Why would a 21st century warplane shoot a balloon with a missile? | Hacker News Reader

Why would a 21st century warplane shoot a balloon with a missile?

aviation.stackexchange.com

112 pointsfergie329 comments

This and the previous thread on this subject have highlighted some interesting(?) things, at least for me:

* The IT community, despite the majority being some form of an intellectual, has either a flawed (read: Hollywood) or no understanding of physics or military aviation.

* The IT community, despite the majority being some form of an intellectual, has a patently insufficient understanding of how sovereignty, diplomacy, and laws work.

* The Chinese apologists are hilarious to witness, particularly the ones who believe two wrongs make a right.

First time? Basically any not-directly-IT domain gets talked about this way. Hell, even times where topics like Health and Nutrition come up you find a lot of wildly inaccurate statements being made here.

I think the problem is too many people see themselves as the type of generalist Intellectual when they shouldn't.

I completely agree. One fun thing about HN though, is that every once in a while an expert from an obscure domain drops in with an extraordinary comment. It is rare, but delightful when it happens.

“engineer's disease”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812804

Ah, I used to call it the “school teacher’s disease”. People spend their whole days in environments where they are indisputable experts, then they carry their patronising attitude elsewhere.

    even times where topics like Health and Nutrition come up you find a lot of wildly inaccurate statements being made

On hackernews alt-med is repackaged as "biohacking" (sic!) and suddenly injecting yourself with home-made concoctions because you've read some research that some stuff had some effect in vivo or you came up with it yourself after reading wikipedia is lauded as next frontier of medicine or transhumanism come home.

I mean, that's every non-IT topic in an IT forum. It's to be expected from all forums really. Everyone has blind spots about other professions.

I think the key is to treat off-topic threads like watercooler talk, friends shooting the shit with each other and enjoy the drama.

I'm sorry but I gotta laugh at "despite the majority being some form of an intellectual", as if that is worth something. If you don't have the experience and the domain knowledge, can you call yourself an intellectual in that domain?

The thing is the IT community should know better. You know what goes in airplanes and missiles? Computers.

Not understanding how high 60,000 feet (roughly 18km) is is embarassing when you're an engineer of some description.

This phenomenon is something I've noticed with other subjects too; like a lot of the IT community not understanding how life works outside of cities when we talk about transport and infrastructure.

IT professionals affect the world in very significant ways with their engineering, but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

> but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

It’s the arrogance associated with it. A kind of “I understand this complicated thing (computers) so everything else is trivial to me”. To learn something, you need the humility to say “I don’t understand”.

There is likely a selection bias at work here. Anyone who correctly identifies that they lack the domain knowledge to leave a well informed comment will not post. So most posts will naturally be by the uninformed or arrogant, but we have no idea what the ratio between these two groups is because people who dont post are impossible to count.

Dunning Kruger?

> but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.

Combination of poor social skills and arrogance.

> "despite the majority being some form of an intellectual", as if that is worth something.

I think I would phrase that as "despite the majority thinking of themselves some form of an intellectual, outside of their domain, they are out often out their depth and unaware of it".

> If you don't have the experience and the domain knowledge, can you call yourself an intellectual in that domain?

Yeah, that's the thing. You can assume that "in that domain" is irrelevant, and call yourself an intellectual, period. You can and you'd be wrong, very wrong, but you wouldn't be alone. It's common.

When I call myself an intellectual, it is mostly a form of pride or vanity.

As a boy, I read Ender's Game and Zhuge Liang's commentaries on The Art of War. As a man, I like to imagine that I now know enough to keep the whole world safe from catastrophic war. It is a comforting illusion.

It's not uncommon to find people on HN who are "in the room" when top-level decisions are being made in healthcare, defense, finance, etc

That's different from when an Oncologist forum is discussing SEC actions or an Accounting forum is discussing laser-guided munitions... or at least it might be different: you rarely know on HN who is speaking from direct knowledge.

And if it's about defense or proprietary information then HNers with knowledge will lurk but not participate.

I work at NASA. We had a big review meeting for a space brayton (turbine engine) concept. One manager-level engineer absolutely thought that the spinning rotor would apply a constant torque to the spacecraft that would have to be constantly counteracted. I tried and failed to explain conservation of angular momentum to him.

I studied physics and it always surprises me how many good engineers really don’t have a very good intuitive understanding of basic physics principles like conservation laws.

I’m just checking my intuition here. An accelerating or decelerating rotor would apply an angular force (first derivative), while a constant rotation would not?

Yes. The time derivative of angular momentum is torque.

I'm confused... you are right that it takes no additional torque to keep a frictionless rotor rotating at the same angular velocity, but in the real world there is friction and air resistance where you have to keep applying torque to keep something spinning at the same rate. and if you are applying torque to someone, then that thing is applying an equal and opposite torque back... is it not?

Great, sounds like our tax dollars are hard at work then.

If rotor has 0 friction mounting then sure, no constant torque. Otherwise small constant torque that depends on friction.

See, in physics, you can assume there is no friction. Engineers often forget this one weird trick.

>"See, in physics, you can assume..."

In theoretical model of ideal XXX. Not when asked to actually calculate something practical unless the ideal model is good enough for constraints.

I am not an engineer. Actually MS in physics however ancient ;)

Which is balanced by the torque applied by the working fluid that's being shoved through the rotor to keep it spinning.

Friction with the helicopter doesn't matter, friction with the air does.

Let me see if I got this: for instance, a helicopter can turn off their anti-torque tail rotor if the speed of the main rotor is constant?

Yes and no. The torque in helicopter is primarily a side effect of power being applied to the rotor. When a helicopter auto rotates (such as after an engine failure), the pilot has to remove anti torque forces with the pedals. This remains true even when you change pitch to slow your descent to the ground. So as long as no power is being applied, if you are in a free descent with a constant rotation on your rotor, then no, you will not need anti torque.

Source: I am a helicopter pilot.

Fantastic, thank you!

without friction with the air/medium it would have to turn it off or it would start spinning

No, because the main router isn’t applying a pure downward thrust. It’s also moving air in the direction of rotation. A turbine has internal baffles and the ducting itself to direct the air in one direction (?)

What about friction? Wouldn’t that cause torque?

The apologists do a good job of burying inconvenient info. I guess the fact that China is escalating the situation today is hard to justify.

Edit:

https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-06/china-let...

China is publicly saber rattling? Must be a day that ends in Y.

You would think given the situation they'd say "no comment". It's incumbent on China given that they violated US airspace to not make the situation worse. They have to know that it is an impossible situation for the US to back down in. They're basically ensuring we get locked into an escalation cycle.

Edit: And by loosening their censorship on nationalist commentators to say incendiary things means neither side has any room to maneuver. It's like adding in dynamite.

Then why would we assume they want anything other than an escalation cycle? Didn't foreign orders fall by some massive amount over the past year? One narrative for why the Chinese people tolerate their totalitarian dictatorship is the economic growth and prosperity they believe that it has bought them.

