Are we talking about all the E36 M3 getting shot down in US airspace lately?

slantvaliant (Forum Supporter) said:

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

do we have higher ranking folk who still use "clip" incorrectly? The m1 garand, which actually used "CLIPS"(enblock clip) was phased out in 1957. 
 

FEBRUARY.
(a) All AMC aligned personnel with weapons qualifications will fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.

Considering the imprecise firearms-related language used by officials at all levels in the past 30-40 years, it would not be surprising.  Also, "clips" are still a thing in military ammunition, whether or not they are what the letter-writer meant:

   

Back to blasting UFO's and balloons:  How many of those missiles (AIM-9 Sidewinders?) do we have on hand, anyway?  How many balloons can the Chinese or whoever make and launch?   And where are we on the airborne directed-energy weapons front?

I mean, A retired col just testified under oath last month that the 5.56 will cut a body in half with one round or decapitate. Under. Oath. 

RX Reven' said:

In reply to johndej :

As I understand it, the three we're tracking now are at commercial aircraft altitudes so if this were the norm, I'd think we'd occasionally be running into them. 

I think you underestimate just how much airspace is up there compared to the amount of traffic that uses it.

I find it kind of funny as an American, that we have been just fine with the extreme degree of spying and information gathering the USA has, but now that potentially someone else is doing the same to us we're running for our safe space. I also feel it's being used to avoid discussing the chemical fire in Ohio that is actively poisoning large portions of the state.

As for war with China, I doubt it anymore. Too much to loose economically from an economy based on production, and even if they captured Taiwan it would take decades to rebuild the advanced semiconductior production they want, apropos how easily they can be cut off in water ways OR their own official population statistics showing contracture OR their growing domestic problems.

The conspiracy theorists are saying that its a distraction from the ecological disaster that we are perpetrating in Ohio.

In 1998 a Canadian weather balloon went rogue and the RCAF USAF and RAF all had goes at shooting it down and all failed. No one used a missle and despite approximately 1000 hits all that was accomplished was a deflation leading to a crash in Finland. 

For reference there is an article on the CBC website.

Beer Baron said:

RX Reven' said:

In reply to johndej :

As I understand it, the three we're tracking now are at commercial aircraft altitudes so if this were the norm, I'd think we'd occasionally be running into them. 

I think you underestimate just how much airspace is up there compared to the amount of traffic that uses it.

Yes, I'm familiar with the "big sky" principle of mid-air collision avoidance.

Somebody check my math...

A.  The United States has 3.797 million square miles so that's (3,797,000 X 5,280 X 5,280) or 105,854,284,800,000 Sq. Ft.

B.  5,670 domestic commercial flights per day X 1,500 mile average flight distance (est) X 5,280 feet in a mile X 150 foot average wing span = 6,735,960,000,000 Sq. Ft.

Maybe I messed up the math somewhere but it looks like the U.S. gets covered by flight paths every 15.71 days (A / B).

Of course, we have to factor in both the vertical dimension and the overlap (some areas getting covered many times while others almost never getting covered) which, if the craft are controlled, would affect the impact frequency.

Whatever the exact math is, if we typically have three (that we know of) craft flying at any given time, I think we'd have collisions or at least near misses somewhat frequently.   

As noted, certainly a passive signals intelligence gathering device (I love how the Chinese doubled down on the weather balloon thing).   It flying over the US may have been a bit of a mistake, but if you release a balloon in the jet stream around Japan, it WILL go over the US a lot of the time.  The Japanese in WWII used this exact tactic to try to set the Pacific Northwest on fire (and only managed to kill some campers in Oregon)

Letting it float around is likely not a bad thing.  I suspect the US flying above it was waiting for it to send a focused data burst to a Chinese satellite, at which point the US knew what frequencies it was using and what satellite it was communicating with, then jamming them.  Then I suspect they did a bunch of testing to see what it would take to pick these up on radar etc.

I would suspect the lower altitude ones they found recently are probably weather / research balloons.

Note the typical paths.  Also note where this ballon went, and where other balloons have been spotted (at least admitted to have spotted), around Hawaii and skimming Texas over Mexico.

Interesting notes on the shoot down.  Use of a sidewinder seems like a bit of overkill, $400,000 a shot (I am a bit surprised it could even lock on to it), but that is explained below.  Use of a cannon for lower altitude balloon also cause some potential issues of 20mm shells eventually reaching the ground.  I don't know if aerial 20mm have the same self destruct as the C-RAM (Phalanx anti missile / mortar system) but I suspect not.  As noted, shooting one down with cannon was done before, but it didn't work so good (shells just went straight through and the holes likely closed up when it descended).

I would guess the US might develop a bit of a lower cost way of taking these down.  Maybe using fused 20mm timed to explode as they pass through the balloon?

We’ll let the dust settle for the final list of military assets put into motion to shoot down a simple balloon, but we’re tracking: F-15Cs, F-22s, numerous tankers, an E-3 AWACS, 1 Navy P-8 Poseidon, 1 Coast Guard C-130, 4 Navy ships, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Anyhoo, once the order was given, F-22s lit the burners, climbed above 50,000 feet, and lined up for the shot.

Due to the altitude, the Raptor had to use a missile. Why: the stealthy F-22 is restricted from shooting its gun above 50,000 feet due to the design limits of the gun door (when the trigger is pulled, the door pops open, exposing the gun barrel to shoot).

