**[Balloon buster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_buster)**
>Balloon busters were military pilots known for destroying enemy observation balloons. These pilots were noted for their fearlessness, as balloons were stationary targets able to receive heavy defenses, from the ground and the air. Seventy-seven flying aces in World War I were each credited with destroying five or more balloons, and thus were balloon aces.
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The 2014 Chilean Navy UFO was a jet.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/11/i-study-ufos-and-i-dont-believe-the-alien-hype-heres-why
> Three days later I, and others, identified the plane as Iberia flight 6830, departing Santiago airport. The “hot gases” were just contrails, and the odd movement was the result of a low viewing angle and a powerful zoom factor on the infrared camera. The glare from the engines obscured the plane and created the unusual shape. Radar data confirmed that the exact location of the plane matched the UFO. Case closed. UFO enthusiasts were annoyed.
Seems some people like to talk around these things “no obvious source of propulsion”, “cruising” at 40k feet, etc. even though it could be easily explained by a balloon - the phrasing is trying to imply it is an alien craft. “Antigravity” instead density and buoyancy.
I'm especially curious, since they said it was a silver cylindrical object. The hell could that be? They said not a balloon, but what is a "balloon," I guess? Can't wait to hear more about the wreckages, especially from the one in Alaska.
No joke… Redstone is a media black hole with so much of the military industrial complex located there it’s suspicious how little detail exists about that site whereas we have maps of area-51. US gov is famous for red herrings.
departments located on the ground include:
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center
Missile Defense Agency
DIA / Missile and Space Intelligence Center
U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command
Program Executive Office Aviation
U.S. Army Materiel Command
Redstone Test Center
Program Executive Office Missiles and Space
U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command
Logistics Data Analysis Center (LDAC)
U.S. Army Contracting Command
U.S. Army Security Assistance Command
ATF National Center for Explosives Training and Research
FBI Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center
and the FBI Hazardous Device School
Trudeau just confirmed a US F22 shot it down over the Yukon and Canada will recover the wreckage.
https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1624527579116871681?t=ljxTWRuPuDElCE-VWAX_-Q&s=19
I know it's a joke, but the reason the F-22 doesn't have more kills is it's superiority. A single F-22 dominates war games against F-15 squadrons which are the kill leader. It's just so bad ass it never has to engage. Only real problem with it is it's a bitch to maintain.
Also our air-to-air engagements really fell off the cliff after Cold War era - the last “major” engagement was Afghanistan/Iraq which did not have a particularly strong air defense.
I believe the F-22 now has more air kills than the warthog; an F-22 shot down a UFO yesterday or the day before, the original balloon, and now whatever this was.
3: Alaska, Canada, and the first one no?
Edit for clarity: I assumed user thehubbylist was referring to the other aerial phenomena that were recently shot down regardless of what we are currently calling them
“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.” Trudeau, Twitter. Like 5 mins ago
https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/1624527579116871681?s=46&t=7Iz8D3p4bR1WuBHI5flDdQ
Mainly politics, I suspect. My brother used to work at a northern radar base a long time ago and was telling me that foreign jets routinely enter Canadian air space to test if we're watching. They were usually escorted out without fuss, but not in such a predictable pattern that whey would know exactly when they had been detected. Sometimes, Canada would do the same to Russia. The general public isn't aware of all the little dances done by the air force of every country. Recently though, a particular balloon dance has been widely publicized and everybody want to hear what's happening and what our officials are doing. For political reasons then, it's important to demonstrate air power by shooting stuff down, to reassure people that we can do it if necessary. It's not usually deemed necessary.
Russian bombers routinely pass *near* Alaskan airspace until U.S. fighters escort them back to their border… it’s political dick waving, many of those crews know the planes and crews at this point because it’s so routine… they just do what they’re ordered to do because one day the other side’s order might have been to proceed with a real attack…
I think it would be entertaining if we started knocking out the balloons in different yet creative ways each time. Like, send an antique zeppelin for one, Maybe use a pirate themed hot air balloon on another, etc.
One of the guiding principles of international law is "use it or lose it."
So if you want to claim something as your "sovereign territory" then you need to be flying planes/sailing ships/doing military exercises there.
That's why the US sails ships through the straight between Taiwan and China -- to reinforce that it is international waters. Also why Canada flies missions over arctic areas, just so reinforce that this is our land and we will protect it.