This is not likely to remain constant given the above, and thus the tolerance of the totalitarian dictatorship is similarly unlikely to remain constant, and what does a dictator with a slipping grip on power want to shore it up? A nice foreign skirmish.

Beware, because this is basically the case on every non-software topic here. I come for the entertaining takes from smart people trying to get it right. They often don’t. The moment the scales fell from my eyes was at a former company where several engineers were talking about their essential oil remedies.

> despite the majority being some form of an intellectual

Wait what? What is your definition of intellectual because I don't think this is remotely true.

>* The IT community, despite the majority being some form of an intellectual

That's your first error. Any trade can encompass a swath of subjects and nuances from history to technology, niche technique and even underlying mathematics thousands of years old, including those that built the floor your chair is on right now, but you'd probably drive by a construction site thinking the mouth breathers are right where big brother market sorted their 'intellect' to.

Could you be more specific about the first part?

I think that why choose a missile over guns is a legitimate question.

As the author also later finds out, and only suggests it, perhaps using guns might have also worked, but just seems riskier because the proximity to the baloon (for the aircraft) and terminal velocity of bullets (though the baloon was shot down over safe airspace)?

There’s a direct parallel where a high altitude balloon survived thousand rounds. It just doesn’t shoot it down in a reasonable timeframe.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6737831

I don’t see how expertise at using the latest javascript framework to serve advertising makes you an intellectual. If I feel I have too much karma and need a few downvotes, all I need to do is post something correct about physics or mathematics that’s even slightly counterintuitive. It never fails.

> The IT community...

...is full of rather ignorant people who see themselves as "very smart" and therefore foolishly talk like they are an expert or near-expert in any area, especially after they've spent a half-hour reading Wikipedia or read some popular-audience book.

IMHO, it's generally the best policy to assume that an expert or conventional wisdom in another field is more correct than whatever "fatal flaw" you can think of in 30 seconds to form an internet comment. The main caveat to that is when political or ideological conflict is at play, no one should feel they need to defer to an expert's ideology or favored political policy choices.

> The IT community

Otherwise accurate, I can only object to your use of this phrase as intentionally vague when you could easily have been more specific and accurate: it is only software developers, apparently, that know everything. Network Engineers, DBAs, Systems Administrators, Tier II and Help Desk Technicians do not behave this way, but generally approach problems from a synthetic perspective of ignorance rather than knowing everything there is to know a priori. Developers are creators, gods among men.

This is simply humanity.

The subject does not matter, intelligence and other cognitive capacities do not matter, here there or wherever does not matter.

Almost no one ever works from the assumption that they are ignorant regarding a topic, and partially to wholly mistaken about everything to do with it, despite this being true.

Yup.

Took me spending hundreds of hours learning about AI risk to realise I know fuck all.

Oh no, people are asking "stupid" questions and speculating about things they are not experts on. How terrible - someone might learn something.

> insufficient understanding

Insufficient for what? We are on a discussion forum. It's not like people here will have perfect knowledge about IT topics either, not to mention that there could be multiple correct actions/decisions besides the one that the expers have chosen.

We should be encouraging more critical discussion, not shaming people for daring to ask questions.

Not only are people here ignorant outside of IT (and often inside of IT as well), but the average age of commenters is 15.

> The IT community, despite the majority being some form of an intellectual

No, the majority are some form of tradesman.

I haven’t been paying attention. What is the proof that it’s Chinese and not Russian or from Brazil?

The Chinese already have confirmed it was theirs, so there is that.

This behavior isn't unique to the IT community, as XKCD has observed with physicists: https://xkcd.com/793/

> * The Chinese apologists are hilarious to witness, particularly the ones who believe two wrongs make a right.

No need to be apologetic about a $1 trillion project shooting down a fricking balloon. At least the Soviets were sensible enough to let Mathias Rust land his airplane close to the Kremlin.

My head is spinning so fast from this comment, you could probably use me to chop down Chinese balloons out of the air.

No, you don't seem to understand. Having used the F-22 in "combat", the program is used up. Now we'll need to play another card to deal with another threat. The balloon was just to tank our defenses. That's why you always build small disposable defenses as well as expensive ones. Our radars were all tapped tracking a balloon! How can we withstand even a bomber run now?

Shooting down one balloon demonstrated all the capabilities of the F-22? Doubt it. the F-15 has seen combat for almost 50 years and we’re still flying it, quite successfully too. I’m sure there are classified planes with greater capabilities than the F-22, and that money has already been spent, so China has to try harder to get the US to deploy its classified weaponry.

> No, you don't seem to understand. Having used the F-22 in "combat", the program is used up.

The US could have strategically used that $1 trillion on its human resources, on things like school and healthcare for all, that way they wouldn't have had a 25% deficit in recruiting personnel (last I've checked). But, hey, building an airplane that can shoot down balloons for the same amount of money I guess also works.

Yeah, I know about the opportunity costs of dissuasion ("nobody is going to attack us if we've got a $1 trillion airplane"), but, again, in the great and long-term strategic scheme of things looks like that was the wrong choice for the US.

Guns on planes are deliberately made to spray over a certain area to increase the odds of a kill, which is good when you're in a fight to the death and you're all out of other options, which is the scenario the gun was made for. Using guns here would risk damaging the payload which they want to recover for study, both to see what exactly was observed and to get a better understanding of the device.

The balloon was brought down with a missile that had the primary explosive removed, it basically just flew through the balloon. This being the F-22's first air-to-air kill after nearly 2 decades in service, it's not like these missiles are a precious resource to be conserved. It also would be quite embarrassing to attempt to shoot down the balloon and fail, so it makes sense to go for a guaranteed kill.

Finally, it should be noted that the balloon was at approximately 60,000 ft. The F-22's flight ceiling is above 50,000 ft, but the exact value is classified. It is possible that the F-22 simply could not get up high enough to engage with guns even if that was desirable, or it's also possible that the F-22 is capable of flying that high but the US did not want to confirm that to a potential foreign adversary. In general it is also just good practice to keep some distance between your most capable assets and foreign espionage devices.

As one can see from video of the encounter, it was very effective in bringing the balloon down in a controlled manner. It's one thing to monday-morning quarterback a failure, but this is ridiculous.

> The balloon was brought down with a missile that had the primary explosive removed

The missile fused and was a normal AIM-9X.

You can see result of the war cranium detonation in the videos as a cloud of black smoke. It's just that things are happening so fast that it looks like the missile just sails right on through.

> This being the F-22's first air-to-air kill after nearly 2 decades in service, it's not like these missiles are a precious resource to be conserved.

The first clause of your sentence here is not logically related to the second clause. These acquisitions programs are separate. While missile purchase quantities are adjusted based on projected needs, it is not as if there is a quantity in inventory earmarked specifically for the F-22 only.

> It is possible that the F-22 simply could not get up high enough to engage with guns even if that was desirable

It wasn't desirable, based on the experience the Royal Canadian Air Force had trying to shoot down a wayward weather balloon in 1988. https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb

Over 1000 rounds fired without bringing the balloon down.