The balloon was somewhere around 60-65,000 feet, and the lead Raptor took the shot at 58,000 feet.

In reply to RX

We do have frequent near misses. We pilots just  don't talk about it.

Mr_Asa said:

The conspiracy theorists are saying that its a distraction from the ecological disaster that we are perpetrating in Ohio.

Nah... it's another distraction away from Hunter Biden's laptop. 

In reply to aircooled :

aircooled said:

As noted, shooting one down with cannon was done before, but it didn't work so good 

Back in WW1, the German hydrogen-filled zeppelins were very difficult to shoot down with machine guns because poking holes in giant gas bags didn't do much.  It required the invention of incendiary tracers to ignite the hydrogen to make a difference.

I wonder if these balloons are hydrogen or helium?  Helium is getting more expensive and hydrogen is actually more bouyant.

No one is saying how it stayed up, especially the WH.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I, for one, am not particularly thrilled with the level and breadth of spying done by the USA. Whether the last 21.5 years or since the end of WW2 when the defense industry didn't want to let go of the cash cow. We don't want a war with China any more than they want one with us; they're busy with their own economical and social problems, India, and Russia just to say the least. I think our next round of proxy war subsidies for Lockheed and Northrup will be somewhere near the tropics, get the shipyards involved this time. (Stock tip? Who's the darling for coastal and river craft?) Ukraine is a great opportunity to get the arsenals emptied so that Defense can empty the coffers to restock the arsenal.

As for Ohio, we're sticking with accident on that one. Totally an unavoidable accident. Definitely exactly not the types of thing that have been warned of by watchdogs and railway workers unions as recently as last quarter. Nope, definitely not a case of a particularly wealthy group of individuals telling America "some of your cities may be rendered unusable but that's a price we're willing to pay". 

All this airspace stuff will blow over in short order.

How do you aim a big balloon ?

you let it go , we will say in Northern China and it catches the trade winds ,

But after that do you really have much control of it ?

My guess is they are looking for signal patterns they have not seen before and maybe at frequencies not seen before  ,  and these signals do not go thru the atmosphere so  the satellites cannot capture them......

I wonder what the USA  has up there ???
 

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Mr_Asa said:

The conspiracy theorists are saying that its a distraction from the ecological disaster that we are perpetrating in Ohio.

Nah... it's another distraction away from Hunter Biden's laptop. 

Or the ongoing congressional hearings of political obstruction/meddling by social media giants. 

johndej said:

My guess is folks in the know had been aware of previous balloon/observation/etc efforts in the past. They'd played the typical cat and mouse games back and forth. It just so happens that this one got spotted and the general public did the standard general public hysterics. Now that there are eyes on it, someone decided to take a shot at anything that gets sent over from that direction.

Quite possible. If these balloons are not a new thing, the military might have been pretending not to notice while feeding the balloons disinformation. But have the balloons show up as front page news and you can't pretend not to notice.

I wonder if they found something in the first balloon that made the military realize they had better take down any more on sight. Or if they expected to recover the balloon's electronics in somewhat larger pieces if it crashed in the ocean, and now that they have one, they don't have to worry about recovering more.

I'm also pretty certain some of these new examples are pranks - now that one balloon made national news, somebody placed an order for surplus weather balloons and a lot of helium. 

China is at war with the US and has been for quite some time. They just aren't shooting guns at us. There's plenty of books, documentation and footnotes if you care to know.

californiamilleghia said:

How do you aim a big balloon ?

you let it go , we will say in Northern China and it catches the trade winds ,

But after that do you really have much control of it ?

By adjusting the altitude to place the ballon in different wind vectors...release ballast or add gas from a tank to go up and release gas to go down.

I checked the images carefully and I didn't see a hose leading up to the ballon so unless there was an internal tank or the hose was too narrow to see, it couldn't add gas.  Although, the two big spherical tanks on the structure did get my attention.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Your math is in square feet.

The sky is 3-dimensional, not 2-dimensional.

The distribution of of aircraft within that 3-dimensional space is not random.

Beer Baron said:

In reply to RX Reven' :

Your math is in square feet.

The sky is 3-dimensional, not 2-dimensional.

I know, I already mentioned that.

californiamilleghia said:

How do you aim a big balloon ?

you let it go , we will say in Northern China and it catches the trade winds ,

But after that do you really have much control of it ?

My guess is they are looking for signal patterns they have not seen before and maybe at frequencies not seen before  ,  and these signals do not go thru the atmosphere so  the satellites cannot capture them......

I wonder what the USA  has up there ???

One way to do it is that the winds blow different directions at different altitudes, so you pick the winds that you want.  There are simple ways to change the altitude of the balloon (releasing either gas or ballast), a more complex way is to store compressed lifting gas in a pressure vessel and either release it into the balloon or use a compressor take gas that's in the balloon and put it back in the tank.  Obviously you need power to do that, solar is an option.

Another way is to build an airship that's more of a hybrid between a balloon and a blimp, by attaching motors to the structure that hangs underneath it.  From what I read, the first one they shot down near South Carolina had solar panels, batteries, and electric motors driving propellers.

"Balloon" can mean a lot of things.

China won't actually initiate conflict this decade unless they have the aliens on their side.

I lived in Roswell, NM for 19 years before retiring, I'm not allowed to comment. . .

Something like 110,000 Sidewinders have been made, and only a single digit percentage of them have been used. I think we can shoot them at balloons for a long, long time.