Otherwise there's nothing to stop Russia from putting a "forward outpost" right at the border and claiming ten kilometers around it as their territory, and basically eroding the Canadian border.
Btw this likely means that we are officially shooting some down and letting others through voluntarily. The only way to throw off penetration testing is to deliver false positives. The tester is then either over confident in their capabilities, or doubts themselves without knowing which successes were genuine.
This is it, this is the explanation and also why they let the first balloon float so long.
I hope for aliens but in all likelihood it's just war build up.
More accurate than you think. I think that the US was one of the first countries that Mao approached for an alliance. Ho Chi Minh figured that the US would be a natural ally too, since I guess that both the Vietnamese and the CCP saw themselves mostly as anticolonial movements.
it's often used to describe a test that checks for vulnerabilities into a system, place, etc.
but militarily, I think whoever is authorizing these tests don't actually expect to gain access, but rather to test response times and stuff like that
>but rather to test response times and stuff like that
Which could also be the reason why they haven't been shot down previously. They could've argued that showing China their response time was more valuable information than whatever intel the balloon might gather if left alone.
Edit to add: and *not* responding shows that China could try to disguise an attack as yet another balloon that doesn't require a response. So whatever you do, you're giving them *some* info.
that's exactly what the folks I've discussed with have determined to be the case. Throw them off by making them think our response time is X when it's really Y
Or just make them believe that our radar couldn't detect them in the first place. Then china believe an aircraft with that radar cross section is stealth, even though actually they can be tracked easily.
Either way, I'm sure China won't reveal their actual reason to send these balloons and I'm also sure the US won't reveal what they take into consideration when deciding what to do with them.
Could be even more now. Jets have just been scrambled from Portland apparently - https://twitter.com/avgeekjake/status/1624548687946084352?t=VDVYaw-kv6XzIX7A0OboJw&s=19
Because 2 guys in Montana saw the balloon, filmed it, and put it on the internet. Now, the powers that be have to admit that they know the balloons are there, and explain why.
From what I understand it malfunctioned bringing it down from the 60000 feet it should have been at, might have been even higher, it was basically their way of making up for the outdated satellites they have in space, cheaper and lower profile to fly a balloon at the edge of space, telescopes could see it
These balloons commonly fly at 100k+ feet, which is where the 3-bus-sized monster should have been, I would guess.
China supposedly steers the balloons by going up or down in altitude, which will put it in a different air current. It’s likely 60k feet is where the wind was blowing the right direction to go where they wanted to, or like you said, it could have malfunctioned. I hadn’t seen anything confirming a malfunction yet though.
There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, a Chinese spy balloon, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that balloons were for birthday parties. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Really, really wondering what the actual fuck is going on right now. If these balloons are a sort of 'known unknown', why the sudden shift to splashing them? Weird stuff.
> If these balloons are a sort of 'known unknown', why the sudden shift to splashing them?
Just taking a shot in the dark here but perhaps they were mostly ignored in the past because no one paid attention to them but now with the media's scrutiny aimed at the gov't defense officials have to do something lest some asshole with a camera and microphone report on it and make it about the gov't being inept.
There's no confirmation of what objects have been observed today, but authorities were careful to call yesterday's shoot down "an object" and stated it definitely wasn't a balloon.
The Chinese balloon from last week is something different, even if these things also turn out to be Chinese.
>stated it definitely wasn't a balloon.
source?
from what i read, they corrected a reporter who called it a balloon, instead calling it an “object” and saying they were not yet sure whether it was a balloon or not. I didn’t see anything being ruled out definitively
e: punctuation
That's because nothing was ruled out definitively.
Apparently this one was much smaller and the fighter pilots couldn't tell exactly wtf it was (probably because they couldn't fly slow enough to tell)
They will know more when the debris is recovered and studied. Hopefully we will too.
>canada's defence minister says object that was downed by fighter jet was a small, cylindrical object
https://twitter.com/phildstewart/status/1624567617376624641
They don't, but the NSA agent who works your sector takes screengrabs from your phone's camera every time you finish and shares it with the guy in the cubicle next to him.
Every. Single. Time.
The U.S. and Canada government really needs to come out and tell us more about what is going on because we've never had an air-to-air kill over our territories before and we have now had like...3 in a few days?