> You can see result of the war cranium detonation in the videos as a cloud of black smoke.

That's the tiny self destruct fuse going off after it's already gone through the balloon. An AIM-9X actually going off is substantially larger.

> The first clause of your sentence here is not logically related to the second clause. These acquisitions programs are separate. While missile purchase quantities are adjusted based on projected needs, it is not as if there is a quantity in inventory earmarked specifically for the F-22 only.

There is most certainly an inventory of munitions earmarked for the F-22. They are stored on the bases with the F-22, the pilots train with these munitions, if there was a need to deploy them they would deploy with these munitions. They could potentially be used by other planes, but only if they were urgently needed, which was the actual point I was making: these are air-to-air missiles, used only for an aircraft to shoot down another aircraft, something which has been a very rare occurrence for quite some time. Not only was this the first A2A kill for the F22, it was merely the second A2A kill for the US in the 21st century. This lack of aerial combat is the reason why the F-22 has been so rarely used.

> An AIM-9X actually going off is substantially larger.

No; the resulting exploding plane full of fuel is.

The actual explosion from the missile is small; you can see it at 0:54 or so on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YMSfg26YSQ.

As with a fragmentation grenade, they're shrapnel generators. https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-trending/grenades-movi...

Yeah, there isn't any explosion even that large. Perhaps you are mistaking the cloud of vapor as the balloon pops?

Again, the goal was to preserve as much intact as possible, shrapnel production runs completely counter to that objective. I'm basing my comments off this source [0], which admittedly is just some guy on the internet, though I have not been able to find any source claiming the missile carried a munition, if you have one please share it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2xz21HvLs8

> You can see result of the war cranium detonation

"war cranium"? Is it you, ChatGPT?

Saying "head" in fighter pilot circles historically had an immediate sexual connotation. Who knows what's considered funny any longer.

What the other person replying to you said. They even use this terminology in official documents. So I do, too, for laughs.

Per what I read, the F-22 was operating at 58,000 ft and shot the balloon that was at the time at 65,000 ft. A missile was used because it had to elevate ~7,000 ft to hit the target. The balloon fell in 47 ft of water, 6 mi from the coast.

edit source: https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32...

F22 unclass service ceiling is 65,000ft

> The balloon was brought down with a missile that had the primary explosive removed

Please stop reciting this fake and incorrect information.

You got a source saying that it did have a warhead?

Is there any reputable source saying it didn't?

The closest anyone's come in this thread is "this YouTuber said so".

I don't have a source proving the cop who pulls me over has real bullets in his gun, but it's safe to assume he does, because that's the normal scenario. If you claim he's carrying a water pistol (highly unusual!) burden of proof is on you.

edit: Here. Debate settled.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/...

> GEN. VANHERCK: Yeah, absolutely. There was a warhead in the missile. You can see that explosion on TV as it goes through the lower part of the balloon and right there through the superstructure.

Find ANY source that says you can remove a missile's warhead and have it still work (excluding missiles designed to have no warheads).

I know absolutely nothing about planes and missiles etc. but the "measure thrice, cut once, build in failsafes and leave loads of margin for error" approach seems very plausible for a bureaucratic and highly public organization like the US Army.

I know I’m being pedantic but the Air Force is completely separate from the Army

Using guns wouldn’t work well because of various interesting aspects of physics. It was tried before on a different balloon and based on that they used a missile. In this situation it was important that the balloon be disabled in one hit and crashed within US territorial waters to avoid bigger headaches. The US regularly patrols just outside a Chinese airspace and for the US to shoot at something outside it’s airspace or have the ballon crash in international waters would open up a whole different can of worms.

Perhaps worth noting that the US did overflights of China with drones (or at least attempted to) as recently as 1971:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

Why is something "as recently" as 1971 worth noting?

Of course it doesn't justify what China did (I wasn't making a "two wrongs make a right" argument) - but it might help explain the thought processes of the Chinese leadership in pulling a stunt like this - I would suspect that they are aware of US overflights over China.

Talk to a diplomat about "precedents". And to someone familiar with current politics in China about the policy of cultivating memories of past indignities, which were suffered at the hands of foreign powers.

Indignities as recent as 1945.

That was before even Nixon's famous visit when we still had zero diplomatic relations with China, and those drones were completely replaced by satellites, which both the US and China use on each other to this day. Your 50 year old example has zero relevance to today.

Not just China, and not just drones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

However, this incident is going to establish an interesting precedent of when it is ok to shoot down an satellite.

The difference between a baloon and a satellite is pretty massive, and airspace != space. Granted, there is no clear border between those two (the Kármán line is somewhat artificial), but there is a clear difference between orbiting stuff and stuff that needs air in order to fly, and long term behavior of powers that be clearly distinguishes between those two.

I suspect historically it had more to do with capabilities than anything else. If you had the power to shoot it down, you would, and nobody could shoot down a satellite. Of course now, everybody and their brother has satellites and shooting them down would be major bad for everybody involved.

Yes. In practice, your airspace is what you can defend.

This kind of thing has a long history -- the old "three mile limit" for territorial waters had more to do with the maximum range of cannon than it did anything else.

How is this fundamentally different from the U-2 incident? The precedent is already set: a nation has sovereign rights over its airspace

Interestingly enough there doesn't seem to be an agree vertical extent as to where "airspace" stops:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace

I don't see how this would set a precedent - it was over the US and they shot it down, seems pretty clear cut to me.

For aviation noobs (like me) wondering how low the balloon would have to be in order for a helicopter to be an option for retrieval:

"The maximum altitude which can be reached during forward flight typically depends on the ability of the engine to breathe the thinner air rather than the rotor's ability to provide lift. Turbine-engine helicopters can reach around 25,000 feet (7,620 meters). But the maximum height at which a helicopter can hover is much lower - a high performance helicopter can hover at 10,400 feet (3,170 meters)."

Source: https://www.virginexperiencedays.co.uk/experience-blog/how-h...

A helicopter was successfully hovered to land on the Everest though, at 8,848 m (29,029 ft).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle#Mount_Everest_...

(For context, the atmosphere at 65k feet is about 1/5 of Everest.)

Is the one on mars able to operate with really thin air because mars has less gravity?

A "balloon retrieval bot" using battery powered propulsion, launched by another platform such as a rocket (or another balloon!) might be a fun thing for someone at raytheon to pitch.

Large, much faster blades, and very light construction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

> The planet's atmospheric density is about 1⁄100 that of Earth's at sea level, or about the same as 87,000 ft (27,000 m), an altitude never reached by existing helicopters. This density reduces even more in Martian winters. To keep Ingenuity aloft, its specially shaped blades of enlarged size must rotate between 2400 and 2900 rpm, or about 10 times faster than what is needed on Earth.

Of course that helps, but the whole design was made for it. It's dual rotors were designed for the environment, and rotate at 2500 rpm+ vs 500rpm for a normal helicopter.

A remote controlled helicopter/multicopter could perhaps be used to shred the balloon if it can fly high enough.

