In November, 700 Intercontinental Weapons Were Launched Against the USA?

Does it matter?

 

It sounds like a US weather balloon that failed to ‘pop’ as it reached peak altitude. Very cold air might have limited it’s climb and/or defective balloon with too strong envelope.

Bob Wilson

 

Would it be that hard for the military to recognize that?

 

Given the 40,000 ft altitude risk to commercial aviation, it was target practice.

Bob Wilson

 

The weather balloon launcher would detect Bob's scenario, if they received enough radio-ed data. They might inform military directly. Or, mil might ask all launchers if they had bad flight profiles. Don't know how those communication chaains work.

Radiosonde Observation

 

Now a third thingy.

And I notice that they seem to be going out of their way to use older F-22s to do the deed, despite the fact that F-35s were based closer in at least 2/3 cases. I guess they don't want to show off the new stuff yet.

 

F-22 has a higher (stated) service ceiling. That may not matter if both can launch whatever firestick is chosen.

I suspect that pilot or base commander seniority figures into who gets to go. Ya gets to shoot and target does not shoot back. Fun and maybe ya gets to put a balloon image below cockpit window.

 

A list of notable high flyers.

Aircraft Ranked-by-Ceiling (Top 100)

F-35 not included; I found that elsewhere as 50,000 feet.

 

trudeau is all in:

42837960

 

Shara Palin must be jealous.

Bob Wilson

 

she probably took a few shoots herself

 

Once again y'all made me look. There are rifle bullets that can reach 10,000 feet. Maybe something off the charts could get to 15,000? But oh my dears, higher is not in reach.

Let us suppose that Alaska National Guard has something stronger (say, with 10 kg of propellant), and might gift a unit to an ex-Governor. Shoot! I expect her to miss. Target acquisition and guidance are things.

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As readers will have noticed, all efforts to pop these balloons have used more sophisticated approaches and spent $millions. That works. Ground-level gunning is play.

 

a giant needle would do it

 

... or a 22LR at close range.

 

While I don't doubt needles and garden guns, I've read elsewhere that they've been using anti-aircraft missiles with proximity-fused warheads in the hopes of knocking out the targets' power systems suddenly to improve the chances of data recovery later.

 

why can't we just snag these things and drag them down?

 

You first.

We don't know what's in it. Could include explosives to self-destruct sensitive parts to prevent us from reverse-engineering.

We do that too- heck, we did do that on the EP-3 they forced down 20 years ago. The difference in that situation was that it was a manned plane, and the crew on board used some self-destruct devices to wreck the most sensitive stuff before they were obliged to disembark.

With a robot, there's still every chance of a self-destruct, but no operator nearby to judge if using it might make things worse by injuring someone.

So they're using explosives to "shock" the things, trying to cause electrical power and computer controls to stop instantly in the hopes of preserving everything else in-state for analysis- including any self-destructs.

 

but they're just weather balloons