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Chinese Balloon

Yeah... I wondered about that, until I found the payload was school-bus sized.

Skyhook was for film canisters and Dick Marcinko. (I think he was one of the early testers.)

Sirhr
Ad you can add to that not at 60k feet. And no, they ain’t going to just snag it as it falls after being shot down.

Crap is in fairly shallow water. The Navy will get most of it, I wager.
 
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We had a BBQ at my hunt club today about 40 miles west of Myrtle Beach. We could see it for a pretty long time and saw the jets circling it for a pretty long time. I had a felling once it got off the coast, they were going to shoot it down. With the naked eye it just looked like a big white dot with 10x power binos you could just make out it was a balloon with something hanging off the bottom. All I had in my truck was my 10x42 LRF Furys and they wouldn't pick up a range I am going to contact Vortex to see what was wrong with them.......;)
 
Do not think for a second that these demonic people would stop at anything to maintain power. If they had dropped the balloon in Montana, then someone like me would have beat them to it, taken a bunch of pics and then they would have lost control of the "narrative". The narrative is the thing.

The SC wreck divers are probably already there. I wouldn't be surprised to see pieces of it on Ebay tomorrow.
 
Come on… you never went to order something on Amazon and saw it had a month and a half delivery time? This is why.
 
Pshaw, what are a few water hazards to the USAF?

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Too true. Fact...used to be every AFB had a skeet range. Goes back to WW II and teaching bomber gunners how to lead attacking aircraft.

The skeet fields are almost all gone (pussification of our military) but the golf courses are still there.
 
Best pics so far of the impact



Hard to say what was hit, but the arms with the sensors, solar panels and possibly antennae and steering/propulsion quickly dropped away from the balloon.

"How fast would it be going when it hits the ocean?", one might ask.


Hard to say, is my official answer.

Will be interesting to see what gets recovered (knowing full well it will never be disclosed)

We had our best Sigint assets stalking it, although being nearby and being perfectly positioned to intercept data may be two different things. I saw some highly directional antennas in one similar picture, which I can't find at the moment.

Something similar to this:


Perhaps the "propulsion" was simply some small DJI drone style motors/props for aiming the antennas at a PRC satellite?

This is a 2020 spy balloon over Japan

1000x563_cmsv2_5a1b1cd8-23de-5021-995a-143c792f9805-4759120.jpg


Put drone motors/props at the ends of the long axis, the antennas are on the perpendicular short axis. Think bow thrusters on a ship to keep the overall orientation precise to within a few MOA (mrad???)

The narrow beam antennas are more efficient than an omnidirectional antenna and harder to intercept.

There is very much which can be obtained from an autopsy of the payload, although one might consider China expected this one to be intercepted, and not put their best gear on it.

I genuinely hope the AF got a lot of very, very,very high resolution images and signatures from the contraption while it was aloft.

WWIII is going to be technically very challenging.
 
"How fast would it be going when it hits the ocean?", one might ask.

About the same speed as Christa McAuliffe.

Too soon?

Sirhr
 
Dibs on thermal sensor if it’s 1280 or better

It occurs to me that gathering high resolution thermal imaging of the missile fields in the dead of winter might yield a pretty good idea if the structures beneath the surface. Something that was never thought of when the silos were built.

Same with every installation along the balloon's path.
I'm not sure how good thermal images are from space, the additional distance can't help plus some additional absorption/degradation of the image from water vapor in the atmosphere.

Capabilities like seeing what buildings are occupied, security patrols, the list is endless.

That's one of the kinds of things that an autopsy of the wreckage should tell us.

Also if they have other imaging equipment, like gas imagers:

Other stuff like magnetic anomaly, ground penetrating radar...

I'd bet they had their target list carefully plotted out, with Malmstrom probably being #1. Other stuff can be surreptitiously captured by them renting private aircraft and overflying, unless there are permanent TFR's in place or known sensitive areas under generally active air routes.

Malmstrom is so remote that few would fly there by chance.
Wonder if we have a shot at smoking one of the other (2? 3?) rumored balloons over central America or possibly Canada? Wait until it gets in international waters then quietly waste it and grab the wreckage. Like the old Glomar Explorer days.
 
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One of the useful byproducts of this debacle is the number of OSINT resources I've found just by searching China balloon on Twitter. Lotsa good folks keeping an eye on things, maybe former spooks & intel guys...


Where else does one find delights like this:





Ouch.

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7a0igm.jpg


Told y'all the Combat Sent was a pretty BF deal :)
 
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Based on a very cursory inspection of the optics forum, it appears the Chinese think someone from SH shot down their balloon…
 
Meanwhile, in Austin...