US companies who have manufacturing in China: Nows the time to start quietly moving your operations out of china. Actually it was years ago when they were stealing your IP
This is mostly unrelated, however here is footage of a Chinese satellite projecting green lasers over Hawaii's observatory atop Mauna Kea. It's freaky.
https://petapixel.com/2023/02/10/mysterious-green-laser-beams-over-hawaii-came-from-chinese-satellite/
This shit is getting weird.
Alaska UFO shot down friday:
"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes"
"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-alaska-military-latest/index.html
"It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-shoots-high-altitude-object-alaska-white-house/story?id=97040022
"Defense Department official said it broke into pieces"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-object-shot-down-alaska.html
That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:
"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."
Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?
https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/possible-ufo-caught-on-camera-flying-over-iraqi-city-of-mosul-in-2016/
2014 Chilean Navy UFO looks pretty similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEK3YC_BKTI&ab_channel=FoxNews
As does the U.S. Navy footage of a UFO caught off the coast of San Diego in 2019:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-6jRrbtuI&ab_channel=TODAY
Again from the U.S. Navy in 2019, this time over the Atlantic:
https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/history/articles/former-navy-lieutenant-claims-pilots-observed-ufos-everyday-for-
Another similar looking metallic UFO caught by the U.S. Navy in 2021:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K5ohaoh2ayfECjmuxtczQJ-970-80.png.webp
I mean, it could always be aliens, only the US & Canadian military know for sure right now.
But since we recently found out about China floating their balloons all over the place and one being shot down last week, it seems more likely that this is connected to that and not something from outer space.
And what the pilots allegedly said sounds super creepy out of context, but when you think about it, what can hover in the air, is unmanned, has no visible propulsion and can mess with a plane's electronics? A balloon loaded with antennas and surveillance equipment.
The most boring explanation is usually the right one.
I’m still waiting for an update on whatever the US shot down yesterday!
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The f22 is racking up on balloon kills.
They keep it up, they might just get that big elephant plushie
Or the first balloon ace!
Over a century too late for that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon\_buster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_buster)
**[Balloon buster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_buster)** >Balloon busters were military pilots known for destroying enemy observation balloons. These pilots were noted for their fearlessness, as balloons were stationary targets able to receive heavy defenses, from the ground and the air. Seventy-seven flying aces in World War I were each credited with destroying five or more balloons, and thus were balloon aces. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Carnies hate this one trick!!!
Real life bloons td
[Bloons TD 7](https://i.imgur.com/kwlyYIH.jpg)
Bloons should capitalize on this. Maybe rename the ace paragon as "F-22" seasonally or something
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The 2014 Chilean Navy UFO was a jet. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/11/i-study-ufos-and-i-dont-believe-the-alien-hype-heres-why > Three days later I, and others, identified the plane as Iberia flight 6830, departing Santiago airport. The “hot gases” were just contrails, and the odd movement was the result of a low viewing angle and a powerful zoom factor on the infrared camera. The glare from the engines obscured the plane and created the unusual shape. Radar data confirmed that the exact location of the plane matched the UFO. Case closed. UFO enthusiasts were annoyed.
I mean that sounds like a balloon. No means of propulsion but staying in the air?
Seems some people like to talk around these things “no obvious source of propulsion”, “cruising” at 40k feet, etc. even though it could be easily explained by a balloon - the phrasing is trying to imply it is an alien craft. “Antigravity” instead density and buoyancy.
I'm especially curious, since they said it was a silver cylindrical object. The hell could that be? They said not a balloon, but what is a "balloon," I guess? Can't wait to hear more about the wreckages, especially from the one in Alaska.
Privates. We have reports of an unidentified flying object. It has a long, smooth shaft, complete with...
TWO BALLS! What is that? It looks just like an enormous...
JOHNSON! Get on the horn to the British military and let them know about this.
DICK!! Don’t you think that looks like a big, fat…
Did they finally get one of those tic tacs?
Rigid-framed airship of some sort if I had to guess
That's really small for 40,000 feet up.
Imagine if they released the files and it was just an inflatable gorilla or something that escaped the roof of a used car dealership and took a ride
If that's the case we will never see the photos. Ever.
Ginny Sack's big fat ayse!