This is why no one brings down the bodies from Everest.

In the video (or one of the videos) it looks like the missile hit the base of the balloon, which did pop the balloon but also separated the payload from the balloon without destroying the payload.

Considering that they waited until the balloon was over shallow water it seems like a deliberate, 'surgical' move to seize the payload with minimum damage.

For public consumption this also provided a clean and decisive shoot rather than looking rather ridiculous by shooting rounds at it without necessarily any immediate effects. So a good ending for the President's image.

The fact that they it let cross the country first suggests that it wasn't deemed a threat, though.

From what I've read elsewhere, they were jamming it extensively for most of its trip. In addition, they were using it as an exercise in monitoring and assessing its capabilities. Then it was safely disabled in shallow US waters with no risk of collateral. Seems like it was handled professionally by all involved.

Yep; they shadowed it with an RC-135, a recon and electronic warfare aircraft.

ADS-B track: https://twitter.com/HarryBloke/status/1621759602344988672

Air to air missiles have proximity fuzes and the pattern of the shrapnel is roughly a disk normal to the missile - so not that precise.

Or do you think it was actually a laser-guided air-ground missile?

It was an AIM-9X Sidewinder, with the warhead removed.

The missile clearly fuses, it had a warcranium. Where are you and others getting the idea that the missile had no warcranium?

I wanted to joke about this showing the clear need for jet-mounted shotguns, but there is or was probably some multi-million MIC research project about exactly this. (And yes, I read that 1000 holes weren't sufficient. But software architecture rule #1: if brute force didn't work, it just wasn't brute enough.)

Air-to-air missiles are jet-mounted shotguns. They send a cloud of shrapnel into the target.

For a good example, look at pictures of the MH17 debris: https://twitter.com/samgadjones/status/491242301872955393

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1835D/production...

Not a shotgun, but the USSR developed an entire aircraft with EO-guided turret-mounted 23mm cannon to counter balloons. The Myasischev M-17:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ad9rmXHhi2U/TaBxNpJvBtI/AAAAAAABI...

Over 4,000 recce balloons had entered their airspace up until the late 1970s and the Soviets compiled statistics that "on average 1.4 guided AAM's, 26 unguided rockets and 112 cannon rounds were used against each [destroyed] balloon"

In case anyone is wondering:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myasishchev_M-55

> if brute force didn't work, it just wasn't brute enough

Arguably, upgrading to explosives counts as 'more brute'

Canceled out by the smarter delivery. But I'm willing to allow HEI cannons instead of shrapnel shotguns.

I mean, obviously the dumbest, brutest thing would be the jet equivalent of Ben Hur's wheel spikes. Sharpened wings?

The missile they took it down with didn't have an explosive warhead. It was more like an arrow.

I've seen this claim several times in this thread, zero of them with a source. Meanwhile, the close-up video has clear evidence of a detonation. https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1621996717624393728

I've seen it speculated and took that for more than it was worth apparently: > https://newsrnd.com/news/2023-02-06-beyond-u-s--china-relati...

"Some military analysis also pointed out that the missile may not be equipped with a warhead, and the U.S. military only selected a favorable attack position after monitoring the balloon in the past few days."

I see no detonation here

> I wanted to joke about this showing the clear need for jet-mounted shotguns

You might want to play the NC (blue guys) in Planetside 2. They have shotguns on everything. Yes, even their aircraft have shotguns.

“XML is like violence - if it’s not solving your problem you’re not using enough of it.”

I'm not up to date on spy-balloon technology, but what kind of things can they learn using a balloon that they couldn't have learned by using a satellite?

Today's New York Times piece says

>Now [balloons] are making a comeback, because while spy satellites can see almost everything, balloons equipped with high-tech sensors hover over a site far longer and can pick up radio, cellular and other transmissions that cannot be detected from space. That is why the Montana sighting of the balloon was critical; in recent years, the National Security Agency and United States Strategic Command, which oversees the American nuclear arsenal, have been remaking communications with nuclear weapons sites. That would be one, but only one, of the natural targets for China’s Ministry of State Security, which oversees many of its national security hacks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/05/us/politics/balloon-china...

Does the baloon transmit the data back via sattelite or is it recorded on a device and has to be phisically retrieved?

If it we're me I'd assume whatever the balloon is carrying is expendable since it over foreign airspace and/or weather is a thing.

They're controlling the altitude so I assume they have it transmit data back either upon command or continuously.

Do you have any source for the claim that the balloon altitude was controlled remotely? I didn't see it mentioned until now.

That's a good question. I haven't heard any information one way or the other, and it wouldn't surprise me if the public never learns those kinds of details (or, rather, only learns in 30 years or whenever it gets declassified)

Orbits and schedules of satellites are well-known. A balloon gives you eyes in the sky outside of those known schedules and longer hover times.

Balloons have the same problem; you can see them. You know when one's over your ICBM field.

“Prior Chinese Balloon Incursions Over U.S. Went Undetected, Officials Say” https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-decision-to-delay-shootdo...

NORAD claims it was tracking it as soon as it started heading across the pacific

Aside from the much, much slower movement (more time over targets), a balloon is roughly 10x closer to the surface than even the lowest satellite.

Are there any laser weapons portable enough to use (either on a vehicle or a ship if the balloon is near the cost)?

I have read about lasers that are used against missiles and planes. I imagine that the balloon would be more fragile. Could it be hurt even if the laser has lost energy due to the high altitude?

You usually don't show off your brand new never seen before army tech to a potential future enemy to pop a literal balloon

The YAL-1 with it's Mega Watt laser may have been able to burn a significant hole in the envelope, but it was retired in 2014: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Perhaps but they're not going to show off any new weapons to whatever Chinese sensors are on board.

Here's more information about shooting down balloons with modern airplanes than you ever wanted to know (TL;DR: it's surprisingly tricky):

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-shooting-down-chin...

This article is the best comprehensive and contextual description of the targeting and munition decision.

What amazes me is that the distance of 60000ft (20km) is quite short here on earth. You can do it by bicycle in one hour. But if you go vertical, suddenly the rules change. Up there isn't even enough air to power the engines of jets, so the will have to carry an oxigen tank with them. If you go vertical things become difficult really quickly and space starts in vertical direction where the neighboring town is in horizontal direction.

Also, where is the limit when you would call the balloon a satellite? Satellites cross over foreign countries all the time, so there must be a height above which this is not a problem. Is there a fixed threshold for this?

I don’t think there’s a hard set boundary (I don’t remember that the ‘67 OST defines one).

The FAI treats the Karman line as the limit between atmospheric and space flight.

USAF uses a lower 50 miles threshold (80km), NASA uses that for uniformity since 2005.

Satellites have to be placed in orbit by definition. To be in orbit at 20km of altitude you'd need to be flying at over 7km/s, so balloons can't argued to be satellites.

Honest question... why did they have to shoot it down? Wasn't it better/safer/smarter to pull it down and study/analyze it?