 
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Best pics so far of the impact



Hard to say what was hit, but the arms with the sensors, solar panels and possibly antennae and steering/propulsion quickly dropped away from the balloon.

"How fast would it be going when it hits the ocean?", one might ask.


Hard to say, is my official answer.

Will be interesting to see what gets recovered (knowing full well it will never be disclosed)

We had our best Sigint assets stalking it, although being nearby and being perfectly positioned to intercept data may be two different things. I saw some highly directional antennas in one similar picture, which I can't find at the moment.

Something similar to this:


Perhaps the "propulsion" was simply some small DJI drone style motors/props for aiming the antennas at a PRC satellite?

This is a 2020 spy balloon over Japan

1000x563_cmsv2_5a1b1cd8-23de-5021-995a-143c792f9805-4759120.jpg


Put drone motors/props at the ends of the long axis, the antennas are on the perpendicular short axis. Think bow thrusters on a ship to keep the overall orientation precise to within a few MOA (mrad???)

The narrow beam antennas are more efficient than an omnidirectional antenna and harder to intercept.

There is very much which can be obtained from an autopsy of the payload, although one might consider China expected this one to be intercepted, and not put their best gear on it.

I genuinely hope the AF got a lot of very, very,very high resolution images and signatures from the contraption while it was aloft.

WWIII is going to be technically very challenging.

The chance that the US military either did not think to photograph it, or could not photograph it, is not zero. Today's military leadership is not what it used to be.
 
I can completely understand why they wouldn’t shoot it down over US mainland, for all they knew it could have a bio weapon on board. They knew that shit was incoming when it was over the pacific though, probably been tracking it since it went in the air in China. They should have smoked it in the pacific.
If it were to have bioweapons in it. What do you reckon it would be doing as it flies across the U.S?
 
If it were to have bioweapons in it. What do you reckon it would be doing as it flies across the U.S?


If you keep asking questions like that we are going to have to keep an eye on you. A very close eye.
 
Fail #1: Letting the balloon enter US airspace. NORAD either missed it or DOD did not have the balls to follow policy.
Fail #2: Letting the balloon fly across strategic assets in MT. At this point a clear violation of policy.
Fail #3: Letting the balloon leave MT, one of the least populated states.
Fail #4: Letting some moron play Nintendo games in an F-22 and blow any evidence to bits and pieces. (The ring of shrapnel emanating form the AIM-9x warhead was impressive though.)

They should have called Maverick to put a couple of small vent holes in the balloon with the gun. Seriously, the issue of the balloon flying above the service ceiling of most fighters and the closing rate mentioned before could have been dealt with by doing some old-school pilot shit. Trading speed for altitude.

Approach the balloon fast on a straight course at service ceiling or even lower. Pull up, nose pointing slightly above the balloon, and bleed off speed. Once slow and close enough, fire a burst, roll over, and pull into inverted dive.

Can someone please try this on a decent flight sim? Chinese balloon was supposedly flying between 60,000 and 65,000ft. F-16 published service ceiling is 58,000ft.
 
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Cheap ancient technology that would gather information over a weeks time that would be done in seconds with the many satellites they have not to mention half of our government that would just email them the requested information they wanted. So what was the real purpose of the exercise .......
 
And the frikin' libtard media and their lemmings are fanning the flames with the "we don't care" mantra and saying that the right is paranoid in thinking this situation is of any importance whatsoever.

Fuckers. :mad:


But they got to check our reactions… and not just our military response.

Our political and social reactions tell them a lot.

Balloon hysteria… potato weakness… tracking capability…. How governors reacted… how the media went full retard… gauging the business potential for aerial delivery of laundry and moo goo gai pan.

This was intentional. It was a wave of “high altitude probes” designed to measure response.

In the 1930’s Kristalnacht was not just intended to destroy Jewish businesses. It was done specifically to see the reactions of Germans, other European countries and the United States.

When no one did anything, it was a signal that the early stages of the Holocaust could ratchet up.

China calls itself Communist. It is not. It is now fascists because the means of production is privately owned and the government works for the oligarchs… and is the oligarchs. But fascism and communism are basically the same thing. Violent, genocidal and unable to co-exist with free, Constitutional Republics.

We should be acting accordingly now, before we have to act with kinetic means. Sadly, the West will not. Too pussified, infiltrated and ignorant of history and real politics.

But this whole thing is intentional and the strategists in China are adding it into their planning.

Sirhr
 
Once upon a time, he would have the new call sign of 'balloon boy' and would be carpet bombed with a metric ton of balloons for the rest of his career.

Now that sort of stuff would be considered bullying... and he'd have to have therapy.

Sirhr
Really? This guy has the first confirmed balloon kill since wwi. Surely that would rate at least Balloon Man, and free drinks anywhere he goes.