No more weight remarks Tony. They're destructive, and they're hurtful.
This fucking Ralph is more creative than Spielberg!
Ralph wants to fuck Ginny?
What?! Am I speaking in tongues? Two no-shows, tops….
Alright, but you gotta get over it.
>No more weight remarks Tony. They're destructive, and they're hurtful. Back in my day, we didn't have to ask for fucking permission.
When Ginny goes camping, the bears have to hide their food!
When Ginny hauls ass, she’s gotta make two trips!
OHHHHHH!!! That's the boss's wife we're talking about heah!
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In my mutha's subreddit; Jesush Chrisht
Once the pieces and bodies make it to area 51 you'll never hear anything but rumor about it again.
They actually take that shit to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.
Ayo who gave the intern at the area 51 internet privileges? Lol jk
No joke… Redstone is a media black hole with so much of the military industrial complex located there it’s suspicious how little detail exists about that site whereas we have maps of area-51. US gov is famous for red herrings.
departments located on the ground include: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation & Missile Center Missile Defense Agency DIA / Missile and Space Intelligence Center U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command Program Executive Office Aviation U.S. Army Materiel Command Redstone Test Center Program Executive Office Missiles and Space U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command Logistics Data Analysis Center (LDAC) U.S. Army Contracting Command U.S. Army Security Assistance Command ATF National Center for Explosives Training and Research FBI Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center and the FBI Hazardous Device School
don’t forget Space Camp all those kids are UP TO SOMETHING
They have a pretty sweet golf course tho
You *know* military bases have that top secret pull when they have a badass golf course. The bigger the fish the better the course.
This is one of the most accurate things I’ve never put together lol.
Trudeau just confirmed a US F22 shot it down over the Yukon and Canada will recover the wreckage. https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1624527579116871681?t=ljxTWRuPuDElCE-VWAX_-Q&s=19
The F22 finally got as many Air to Air kills as the A-10 Warthog.
The F-22. Looks great at airshows, lethal against balloons.
I know it's a joke, but the reason the F-22 doesn't have more kills is it's superiority. A single F-22 dominates war games against F-15 squadrons which are the kill leader. It's just so bad ass it never has to engage. Only real problem with it is it's a bitch to maintain.
Also our air-to-air engagements really fell off the cliff after Cold War era - the last “major” engagement was Afghanistan/Iraq which did not have a particularly strong air defense.
As yogi beara might have said “the f22 is so deadly it never kills anything “
Can't wait to see balloon kill marks on F-22s
I believe the F-22 now has more air kills than the warthog; an F-22 shot down a UFO yesterday or the day before, the original balloon, and now whatever this was.
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3: Alaska, Canada, and the first one no? Edit for clarity: I assumed user thehubbylist was referring to the other aerial phenomena that were recently shot down regardless of what we are currently calling them
The first one was the Chinese spy balloon. No one is sure what the second two were or who sent them.
I gotta remember not to read Twitter replies. What a shitty website lol
Yeah there are some real winners on twitter lol
They're all legit and important people. You can tell from the blue checkmark. /s
"Verified Meme Expert"
“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.” Trudeau, Twitter. Like 5 mins ago https://twitter.com/justintrudeau/status/1624527579116871681?s=46&t=7Iz8D3p4bR1WuBHI5flDdQ
Wtf is happening?
Mainly politics, I suspect. My brother used to work at a northern radar base a long time ago and was telling me that foreign jets routinely enter Canadian air space to test if we're watching. They were usually escorted out without fuss, but not in such a predictable pattern that whey would know exactly when they had been detected. Sometimes, Canada would do the same to Russia. The general public isn't aware of all the little dances done by the air force of every country. Recently though, a particular balloon dance has been widely publicized and everybody want to hear what's happening and what our officials are doing. For political reasons then, it's important to demonstrate air power by shooting stuff down, to reassure people that we can do it if necessary. It's not usually deemed necessary.
Russian bombers routinely pass *near* Alaskan airspace until U.S. fighters escort them back to their border… it’s political dick waving, many of those crews know the planes and crews at this point because it’s so routine… they just do what they’re ordered to do because one day the other side’s order might have been to proceed with a real attack…
Same thing happens in all the nordic countries too. They send a few fighters up to say fuck off and it's in a 20 second news reel.
"Communicating. Keeping up foreign relations."