EDIT: Assuming it was possible to pull it down. Was it?

Pull it down with what?

Maybe they could rig a hook on the end of a 60,000-foot broom handle?

The AIB-1 (Air Intercept Broom)?

Fulton comes to mind, but I really doubt it operates at 68,000 feet. Maybe there is a jet variant, but that might be something worth keeping secret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery...

A heavily weighted net perhaps?

How are you getting one big enough to take down a balloon "the size of two to three school buses" to 60k feet?

I'm assuming you're joking, but if you're not ...

How the hell are you getting a heavily weighted net up to 60,000 feet?!

Half-serious. A rocket/missile perhaps? :)

I have no idea, I'm not an expert at all. Was it COMPLETELY impossible to pull it down?

> Was it COMPLETELY impossible to pull it down?

As a first approximation: yes. Nobody can pull it down because not even the tallest human is tall enough to reach it. By far. So that is the answer to that.

On the other hand I assume you mean: Is it possible to pull it down with some machine? And the answer is yes, it is possible to pull it down with some machine.

Entirely within the demonstrated abilities of humankind.

If we want to, have enough money and time, we could make a machine which captures it, takes it to Mars, lands it there softly, dances the cha-cha-cha with it there, launches again back to Earth and lands it softly here. Entirely possible. Only a matter of time and money.

It is not a question of impossibility. It is a question of how much time you have (remember it is drifting out of your airspace) and how much money you want to spend on it, and how certain you want to do it, and how safe you want to keep your personal and people on the ground while doing it.

It was at 60,000 FT, so yes, COMPLETELY impossible.

The balloon was very high in the upper atmosphere, above normal commercial airline flight and above the reach of helicopters.

If balloon pulling is a regular occurrence you can set up infrastructure for it. Devise some different approaches and test them to see what works.

If they waited that long, the balloon would have drifted out of US territory and the politics of downing an object over international waters would have been very sketchy. So yes, it's probably possible to engineer a solution to down a balloon using some non-destructive method, but there simply wasn't time to test it out and figure out what works.

It was shot down over shallow water to maximize the amount of wreckage they could study. Also, while international law is clearly on the US side shooting it down, I'm not sure if capturing it intact would be allowed. That might be air piracy or something. I am not an international lawyer.

> I'm not sure if capturing it intact would be allowed. That might be air piracy or something. I am not an international lawyer.

100% baseless speculation here. The US can, effectively, do whatever the hell it wants. Who's gonna tell us no? We invaded multiple sovereign countries over the past few decades and no one stopped us; you think anyone is gonna stop us doing anything to a balloon within our own airspace? And whatever happens afterwards is a matter for diplomacy, not international courts; there's no one who can enforce a ruling against the US (or China) like that. Welcome to the world of sovereign state actors, where might makes right.

I wonder the same thing. I suspect the reason is that the payload is large no heavy and very high up which makes it hard to catch. The US used to catch rolls of film out of the air after they were dropped by satellites, but those were small and had parachutes, which probably made it easier.

Because not blowing it up would mean people would continue asking pesky questions and demanding evidence. But that would take down the real hot air balloon, the narrative.

Did you watch the video? The payload clearly falls as one, intact piece. Its not like they blew it up with a nuke.

What I don't understand is why one would opt for an IR (heat seeking) missile, over a radar homing one? In this case the goal - I'm guessing - was to pop the ballon and not damage the payload more than necessary. Any heat emitted must have been from the payload, so an IR seeker might hit the part you want to keep (the only part emitting any heat at all).

If you believe that the payload was a sophisticated signals investigation platform, sending a radar-homing missile towards it potentially gives your adversary access to information about your missile's capabilities.

I guess. Likely the F-22 radar itself is a better kept secret than the AMRAAM which has existed for a long time and in semi-recent versions in places like Pakistan. So that could be a reason: firing a radar homing missile requires using the plane radar (?) and you'd prefer to avoid that if possible.

From what I’ve read, this was the first F22 air to air “kill”, so this may have been the first opportunity to test the missile system in production.

I don’t see mention of Air Defense Identification Zone. Within this area is where the balloon interdiction and response should have occurred.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_defense_identification_z...

What I want to know is: Why publicize this now? It's clear that China's been sending out spy balloons for a few years. (And that we (the US) probably do plenty of our own spying too.)

So what's the real reason for telling the whole world about this and cutting off a diplomatic visit?

The game theory of the balloons

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34677497

First time it has happened with a president who isn't asleep at the wheel?

citizens saw it.

That, and not being willing (or able) to stop it makes the president look weak. No president wants that if they can help it, so no president will authorize releasing the information if they can help it.

So?

If you see a balloon, do you automatically assume it's a spy balloon from China?

If the US government ignored the sightings, or gave a plausible answer, I don't think there would be much of a hubbub.

Do we even have planes that can shoot bullets anymore? (Please excuse my ignorance, I really don't follow the military very closely.)

Can jets even fire bullets? I'm no expert in physics, but somehow I think firing a bullet from a jet just wouldn't work.

Why wouldn't it work? Yes I believe all US combat aircraft still carry a gun, usually a 20mm Vulcan cannon:

Here is the F22's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6GhVrVjArI

Yes, jets can fire bullets. There's no reason they wouldn't be able to. Almost all US fighters carry guns. Most carry the M61 Vulcan gatling cannon firing 20mm rounds. The exceptions are the F-35 series. The F-35A, used by the Air Force, carries a GAU-12 Equalizer gatling cannon firing 25mm rounds; the F-35B (the STOVL variant used by the Marine Corps) and the F-35C (used by the Navy) do not carry guns. Guns on fighters have basically the same level of utility as bayonets on assault rifles; that is, not very much.

It's not as important anymore, but pretty much every fighter jet still has a a gun or can carry one on a mount, yes. (commonly 20mm cannon of some kind)

Did the balloon have enough heat to trigger the seeker or did the pilot have to aim the missile and it exploded when it got close?

Probably a very clear differential between the balloon in the sun and the cold sky around it.

Modern Sidewinders have focal plane arrays, which is basically a fancy military way of saying "it's a camera instead of just a single sensor".

https://twitter.com/MergeNewsletter/status/16219846548981104...

Missiles can track things other than heat signatures.

As far as has ever been publicly disclosed, there is no version of the AIM-9X with a non-IR seeker.

Each of the variants, including the AIM-9X, are listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM-9_Sidewinder as "IR/Laser fuze".

Boresight shot towards a slow, non-maneuvering target plus laser fuze should be just fine.

What do you mean by boresight shot? Even in BORE mode, the AIM-9X seeker tracks the IR signature of the target.

Perhaps they painted the target with an IR laser. Just a guess.

FTA: Laser fuze. I assume that means it detonates on proximity measured by Laser.

I'm no balloon pilot but I'd assume you could just puncture it and bring the thing down gradually?

How do you get to the balloon to puncture it?

You have 3 choices: an airplane, a drone, or another balloon.

Airplanes are fast, you can't just approach, slow down, reach out and poke the balloon.

