I seriously wonder how Taiwan and Japan feel about the alarm being generated by the US. You know, they are the ones that had Chinese missiles fired into their waters/air spaces in the last few months.
an air balloon...... militiary attack missiles. Hmmm?
I don't know what the fuss is about. It's probably not spying, satellites are already doing that. Just get it out of the way and examine it and move on.
I think i heard a news report saying that they said its a weather balloon run adrift.
Yes: "In a relatively conciliatory statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said late Friday that the balloon was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research. The ministry said the airship has limited “self-steering” capabilities and “deviated far from its planned course” because of winds."
WW3 is about to pop off and our administration is just letting a Chinese balloon fly around? What a complete f*cking failure.
What's your solution, drama queen? If you don't care about human life on the ground, then I guess you'll say we should shoot it down.
To the person suggesting that a helicopter go up and get it, helicopters can't go that high. The balloon is over 60,000 feet up. A turbine-engine helicopters can "only" reach around 25,000 feet and hover just a bit over 10,000 feet.
It's really out of reach to do anything about. If it comes down to a lower altitude perhaps it can be snared somehow, taken out over the ocean, and destroyed there.
You get rid of the foreign object from our airspace.
Goldfinger's official music video for '99 Red Balloons'. Click to listen to Goldfinger on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/GoldFSpotify?IQid=GoldF99As featured on...
Okay, first thing is send up a drone to photograph it, Then take out a post in the LOST AND FOUND section of the Beijing Daily News of a balloon we would like to offer back to it's rightful owner.
State that if owner is not found, say: "will consider trading for a high end kite (Delta kite preferred) and bag of lollipops."
WW3 is about to pop off and our administration is just letting a Chinese balloon fly around? What a complete f*cking failure.
What's your solution, drama queen? If you don't care about human life on the ground, then I guess you'll say we should shoot it down.
To the person suggesting that a helicopter go up and get it, helicopters can't go that high. The balloon is over 60,000 feet up. A turbine-engine helicopters can "only" reach around 25,000 feet and hover just a bit over 10,000 feet.
It's really out of reach to do anything about. If it comes down to a lower altitude perhaps it can be snared somehow, taken out over the ocean, and destroyed there.
Let me defend Pontoise and others here. Frankly it's not his or my job to come up with a step-by-step plan to shoot it down. The Pentagon has a $ trillion dollar annual budget to prepare for every tactical situation under the sun, if they can't defeat a hot air balloon then 1 of 2 things is possible:
1. The military is incompetent
2. The administration is dysfunctional, alseep, or corrupted by foreign influence, and everyone in it should be impeached immediately, assuming they don't resign in disgrace
Next, we need to assemble a cluster of high altitude balloons along the sea off the coast of China. In plain sight. This gesture will speak for itself, but just in case it doesn't emblazon a skull and crossbones on the biggest one.
I see the national defense policy and military capability experts are out in force this morning! The same guys that cannot properly train for Turkey Trots, understand NCAA eligibility rules, or get Tinder dates sure have strong opinions about how easy it is to shoot down a massive balloon at 60,000 feet without provoking an international diplomatic incident.
I bet all of those four stars at The Pentagon and NORAD had your keen insight.
You get rid of the foreign object from our airspace.
How would you do that, exactly?
Easy, an F15 can fly at 64,000 feet and an F22 can fly to 65,000 feet, shoot it down with canon or missiles. But Biden cannot piss off his Chinese masters after they gave Hunter all the cash.
So many dolts on this site just reacting to fit their political narrative.
The military analyzed the scenario for shooting it down. There is risk to American lives from the falling debris from the shoot down. And, they determined the intelligence value of the balloon to the Chinese is pretty low (they aren't learning anything they don't already know from spy satellites). Putting those two things together it was a no-brainer to just let the thing float away.
So many dolts on this site just reacting to fit their political narrative.
The military analyzed the scenario for shooting it down. There is risk to American lives from the falling debris from the shoot down. And, they determined the intelligence value of the balloon to the Chinese is pretty low (they aren't learning anything they don't already know from spy satellites). Putting those two things together it was a no-brainer to just let the thing float away.
So many dolts on this site just reacting to fit their political narrative.
The military analyzed the scenario for shooting it down. There is risk to American lives from the falling debris from the shoot down. And, they determined the intelligence value of the balloon to the Chinese is pretty low (they aren't learning anything they don't already know from spy satellites). Putting those two things together it was a no-brainer to just let the thing float away.
No, those are their lame excuses for letting the Chinese spy on us. They had tons of chances to shoot it down over wilderness areas. Biden is a pansy and will NEVER stand up to the Chinese. They are testing us to see how weak we are before invading Taiwan.
What's your solution, drama queen? If you don't care about human life on the ground, then I guess you'll say we should shoot it down.
To the person suggesting that a helicopter go up and get it, helicopters can't go that high. The balloon is over 60,000 feet up. A turbine-engine helicopters can "only" reach around 25,000 feet and hover just a bit over 10,000 feet.
It's really out of reach to do anything about. If it comes down to a lower altitude perhaps it can be snared somehow, taken out over the ocean, and destroyed there.
Let me defend Pontoise and others here. Frankly it's not his or my job to come up with a step-by-step plan to shoot it down. The Pentagon has a $ trillion dollar annual budget to prepare for every tactical situation under the sun, if they can't defeat a hot air balloon then 1 of 2 things is possible:
1. The military is incompetent
2. The administration is dysfunctional, alseep, or corrupted by foreign influence, and everyone in it should be impeached immediately, assuming they don't resign in disgrace
You are dumb. They can shoot it down. They are electing not to b/c it carries far greater risk than reward.
So many dolts on this site just reacting to fit their political narrative.
The military analyzed the scenario for shooting it down. There is risk to American lives from the falling debris from the shoot down. And, they determined the intelligence value of the balloon to the Chinese is pretty low (they aren't learning anything they don't already know from spy satellites). Putting those two things together it was a no-brainer to just let the thing float away.
No, those are their lame excuses for letting the Chinese spy on us. They had tons of chances to shoot it down over wilderness areas. Biden is a pansy and will NEVER stand up to the Chinese. They are testing us to see how weak we are before invading Taiwan.
A massive object obliterated at 60k feet does not create a controllable debris field. Please present your analysis how the debris would have avoided all human life or shut up
Let me defend Pontoise and others here. Frankly it's not his or my job to come up with a step-by-step plan to shoot it down. The Pentagon has a $ trillion dollar annual budget to prepare for every tactical situation under the sun, if they can't defeat a hot air balloon then 1 of 2 things is possible:
1. The military is incompetent
2. The administration is dysfunctional, alseep, or corrupted by foreign influence, and everyone in it should be impeached immediately, assuming they don't resign in disgrace
You are dumb. They can shoot it down. They are electing not to b/c it carries far greater risk than reward.
What's the risk here, it's in freaking Montana, there's a 1 in a billion chance it hits a cow in the butt. And I hope we have a plan to nuke the rest of these out of the sky before they reach American airspace
You are dumb. They can shoot it down. They are electing not to b/c it carries far greater risk than reward.
What's the risk here, it's in freaking Montana, there's a 1 in a billion chance it hits a cow in the butt. And I hope we have a plan to nuke the rest of these out of the sky before they reach American airspace
What a solid intellectual analysis! Such a shame you're not in the top brass making decisions in the Pentagon with this sort of carefully calculated risk analysis.