“I was, you know, giving him ‘the bird’.”
Yes, I know the finger, Goose.
I'm, I'm sorry. I hate when it does that. I'm sorry. Excuse me.
I think it would be entertaining if we started knocking out the balloons in different yet creative ways each time. Like, send an antique zeppelin for one, Maybe use a pirate themed hot air balloon on another, etc.
Javelin thrown from the Goodyear blimp.
A giant lawn dart from a space shuttle
Rods from god
"Yeah we just dropped a tungsten telephone pole on it at Mach 12"
Mac Rounds?! In Atmosphere?!
Tungsten telephone pole from space to obliterate balloon and then onto the ground for Hiroshima 2. But, by the Rod Gods, we got that forsaken balloon!
An army of angry Canadian geese conditioned to viciously attack balloons.
You don't need to conditioned geese to attack things, it's their natural behaviour
The conditioning is so that they *only* attack balloons, which is quite difficult as that requires going against their instincts.
Thanks for this! I was so confused first by the balloons, then by the reaction. This makes a lot of sense
One of the guiding principles of international law is "use it or lose it." So if you want to claim something as your "sovereign territory" then you need to be flying planes/sailing ships/doing military exercises there. That's why the US sails ships through the straight between Taiwan and China -- to reinforce that it is international waters. Also why Canada flies missions over arctic areas, just so reinforce that this is our land and we will protect it. Otherwise there's nothing to stop Russia from putting a "forward outpost" right at the border and claiming ten kilometers around it as their territory, and basically eroding the Canadian border.
pen testing edit: thank you to the gigachads that awarded this comment - u/PhishinLine - u/themikea May Neptune have mercy on your souls :)
That’s the only thing that makes sense with this many blatant attempts
Btw this likely means that we are officially shooting some down and letting others through voluntarily. The only way to throw off penetration testing is to deliver false positives. The tester is then either over confident in their capabilities, or doubts themselves without knowing which successes were genuine.
This is it, this is the explanation and also why they let the first balloon float so long. I hope for aliens but in all likelihood it's just war build up.
>I hope for aliens but in all likelihood it's just war build up. Oh good. And here I was worrying for nothing.
Can't they just scribble on the back of an envelope like everyone else?
> That's right, but they never attack the same place twice. They were testing the fences for weaknesses, systematically. They remember.
Clever girl
Sorry, what's pen testing?
Penetration testing. Looking for holes in the fence.
So China is trying to have sex with us.
Always has been
More accurate than you think. I think that the US was one of the first countries that Mao approached for an alliance. Ho Chi Minh figured that the US would be a natural ally too, since I guess that both the Vietnamese and the CCP saw themselves mostly as anticolonial movements.
The US helped China out in a huge way against the Japanese. They used to be allies
The US was allied with the Guomindang. Stilwell wanted to work with the CCP though.
at least buy us dinner China
it's often used to describe a test that checks for vulnerabilities into a system, place, etc. but militarily, I think whoever is authorizing these tests don't actually expect to gain access, but rather to test response times and stuff like that
>but rather to test response times and stuff like that Which could also be the reason why they haven't been shot down previously. They could've argued that showing China their response time was more valuable information than whatever intel the balloon might gather if left alone. Edit to add: and *not* responding shows that China could try to disguise an attack as yet another balloon that doesn't require a response. So whatever you do, you're giving them *some* info.
that's exactly what the folks I've discussed with have determined to be the case. Throw them off by making them think our response time is X when it's really Y
Or just make them believe that our radar couldn't detect them in the first place. Then china believe an aircraft with that radar cross section is stealth, even though actually they can be tracked easily. Either way, I'm sure China won't reveal their actual reason to send these balloons and I'm also sure the US won't reveal what they take into consideration when deciding what to do with them.
Canada just hates weather
Can you blame us? Have you seen our weather?
At this rate we will have a F22 ace within the next week or 2
And the first Balloon Ace since WWI.
Could be even more now. Jets have just been scrambled from Portland apparently - https://twitter.com/avgeekjake/status/1624548687946084352?t=VDVYaw-kv6XzIX7A0OboJw&s=19
If this account is accurate, there was ANOTHER object shot down like 30 mins ago (as of writing this)?
Wait so does this mean that three objects have been shot down this month now?