Drones don't fly that high up. On the internet you can find that drones can fly as high as 33000 feet. It's likely the military has drones that fly higher, maybe even as high as this balloon. But you need one that flies that high, and also has the capability to puncture a balloon. It looks like such a modification was not doable in the given window of time.

Another balloon. That would obviously be doable. If a balloon can fly at 60000 feet, another one can too. But again, you need the modifications to make it go up there and shoot at another balloon. Maybe in the future they'll make this type of balloons, but for now they didn't have one handy. And if they had, they didn't want to tip their hand. Better to use weaponry that's widely known to exist, rather than new and classified stuff.

At high altitude these sorts of balloons are massively stretched out due to the low atmospheric pressure. A puncture will cause catastrophic failure of the balloon.

The opposite is true. https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb

> A runaway weather balloon floating toward Britain over the North Atlantic is proving a tough target for some of Canada’s top guns. The helium-filled balloon, a 25-story high unmanned research station used to measure ozone levels over Canada, was launched Monday from Vanscoy, Saskatchewan.

> Jet fighters trying to bring the balloon down fired more than 1,000 rounds into it Thursday, but it remained aloft. The air force hopes the now-leaking balloon will eventually come down.

That balloon was not at high altitude. From the article you linked:

>``It’s at an altitude and an area where trans-Atlantic flights pass nearby,″

That is around 35k feet. I’m talking about the altitude that the recent Chinese balloon was at, around 60k feet.

Are there rocket systems that can deploy drones to great heights or distances?

Because, the powers that be, a.k.a. corrupt Biden family, sold to chinese commies, do not want what this balloon was all about, because their chinese overlords want to keep it hidden. After the payload of spy data was delivered home, i.e., china, the vehicle is destroyed. Otherwise, capturing it and reverse engineering what it was doing in US airspace, and what data it collected as it traversed the whole fucking country, would be very useful. Don't you think?

Yikes. I fear you may have succumbed to propaganda.

Can you provide sources to how "Chinese overlords" have manipulated "corrupt Biden family" in any specificity?

Do you believe that the thousands of career professionals in the US government just decided to not do their jobs because of "corrupt Biden family"?

TLDR: Too big for guns, switching to missiles.

My understanding is we should wait until the balloon is accompanied by at least 98 others before we worry, worry, super-scurry, and call the troops out in a hurry.

Referential humor should stay on Reddit. It's chuckle-worthy, sure, but this forum is one of the few places we have for serious discussion.

When people upvote jokes, the high-value expertise people freely share here gets drowned out, and will eventually disappear.

A more constructive interpretation of the parent comment would be that Nena was on to something.

It’s interesting to draw parallels from the Cold War to today, especially when they are so on the nose.

True, the overreaction to a balloon that triggers a real war seems like a totally realistic scenario nowadays.

I generally agree with you, but it's also okay to laugh on HN sometimes! We mustn't take ourselves too seriously.

Please be aware that furious clutching of pearls will not transmute them to diamonds.

There's a ufo truther article not far above, so citation needed on tgat.

AFAIK knights of the air riding super high-tech jet fighters could identify target as being ballon but not clarify target count nor classify target colour as being red. Target was nonetheless shot down as measurements fit within error margins.

Clearly development of higher-tech jet fighters must be funded ASAP.

Captcha updated to include question: "Pick images that have red ballons"

Captcha updated to include question: "Pick images that have 99 balloons"

F-35 software update deployment scheduled

In fairness the original sign was in German and IIRC doesn’t mention the color red anywhere

Right, but on the otherhand an unqualified "Luftballon" pretty much exclusively refers to party balloons so their scale calculations must have been wayy off - perhaps a metric vs. imperial unit mixup.

Also, I knew about the "red" in the english name, but had no idea how different the english lyrics for the song are.

Actually, we should very much avoid doing that so that we don't end up standing pretty In this dust that was a city, looking for a souvenir just to prove the world was here.

If there are many balloons other tactics would be used to take them down.

I think you missed the reference here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

For the kids too young to know this classic song (99 Red Balloons - English version): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc

I know of the song, also I think the song is known much more in Europe than in the US.

Looks like saving face and putting on a show for the concerned public. https://youtu.be/xuVk1zpp94k

This guy definitely is _the source_ I would use to get all my information. He has videos on every topic imaginable, I can only assume he's an expert in all of them.

Lol. I don't get how people find random people on youtube and then suddenly treat them on experts on all topics.

I think some people will actually think your post isn't sarcasm.

I get puzzled about why people use such a low bandwidth medium as real time talking.if he put all that in a post it'd be a few hundred words and could be read in a minute.

I do agree but is anyone going to see that post? Even for Google searches (as opposed the video being pushed by the Youtube algorithm), videos are often ranked at/near the top.

Got to admit - I suffer from a myriad of conscious and unconscious biases - didn't see that kind of rational thinking coming from "Beau of the Fifth Column".

This is it boys!

I mean why not? Would have been funnier if they pulled out an old ww2 plane and let them rip it to shreds. They downed a lot of blimps in ww2.

Good luck getting a WW2 fighter to 60,000 feet

Biplanes have been to 56,000 feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caproni_Ca.161

Yeah, those biplanes don't have armaments though. Most fighters of the time were maxing out around 30-40,000 feet, with high altitude recon/bombers maxing out around 50k-ish

This precedent should be extended to overflying satellites.

If that policy is applied to the US, you'll see a LOT less satellites in the sky.

After a certain amount of km, it's all good. Same as international waters.

That's the point. Letting adversaries overfly your country with their satellites is bad.

Well, if you want these United States to start shooting down any satellite overhead, then Russia and China follow suit and there'll be nothing left (and/or it will just provoke all-out war on the ground too.)

Not any, just the military ones.

I also have lots of questions:

- How do we know it is a spy balloon and not just a weather balloon that got lost??

- If it is a spy balloon why not take it down gently and look at its payload?

- Did the balloon got on top of a military base by chance or was it directed?

- How was it directed from so far away if the balloon has no propellers?

> How do we know it is a spy balloon and not just a weather balloon that got lost?

It has a much larger payload than weather balloons.

> If it is a spy balloon why not take it down gently and look at its payload?

That's what they did. Controlled shootdown over shallow water; they're collecting the parts now.

> Did the balloon got on top of a military base by chance or was it directed? How was it directed from so far away if the balloon has no propellers?

The Pentagon says it maneuvers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... Might be small propellers (think drone props) within that truss structure.

If we can launch wildly complex space hardware to look into the deepest regions of the universe we can bring down a balloon without the IronEagle dog fighter theatrics. You have to admit this came across like some old-timey George Creel propaganda.

We've plenty of reason to develop the technology for space flight.

We've essentially zero reason to develop the technology to hijack a high-altitude helium ballooon. As clearly demonstrated, much easier techniques already exist.

We spend decades and billiobs if dollars planning and building space telescopes.

Why would we spend money investing in a balloon defense system, when we already have an air defense system that can handle them.

