Balloon shot: Highest altitude Air to Air engagement ever recorded (Claim)
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Referenced due to mention of previous Air to Space engagement by F-15 Eagle carrying ASM-135 ASAT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT
F-22 pilot in the balloon shot apparently used an AIM-9X missile, and debris fell into 47 feet of water:
https://www.ssj.news/news/americas/2023-02-05/efforts-underw...
AIM-9X capabilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op7n8I2_Dkc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ
Some are reporting (Ward Carroll) that the missile was released without a typical warhead configuration (missile-body kinetic kill only).
This in the context of an awkwardly-handled political-diplomatic messaging transition on China's part: https://twitter.com/SariArhoHavren/status/162215827346499174...
Pentagon confirms 3x Chinese balloon flyovers of the US during prior administration: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32...
Starlink's next generation of LEO orbitals will pick up Mobile phone device signals to provide service: So what exactly is the benefit of a balloon?
It says nothing about Chinese intelligence, and maybe quite a lot about the lack of coordination in remote earth sensing between nation states using the jetstream this happened this way. They should be chastised for not reporting it, assuming somebody at NOAA or the American Academy of Sciences didn't in fact get a heads-up.
Shooting it was performative reactive management and did nothing particularly useful in the geo politics space. Like everything, it was targetted domestically inside the USA