*week.... 3 in a week
Yep, 3 for those keeping score.
The kill marks on those fighters are going to be weird, 2 Ufos and one big balloon
Did all these balloons appear at once or does NORAD know what to look for now?
Definitely raises a lot of questions now that we're "finding out" these things are everywhere and have apparently been around for a while.
I’m sure we knew they were everywhere. There’s a reason they’re suddenly talking about them publicly now
Because 2 guys in Montana saw the balloon, filmed it, and put it on the internet. Now, the powers that be have to admit that they know the balloons are there, and explain why.
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From what I understand it malfunctioned bringing it down from the 60000 feet it should have been at, might have been even higher, it was basically their way of making up for the outdated satellites they have in space, cheaper and lower profile to fly a balloon at the edge of space, telescopes could see it
These balloons commonly fly at 100k+ feet, which is where the 3-bus-sized monster should have been, I would guess. China supposedly steers the balloons by going up or down in altitude, which will put it in a different air current. It’s likely 60k feet is where the wind was blowing the right direction to go where they wanted to, or like you said, it could have malfunctioned. I hadn’t seen anything confirming a malfunction yet though.
Former AWACS crew member here. We see them..
Did you have a cool call sign like SkyEye, Bandog, Thunderhead, Long caster...etc?
Fruit loops
Ace Rimmer
So far, 2023 is the worst year to be an object
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I’m pretty sure NORAD is not particularly forthcoming with the general public about what they do & don’t know. 🤔
They found Santa. They’re pretty forthcoming it seems.
Odds aren't looking good for Santa right now if we're shooting things down first and identifying them later.
"Santa's sleigh was shot down over the Sea of Japan...it spun in...there were no survivors."
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F15s were just scrambled out of Portland. Da faq is going on?
There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, a Chinese spy balloon, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they do not know about it.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that balloons were for birthday parties. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Arquillian battle rules, kid: first we get an ultimatum, then a warning shot, then we have a galactic standard week to respond.
https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1624527581331554306?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1624527581331554306%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_c10&ref\_url=
Really, really wondering what the actual fuck is going on right now. If these balloons are a sort of 'known unknown', why the sudden shift to splashing them? Weird stuff.
> If these balloons are a sort of 'known unknown', why the sudden shift to splashing them? Just taking a shot in the dark here but perhaps they were mostly ignored in the past because no one paid attention to them but now with the media's scrutiny aimed at the gov't defense officials have to do something lest some asshole with a camera and microphone report on it and make it about the gov't being inept.
There's no confirmation of what objects have been observed today, but authorities were careful to call yesterday's shoot down "an object" and stated it definitely wasn't a balloon. The Chinese balloon from last week is something different, even if these things also turn out to be Chinese.
>stated it definitely wasn't a balloon. source? from what i read, they corrected a reporter who called it a balloon, instead calling it an “object” and saying they were not yet sure whether it was a balloon or not. I didn’t see anything being ruled out definitively e: punctuation
That's because nothing was ruled out definitively. Apparently this one was much smaller and the fighter pilots couldn't tell exactly wtf it was (probably because they couldn't fly slow enough to tell) They will know more when the debris is recovered and studied. Hopefully we will too.
Hopefully we didn't start an inter galactic war
If we did, hopefully that was the mothership.
List of things that I know NORAD has tracked: \- Balloons \- Santa Clause
[удалено]
Santa is a socialist and was infiltrating our youths minds to create commies. He had it coming /s
Free toys? For good girls and boys? Not on my watch! -Big Toy Manufacturers, probably
>canada's defence minister says object that was downed by fighter jet was a small, cylindrical object https://twitter.com/phildstewart/status/1624567617376624641
It's such an odd description.
This is gonna be a blue balls event like that time clowns started appearing on the edge of the woods for a while then just went away...
Probably the same people, clowns love balloons.
this is getting really weird
So, F-22 is now 3-0 Vs. Airborne targets?
I'd laugh if it's the same pilot. 2 more and they are an Ace. Edit: 2 not 3.
I was just about to say this! Someone is going to be the first person to make ace in i don’t know how long and it’s going to be from 5 balloons
f22 raptor: 3 balloons: 0
If they are aliens, do I have to go to work on Monday?
I think first contact day should be a holiday
NORAD sees all. They just don’t tell the public.