I have one question: If it was a rogue weather balloon, why didn't they call ahead and say, "hey we got this rogue weather balloon, headed into your airspace, don't freak out, shoot it down if you want, it's expendable, sorry for the aviation hazard", because that is what normal countries do.

Yup. Instead, China chose to escalate. What do the apologists think of this?

[1] https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government...

Very "fish at a poker table, called out on bluff, explaining a story that makes no sense" vibes

> How do we know it is a spy balloon and not just a weather balloon that got lost??

We don’t _know_ this AFAIK, but we can make educated assumptions

> If it is a spy balloon why not take it down gently and look at its payload?

That’s what they did

> Did the balloon got on top of a military base by chance or was it directed?

Not publicly known AFAIK

> How was it directed from so far away if the balloon has no propellers?

I believe they said it had a propeller, but even if it didn’t balloons can be directed by changing altitude since the wind blows different directions based on how high up you are. This is how hot air balloons navigate

If there are unfortunate technical difficulties in either recovering or analyzing the balloon, we will know that it was in fact a weather balloon.

I don't buy the argument that all weather balloons look the same and this one is too big. If I wanted to camouflage spy balloons, I'd produce identically looking weather balloons.

Weather balloons have been pretty standard for decades, so if you want to start using a markedly different kind to blend in with your spy balloons you'll need to establish their plausibility first. Like showcasing them at metrological conferences where you enthusiastically explain the real advantages of such a large platform for weather monitoring and show the results you're getting and so on. Otherwise it's as if you turned up at a bank's drive-through in a tank claiming that it's just your family car.

I believe that is called the "Glomar Explorer" P.R. strategy !

> I don't buy the argument that all weather balloons look the same and this one is too big. If I wanted to camouflage spy balloons, I'd produce identically looking weather balloons.

That reasoning is topsy-turvy.

It would work if you would say: "It looks like a weather balloon, but I don't believe it is not a spy balloon just because of that. If I wanted to camouflage spy balloons, I'd produce identically looking weather balloons."

It doesn't work in a scenario where you are observing a balloon which looks different than the usual weather balloons. You cannot say "it cannot be a spy balloon because if it were a spy balloon I would design it to look like a weather balloon". Maybe it is a spy balloon and the people who made it didn't want to hide the fact. Maybe they wanted to hide the fact but couldn't.

Answers to all of these were available in just about any news article on the topic.

Weather balloons usually pop when they are high enough and fall to the ground.

I don't quite believe the reason about guns not being fast enough to bring it down. Enough bullets will shred it eventually and bring it down pretty fast.

More of an issue would be that the plane has to come too close to the (relatively speaking) stationary target. That would be dangerous for the pilot and the plane.

Well, unsurprisingly, the US military knows more about this than you.

Multiple planes and over a thousand rounds is not enough to bring down a much smaller balloon[1]. Not to mention, a leaky balloon will fall slowly, making it an obstacle for regular air traffic.

A single missile is faster, cheaper, easier, etc. We didn't want to bring the balloon down "eventually". We wanted to bring down the balloon precisely and immediately, once it was over water but still in US airspace.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb

> I don't quite believe the reason about guns not being fast enough to bring it down.

What makes this reason a challenge for you to believe?

The F-22’s M61A2 20mm Gatling gun propels 20mm (~0.75”) rounds. A full load out is 480 rounds.

The target is a 90’ diameter, nearly atmosphere equalized pressure vessel. Striking the target with 480 rounds of that size is nowhere near enough to create a large escape surface for the slightly positive pressure gas to vacate quickly.

As I said, enough rounds would do the trick. No reason not to send in two or three planes. Except that all of that increases the risk.

Also you assume a clean through-and-through hole, no tearing. I think the risk to the pilots from flying straight at a balloon is the bigger factor.

You’ll need more than 1,000 rounds[1] (and that was a much smaller balloon)

[1] “ The time a wayward Canadian balloon caused an international stir — and thwarted 3 air forces” - https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6737831

Signaling. It was super brazen invasion of US airspace, this wasn't an accident. So the response was overkill in response to that. Anyway, it looks like China started escalating the conflict today so we'll see how it ends up working out. What I'm confused about is why is China escalating today?

The more mundane reason is “guns don’t work”, from one of the answers further down.

https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb

> Jet fighters trying to bring the balloon down fired more than 1,000 rounds into it Thursday, but it remained aloft. The air force hopes the now-leaking balloon will eventually come down.

Maybe there are some mundane reasons like that help justify it, but a lot of this seems like a bit of a show. I get the F-22 has a high ceiling for operations, but surely you could've shot a missile from a F-16 and accomplished the same thing.

Edit: As proof countries have downed high altitude balloons without F-22s and sidewinders in recent history.

Not guaranteed at all? The ceiling of an F-16 is lower. It's really not guaranteed that that would've worked. These missiles have limited range, and gaining altitude is costliest. It's entirely possible that a Sidewinder would not have worked from an F-16, requiring the use of a longer range, more expensive missile, and even that might not have worked as a balloon is a strange target and they picked this specific weapon system and platform because they believed it to have a high chance of success.

Why wouldn't you use your weapon system that has the highest probability of working on the first shot? The entire world was watching.

Yes the entire world is watching. That's what I mean by signaling.

I'm out of the loop on what china has done in response. Have they done anything other than complain?

(Genuine question, I know it's really easy to be interpreted as dismissive or confrontational and my intent is to be neither of those.)

Let loose the comment section - i.e. stopped censoring nationalists on their internet. This sort ensures that rhetoric is progressively more heated and there will be less space for them to back down. Also they put out additional threats today.

https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government...

I believe the chief of a weather monitoring bureau was removed from his position.

It's awkward how often these civilian weather monitoring operations go awry, isn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

Do you feel this incident from 63 years ago is relevant now?

For context it's closer to the first powered flight in 1903 than it is to the present day.

Surely there is a vertical limit to US airspace??

The US is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, which stipulates that signatories make no territorial claims to outer space. The definition of outer space is often taken to be the Kármán line at 100km. However, the Treaty doesn't use any particular definition. But it does specify that the Moon is part of outer space. So we can assume the US is no taller than 362600km.

"According to international law, states retain sovereignty over the airspace above their territory – subject to certain aviation laws such as the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation (the Chicago Convention). Article 1 of the Chicago Convention makes this clear by providing that every state has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory.

This exclusive sovereignty does not extend to space, because according to Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty, outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

But where does sovereignty over airspace stop, and outer space begin? The exact legal boundary of space is not defined in international law."

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-....

So No, but Yes eventually there is a limit ...

I think it's uncontroversial that FL600 (60K feet MSL) is not "space".

There isn’t at least directly above the country. This normally applies to all countries as well.

At certain heights you are in space and space is international. Anything above 110km is normally considered space, anything below 60km is a country's air space, anything between is a grey area.

That's why the gean BND had it's Space theory to justify it's spying.

