Closer to 60K per a few sources, within the service ceiling of a Raptor. Read that a radar guided missile might be best due to how big the fecker is (width of three commercial buses), a gun run being the second best.
Cold War against China?
- Thread starter VorZakone
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to talk about United's dreadful home defeat at the hands of Big Ange's Tottenham Hotspur. Should this have been the end of Ten Hag? How long does he actually have left? And does Nik finally want ETH out?!
It’s mad how much people are freaking out over it
I heard it might be carrying Covid-23!
I'm more surprised at China's brazenness here. They obviously knew this would get covered in the press.
Alpha move. I applaud it.
Americans are very unforgiving when it comes to trespassing.
From a more historical perspective alone, I say Americans have a right to be mad when they have seen their own U-2 spy planes being unforgivingly shot down over enemy air space (Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union and Rudolf Anderson over Cuba) and one of their electronic surveillance planes forced to land in enemy territory (Hainan, 2001) while the Pentagon and their multi-million waste of money can't even do the same thing that Soviets and Chinese already did against undesirable intruders.
Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) are perfectly designed to hit those things at high altitudes where fighter jets can't reach as well. If they decide to get rid of the balloon over the Atlantic, I see no reason why the US Navy can't fire one of those RIM-161 SM-3 at it from a destroyer.
Good call.
Just seems a bit daft to me, to suggest this is anything other than a lost weather balloon. For starters, its exactly what the purpose of this thing is, what it is designed and used for, its not military hardware. Why they would adapt something you can't direct to any degree of accuracy, to travel over 7,000 miles, taking god knows how many weeks, that's obviously going to be seen, to perform a task their spy satellites are already doing on a daily basis, is totally beyond me.
U-2 was a military plane conducting military ops over Russian airspace in a time of practical war, of course its getting shot down, when they figured out how. The E-3 is also a military aircraft and literally killed a Chinese pilot, accidently or not, while surveying disputed airspace, can't blame them from dissecting the aircraft a bit before returning it tbh.
Yank freaking out like their under attack and thinking they know better than the Pentagon
Comes across as a little embarrassing. If they are curious about what's on it, they'll pick it up later no doubt. Its not some advanced aircraft, probably designed in the US in the first place tbh.@Simbo Okay, but what will you say about Korean Air Lines Flight 007? On one extreme, you have the Soviet/Russians shooting about everything in sight when it encroaches their air space. On the other extreme, you have the Americans doing next to feck all when there is an intrusion or a situation in their own air space. Why can't the best way be in the middle?
I'm surprised no american civilians with their trigger happy approach haven't started trying to shoot at it
I've been presuming that the Americans could have disposed of this pretty easily, and probably tracked it the whole way, but chose not to purely to avoid giving away how their defences are set up. If that makes sense. I imagine they weighed up what the Chinese would gain from leaving it in the air versus what they would gain from examining their response.
They have but it's way out of range.
Looks like they are about to take it down
I hope there's video if it to make all this coverage worthwhile.
Hopefully something very spectacular to watch.
oh there's livestreams
Finally the Balloon Menace™ will meet its end.
BOOM!
boom!
Multitudes of rounds have been expended by the citizenry, a popular congressperson basically called upon them to take the balloon out.
Any status on what the plan is to do with the balloon flying over Central/South America?
Good riddance!
Would love to be a fly on the wall in whatever room Xi Jinping is sitting now.
Looked like whatever hit it, it the undercarriage. Good luck recovering that mess.
OK, I admit it. I've been totally out of the loop. So, my two cents - hahaha
With commentary from a local redneck in Myrtle Beach:
From other videos, it looks like they got the balloon and not the payload.
From other videos, it looks like they got the balloon and not the payload.
Will the air crew be able to paint a balloon silhouette under their canopy? They should.
Probably be something goofy like a fortune cookie.
Even better! A kill's a kill.
China giving 0 fecks
You can see individual vehicles in Beijing on a cheap laptop using Google satellite view. Does that mean China should shoot down all the satellites, or is there some sort of height limit above which spying is allowed?
The media are going crazy over this balloon