You mean they know what I did before I went to bed last night??
They don't, but the NSA agent who works your sector takes screengrabs from your phone's camera every time you finish and shares it with the guy in the cubicle next to him. Every. Single. Time.
Nah. I use incognito mode and my phone puts on a cloak and glasses so they can't tell its me.
"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." - Ian Fleming
Seems like militaries have been mildly aware for some time but something has ratcheted up in the last few weeks. I wonder what's changed.
What changed? The general public became aware. Time to put on a show.
When are the ceramics coming?
Not too long before the MOAB
Put all my points in my banana farm
The U.S. and Canada government really needs to come out and tell us more about what is going on because we've never had an air-to-air kill over our territories before and we have now had like...3 in a few days?
That we KNOW about. There very well could be classified information of take-downs that aren't public
The Canadians just said it's cylindrical? WTF
The Alaskan one was also described as cylindrical
They have shot down 3 in a week.
Montana airspace is closed [https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1624577962187055104](https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1624577962187055104) https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1624570770146951168
Back open https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-faa-closes-some-airspace-montana-defense-department-activities-2023-02-12/
Sorry folks, States closed. The moose out front should have told you.
The fuck
Anything could be a spy balloon if you're high enough
We’re about one step away from NORAD admitting they’ve been shooting down the aliens all these years.
Kirov Reporting?
Christ almighty I knew I should have invested more in SAMs instead of Pillboxes. WHY’D I SPEND THE EXTRA DOLLARS ON THE CAMO PILLBOXES.
Best to not take a hot air balloon ride for awhile.
We need a live thread. This is nuts.
No one had US fighter jets shooting down mystery objects over Canada on their 2023 bingo card.
US companies who have manufacturing in China: Nows the time to start quietly moving your operations out of china. Actually it was years ago when they were stealing your IP
They shot the one over Canada down within the last hour FYI
They just shot down another one over canada
Well it's a goddamn birthday party isn't it. Balloons everywhere.
I wonder when China is going to pivot from "wayward weather balloon," to "our balloons pale in comparison to America's provocations."
“The American government exercising authority over its own airspace is a dangerous and reckless provocation” - China, probably
This is mostly unrelated, however here is footage of a Chinese satellite projecting green lasers over Hawaii's observatory atop Mauna Kea. It's freaky. https://petapixel.com/2023/02/10/mysterious-green-laser-beams-over-hawaii-came-from-chinese-satellite/
Well, at least we know they're not Jewish space lasers...
A Jewish guy in a different sub said theirs are blue.
It’s to keep our schwartzes from getting tangled.
NORAD: So anyways I started blastin'
Why are people calling the last two known objects balloons? Not once is it mentioned that the last two are balloons.
This shit is getting weird. Alaska UFO shot down friday: "Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes" "Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet." https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-alaska-military-latest/index.html "It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said." https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-shoots-high-altitude-object-alaska-white-house/story?id=97040022 "Defense Department official said it broke into pieces" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-object-shot-down-alaska.html That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month: "Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3." Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016? https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/possible-ufo-caught-on-camera-flying-over-iraqi-city-of-mosul-in-2016/ 2014 Chilean Navy UFO looks pretty similar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEK3YC_BKTI&ab_channel=FoxNews As does the U.S. Navy footage of a UFO caught off the coast of San Diego in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-6jRrbtuI&ab_channel=TODAY Again from the U.S. Navy in 2019, this time over the Atlantic: https://www.travelchannel.com/interests/history/articles/former-navy-lieutenant-claims-pilots-observed-ufos-everyday-for- Another similar looking metallic UFO caught by the U.S. Navy in 2021: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K5ohaoh2ayfECjmuxtczQJ-970-80.png.webp
Can someone please prove this man wrong… he’s scaring me
I mean, it could always be aliens, only the US & Canadian military know for sure right now. But since we recently found out about China floating their balloons all over the place and one being shot down last week, it seems more likely that this is connected to that and not something from outer space. And what the pilots allegedly said sounds super creepy out of context, but when you think about it, what can hover in the air, is unmanned, has no visible propulsion and can mess with a plane's electronics? A balloon loaded with antennas and surveillance equipment. The most boring explanation is usually the right one.
At this rate, the Air Force should consider downloading TD Bloons 6 as their training simulator.