I mean maybe I'm just not up to date on recent history, but when was the last time we shot down anything in our our airspace prior to last week?
"One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.
Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II."
https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-wo...
The airforce then bombed hydrogen generating facilities nearby the suspected launch sites.
Section offense and defense
Also wonder how effective it is. Especially nowadays in such an interconnected world where products, and especially sand, could be coming from the opposite side of the globe
Sand with a variety of both of those can look much more varied, under a microscope, than you might imagine.
Or maybe the US government chooses to fund all areas of research, like mineral surveys, in the hopes they can call on a field of knowledge repository to use in a war machine.
I'd like to believe there is a soil library that staff were doing microscope slide searches late into the night.
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/battle-of-attu-60-years.htm
Edit: some more info. 881 Aleuts were gathered up, endured slave labor, and 118 died from lack of food, warmth or medical care. All extremely preventable as is evidenced by the camp just 30 miles away of around 700 Nazi POWs. All 700 returned home alive and in good health. Historian Stan Cohen even wrote, "All in all, the German imprisonment in Alaska was quite pleasant."
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/21/516277507...
The last two paragraphs are a pathetic conclusion from the governement.
Much like this story, many Japanese planners did not appreciate the vast size of the American west. A hundred random firebombs were basically irrelevant compared to the many thousands of yearly lighting strikes that also regularly cause fires. Who knows how many Japanese balloons are out there hanging from some tree undiscovered.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt
German sub drops off a team in 1943 to install a weather station on Newfoundland.
Wasnt discovered until 35 years later only because some scholar found reference to it in the German archives.
Labrador, where’s the station was located, is a lot less densely populated than Newfoundland.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-sep-11-me-then1...
The site of the people that found the remains of the plane is online and has a nice old-times look (with frames):
But who knows really, maybe the US govt is better at hiding its secrets than I give it credit for.