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Comment by fuoqi | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if Russia and/or China will start launching a bunch of relatively cheap stratospheric balloons with foil-covered cardboard boxes to imitate payloads to troll the US and make it spend millions on shooting them down. To make the trolling a bit less obvious they even may add some innocent recording devices to claim that they are "scientific experiments".

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The Russians are already doing it in Ukraine:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64661145

No, they "started" doing it the day after a fake spy balloon was shot down, it's narrative not truth (and actually soviet balloons predate everyone else by about 60 years)

The US was doing it on the Soviets and Chinese in the 50s: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cold-war-balloon-surve...

Yeah, but actually the Soviets started before then even, pioneers really - just like the Nazis pioneered a lot, but we can't possibly acknowledge that because they're evil

I'd simply retaliate by doing the same. I don't think Russia can afford to waste resources and if China is building up for a Taiwan invasion - the same for them.

using ballons as a ddos attack, making the usaf spend 500k per each

Everyone acting like the USAF has never scrambled jets and fired AIM9Xs before for practice... the 3 so far have been a more fun (and probably more effective) training program.

If somebody starts sending thousands...the retaliation clearly isn't going to be against the balloons, but against the sender.

Five AIM-9Xs, to be precise. Four targets destroyed in total; one of the F-16 launched ones missed.

Sounds like you are just making your adversary fund a jobs program you probably can't afford to keep up with. Bomber gap all over again.

At that scale, a change to true mass production of ordnance would occur, significantly reducing the price per piece.

People talk about the millions of dollars of missiles like it is even a little significant to the USAF. They'll just write it off as live fire training.

Firing these four missiles isn't a significant use of their budget. If they start firing four missiles to destroy every three balloons out there it very quickly will be a massive cost.

Plus, if they started getting so many balloons where this is no longer feasible in cost as a method of bringing them down, it will create a lot of incentive to develop cheaper methods that wouldn't have been developed otherwise, and no other nation can keep up with the level of investment the U.S. can deliver on warmaking. Maybe it would have been better for you if you just didn't poke the bear and get it started on all these projects that are now undoubtedly going on behind the scenes because of all of this.

> and no other nation can keep up with the level of investment the U.S. can deliver on warmaking

From wikipedia:

US GDP: USD$25 trillion

Chinese GDP: USD$18 trillion

Chinese GDP (PPP): USD$30 trillion

Maybe we should say, "no other nation would be that stupid".

>four missiles to destroy every three

a much welcome subtle jab. lest we forget even the world's "most advanced army", or, at least the most populous / funded, still has the same error-prone monkeys as every other army

I am full of criticism for the military, but a 75% success rate in such situations seems fair.

A plane moving hundreds of miles per hour is firing a missile traveling similar speeds at a fairly small object likely miles away that is heavily influenced by the strong winds. Comparatively, professional soccer players regularly miss the net.

At that point they might remember they have 20mm gatling cannons on the F16 and F22. Not as cool or long range as missiles, but I imagine significantly cheaper to fire in short bursts.

Bullets fired still land somewhere and are difficult to stop once they leave the gun.

The F16 and F22 are somewhere in the 110 to 160 knot range for stall speed. The balloon, for all practical purposes, is 0 knots. Shooting at something straight ahead that isn't moving while you're moving at 160 knots may pose some more challenges than locking into it with a missile.

A zero pressure balloon ( https://www.nasa.gov/scientific-balloons/types-of-balloons ) is roughly equal pressure on the inside and outside. These balloons do not "pop" as such when punctured and may cause additional hazards as they descend uncontrolled.

Hobby balloons, though, are not zero pressure balloons. It's part of how they control their own flight time, by intentionally bursting when they reach a high enough altitude. So a 20mm cannon would probably have a reasonable chance of success, though it would be spreading a lot of lead downrange that would eventually hit the ground, and could annoy people in the path.

these balloons are too high up sometimes to get in cannon range. then there's the question of where the bullets fall after they rip through the balloon, hopefully not on anyones house.

Assuming they're using exploding shells, there ought not to be pieces heavy enough to be a serious threat.

Requires being able to aim, fighter or politics both shit out of luck ;)

> They'll just write it off as live fire training.

And then someone will complain. "If you're explaining yourself, you've already lost."

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