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They shot it down ,,,,,
forgemonkey
Member Posts: 1,177 ✭✭✭✭
Watching it falling, now on TV ,,,,,,, Sic-em
Saying now U S missile took it down or fighter plane.
A white ‘contrail’ in the background.
Uncle Joe just said (1.29pm MST), he told the military to shoot it down Wednesday, and the military said to wait until over water.
Comments
Where was it when they hit it?
Off SC is where they are filming it.
Got ya.
The shoot down is on youtube.
Looks like a lot of junk falling with it.
So it traveled across the USA to the atlantic. Mission acomplished.
Yes. They had to wait to make sure all the intel was gathered, sent back to, and received by China. Then shoot it down.
Tom Cruise will now do a ‘fly by’ on uncle Joe’s location. ,,,,,,,,, Bwahahaha,,,,,,,🤣
I heard when they recovered it, they found a fortune inside. It said " You'll never be rich and you'll never be poor."
jimdeere, do you mean fortune cookie?
Just Biden trying to save face in the eyes of stupid Biden voters. It accomplished nothing after the info had already been gathered and transmitted back to China. Now any intelligence we could have gotten on the technology will just sink into the sea, just as it probably would have if left to leave our airspace. Should have been done much earlier.
oh by the way it was filled with the lasted version of the China improved disease
any odds on long it would take China to shoot down a balloon over there area
Ole North Korean Kim Jong-un is taking notes, he'll now forget his expensive missile testing program and start a cheaper balloon program. Biden and his Joint Chiefs I'm afraid are already beholding to China and on their payroll, same as Hunter, it's becoming more clear each day. We're in deep trouble people and need to watch each others back....somehow ???
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
data uploaded to the icloud first
They waited for two reasons, didn't want to risk injury to people on the ground and recovering it in the water would cause much less damage to the payload. waiting also allowed time to coordinate the shoot down with the Navy so that the balloon will basically fall into their laps.
Don't disregard the possibility that it was nothing but a publicity stunt to make Biden look "tough". Instead it made him look incompetent by letting it pass totally across the US before taking action.
They tell me the American people voted for this dumpster fire.
Since we don't know what the payload was, I am glad they waited for it to be off the coast. I am still not sure what the point was shooting it down but the news stations played the tape of the shoot down for about 3 hours non-stop. It took us a sidewinder missile fired from an F22 to knock down a modern version of 200 year old tech. I guess the Pentagon didn't want to be accused of not using a big enough gun. Let's see, no defensive weapons, can't maneuver, barely moving unarmored big bag of gas, yupp... let's use a state of the art F22 Raptor and a sidewinder. Bob
Don't laugh, 200 year old technology will put people in the ground forever. I'm glad to see our high-tech weapons being used, that's what they're for.......our protection.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
I bet it made the pilot's day.....😁
Made China's day too, they now know our F-22 fighter can easily climb to 55,000 + feet 😠
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Also, there was likely some counter-collection opportunities to exploit while it was still operating prior to shoot-down.
Not sure there are really any low-tech options for taking something out at 60,000 feet.
That said, I’m sure there are some Internet threads floating around that will assure us the 6.5 Creedmoor could do it. 😁
With a double barrel shot gun !!!
Right, William81. From his back porch I hear.
Yupper, they shot it down AFTER it had gathered all the information possible OR spread all the genetically engineered biological 'fall out' it carried.
Again, I ask why 'it' was even allowed to enter US air space?
At least use a period piece from 200 years ago like a Kentucky long rifle.😁
I guess my point in my above post was that we had no alternative but to use state of the art tech to counter 200 year old tech. I hope when they find the pieces, it was worth it. I am not worried about biological fallout that was mentioned above. Any information it could have gathered could, and probably is, already being gathered by their spy satellites. Anything that is missed by those satellites is probably being gathered by the 10's of thousands of Chinese here in the country, like the thousands of students and businesspeople. So other than as a test to see what we would do, I don't get the point of sending a "spy" balloon. Bob
Now you know he had to wait until the money hit his account first...
They waited so everyone would see it
All they had to do was look at Wikipedia to learn it's ceiling is 65,000 feet.
It was probably more difficult to hit that balloon with a Sidewinder than hitting another jet. In an air-air engagement, you are (ideally) behind the other guy and he's not pulling away or you are not gaining with a lot of speed. But against a balloon, your closing speed is whatever you're doing: 500 knots or so. So your time to engage is short. Then there's the problem with heat signature. The Sidewinder is a heat seeker, and you'd only have the very small instrument package giving off any heat for it to lock on.
In the video, the missile hit the instrument package dead center. Kudos to both the pilot and the missile folks.
BTW, hitting the balloon itself would have been pointless. The missile or cannon shells would have passed right through without detonating, making only tiny holes. It would not "pop" like a birthday balloon, just very slowly leak.
I doubt anyone expected the balloon to "POP" but 400-500 30MM holes in/out would most certainly have resulted in more than a 'slow leak' scenario. If those holes had been punched well out over the Pacific, the entire scenario wouldn't even made news.
If you read the article I linked to in the other thread, you'd have learned that in the past, a smaller balloon survived hundreds of 20mm holes for a long time. This thing was huge - an entire football stadium would have fit inside. It would take thousands if not tens of thousands of holes to bring it down.
And fired from what?
Rocky, I thought the Sidewinder used and "annular ring" which would explain the huge hole in the balloon and leave the instrument package relatively intact for inspection.
It does, IIRC. But the video I watched showed a direct impact on the instrument package. At least that's what I thought I saw. Detonating the warhead that close to the balloon envelope would have caused enough shock wave/overpressure to rupture it. Which flying through the balloon would not have done.
I don't know if the current Sidewinder requires an impact to detonate as the early versions did. If there is a proximity fuse in addition to contact, then even a near miss would fire the warhead.
I was reading this morning, about an incident several years ago. I didn't read what article you posted . Maybe they are the same. It was about a balloon that the Canadians tried to shoot down. They hit it with over 1,000 rounds and it was still operational, to a degree. It slowly let out the helium and came down after a while.
In your opinion, What would have been better to bring down the balloon, besides a sidewinder?? I don't know, because I was never in the military . Thank you. Oak
That's about the best option. If you could get to the same altitude, you could probably rip the balloon skin by flying past it VERY close at high speed. Your wingtip vortex and engine turbulence might do it. You could probably even fly through it without doing any damage to your jet, but I don't know who'd be willing to try. The actual balloon skin is thinner than Saran Wrap.
The story you read was the same as I posted. Even a whole bunch of small holes doesn't hurt these things - at least immediately.
I just learned more. According to Ward Carroll (an ex Navy F-14 guy) on Youtube, the Sidewinder used carried no warhead to minimize damage to the potentially valuable instrument package. It also uses light variability rather than heat signature. Meaning it can guide to a difference in light/dark and can be "aimed" by the pilot before launch. Watch the vid if you want to know more...
https://youtu.be/k2xz21HvLs8
Yeah...........Biden in all of his wisdom..........let it completely traverse the country (transmitting data) and then used a multi-million dollar missile to pop it............way to go BRANDON.