The chinese was way below that a ca. 19km

I’d say it’s best to think of that gray zone as more of a nobody really operates here zone.

the CHINESE are INVADING with their BALLOONS and PARTY POPPERS

To be fair, if you were having a balloon war, China would be #1.

Because the missile costs a million dollars and now they can say that F-22 was in the first air-to-air combat.

It's all ridiculous, on purpose, first rule of military, burn money so you can demand more.

A few bullets would have been a slow descent they could track and capture far more easily.

Now it's a show they can reproduce a million dollars a pop.

The NSA is also now free to float balloons around the country for cellphone capture.

> The NSA is also now free to float balloons around the country for cellphone capture.

Why would the NSA need to float balloons around the country when they could just ask/force the telecom companies to give them a copy of their cell tower data?

A little reminder that the missile fired at the balloon had its warhead REMOVED!

A missile not only is more precise than the guns, but can also be fired at a much safer distance.

Punching a big hole immediately exploded the balloon, whereas shooting a bunch of cannon shots could have resulted in much more unforseen consequenced

> A little reminder that the missile fired at the balloon had its warhead REMOVED!

Where are people getting this idea from? I've seen zero reputable reporting of it, and there's a visible grey smoke cloud from the explosive in the close-up videos. https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1621996717624393728

There is no massive fireball Michael Bay explosion which, I assume, is what people expect.

This is a very strange thing to say, because shooting a missile with an explosive warhead is exactly what most people expect, whereas the kinetic version does not come to mind immediately

> shooting a missile with an explosive warhead is exactly what most people expect

No, it tends to be far less dramatic than people imagine; the missile itself is largely a shrapnel delivery vehicle. If there's a fireball, it tends to come more from the thing you hit, which tends (but not in this case) to be full of jet fuel.

I just haven't seen reputable reporting that the missile didn't have a warhead. I was also noting that AA missiles in broad daylight and very far away aren't very exciting which might lead some to think it had no warhead.

Edit: In the closeup footage I see a flash of orange (explosion) in the debris cloud for a frame or two.

C.W. Lemoine ("Mover") who is a former military aviator pretty much makes all of these points in his YT video on this event.

The missile was locked [Edit: had mistakenly said “guided”] by where the pilot was looking, and guided by IR so that it could hit precisely. Also, this missile had no warhead. They removed it on purpose to limit the damage. They wanted to maximize what they could recover and study.

Had the balloon been at an altitude the guns could reach, though, maybe the would have used them.

It was an AIM-9 Sidewinder. They're not sight directed; I think you're confused by the fact that the pilot can generate a lock-on by looking.

I can't find any reputable source claiming a removed warhead, and there's a visible detonation (it's not a Michael Bay movie, folks, they don't add gasoline to make a pretty fireball) on the close-up video; that greyish smoke cloud didn't come from the balloon. https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1621996717624393728

Yeah that missile fused. It was a normal AIM-9X. Missile war cranium detonations are underwhelming (there's not that many pounds of explosives involved) because they are trying to kill aircraft via shrapnel of some kind. Two common designs are a continuous rod that expands in a circle around the detonation, or a hashed metal casing that produces hundreds of small fragments.

I've seen this incorrect take repeated several places and I'm wondering where it originates. Yes, the missile had a warhead. No, missiles are not guided by where pilots are looking.

> Had the balloon been at an altitude the guns could reach, though, maybe the would have used them.

The jet was flying at approximately the same altitude of the balloon. The altitude of the balloon was below the max service ceiling of the aircraft.

Apparently, there is already precedent for the guns not being a great choice:

The time a wayward Canadian balloon caused an international stir — and thwarted 3 air forces:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/weather-balloon-canada-chin...

The USA's DOD budget is nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars. Yet our air space was infiltrated by a balloon? And we had no low impact (?) way of bringing that ballon down?

Moral of the story...China makes a minuscule investment in a ballon and the USA increases an already bloated and excessive DOD budget. China without going to war suckers the USA into losing another financial battle.

Look this story is embarrassing, but the intercept was free. The entirety of it will come out of the training budget the pilots don't have to do for the month. As to the missile, apparently its $400k a pop. That balloon cost millions.

Cost is not the issue. Far more interesting is what was reveled. We have a political block to take down a foreign object in our airspace. The thing flew over the entire continental US. The F-22 can engage extremely fast (relative to the plane) targets at at least 65 000 ft with apparent ease (wikipedia's spec sheet previously said "more than 50 000 ft).

Edit: forgot to mention. The intercept was easy because the balloon was flying relatively low for a balloon. These things are hard to kill. If it were 80 000 ft, would you shoot it down with an F-22 and reveal a very secret characteristic of it? Or use a very expensive SAM?

The oppositiob invests a couple of million and as a result we raise out DOD budget a couple of trillion.

In terms of "return", that ratio has Bernie Madoff blushing.

> That balloon cost millions.

Not saying you're wrong, but... what is your basis for saying this?

- Its size

- its (suspected) payload

- a million is chump change in aeronautics.

Even if it were a weather balloon, the sensors on it would be insane and worth more than the missile. A spy satellite's sensors? Those lenses are filthy expensive.

Size matters, even just considering raw material costs. The fabric is not a cheap coarse cotton garment that would otherwise have become a pair of Levi's. Its full of Helium. On top of that the balloon's size makes it a difficult structural problem.

Nothing was "infiltrated". They knew where the balloon was since shortly after it left Chinese airspace and tracked it continously as it made it's way toward Alaska, south over Canada, and over the United States. (Is this thread being astroturfed?)

> after it left Chinese airspace

Afaik that's false, they backtracked it to China using historical wind patterns, but it wasn't tracked from China to the US since day 1

>Is this thread being astroturfed?

Some people have a vested interest in various US parties (the executive, the military, others?) looking inept. Some people have a very vested interested in those parties or a subset thereof looking competent. No need to spend money on astroturfing when the team politics knuckle draggers will do it for you.

Could be. But both parties are pro-DOD, and that's the only thing we need to know.

And now ask yourself...why did they allow it to penetrate US air space? Who benefits from that narrative? From that fear?

Your #1 answer should be The MIC.

Keep in mind, the POTUS takes a constitutional vow to protect the borders. And we get this? For a week? Stop being so naive.

Given that Trump said nothing as 3 similar balloons did the same thing but went undetected, this sounds more like happenstance that anyone knew about it this time.

There probably was some diplomatic game at play in parallel to the technical ability to take it down.

And there ya go...as I promised...

https://www.ft.com/content/8a2c77c3-58cc-471d-a187-1823faa4f...

>infiltrated

do you have any proof it "infiltrated"? why use this charged language?

Casually floated in???

But the fact that that word caught your eye and not three-quarters of a trillion dollars is hilarious.

And only proves my point.

Infiltrated means that it came into US territory without anyone knowing.

Do you have proof of that?

> Yet our air space was infiltrated by a balloon?

Sorry to disappoint but for only three-quarters of a trillion dollars you dont get a Wakanda style dome around the USA

The means publicly demonstrated in a non-emergency are not necessarily the state of the art.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com