So China is flying a balloon over Montana apparently..

[atomicinumatt]

2 hours ago, Lemming said:

What people fail to understand is that shooting down a balloon with a wing mounted aim 9 sidewinder would require a heat signature. There are many more pieces of weaponry, amraam, sparrow, toe, and if the thing had small nuclear reactor on board and an antenna, you could probably use high altitude anti radiation missiles to bring it down. O, what genius would have thought of this haha *cough england zeplens ww1* but incendiary rounds from a nose mounted minigun would be quite effective against something filled with lighter than air gases. Luckily the footage shows a short range probably radar guided projectile hitting the balloon. I think the defense ministry acted smartly. 

There are guided missiles too, which use other remote sensing and can be actively guided (but you won't be using anything like TOW or any ATGM haha). But I doubt that this thing had any kind of nuclear reactor on it. It is certainly a possibility but it would cause an international outcry that China or whoever does not want. 

The fact that the US knew about it meant that they probably had measures in place to mitigate security vulnerability and were probably trying to exploit some kind of up link. Unless the balloon was air-gapped and operating passively, it had to communicate its data somehow. I doubt the Chinese or whoever expected to get the balloon back unless it really was a weather balloon gone haywire haha  

My biggest issue is that this might embolden China or whoever sent it. 

But if it is aliens then anything goes lmao. 

I forgot about this thread and the UFO news for a couple days. Goes to show my ADHD attention span!

Edited February 16, 2023 by atomicinumatt

[Farg]

3 minutes ago, atomicinumatt said:

There are guided missiles too, which use other remote sensing and can be actively guided (but you won't be using anything like TOW or any ATGM haha). But I doubt that this thing had any kind of nuclear reactor on it. It is certainly a possibility but it would cause an international outcry that China or whoever does not want. 

The fact that the US knew about it meant that they probably had measures in place to mitigate security vulnerability and were probably trying to exploit some kind of up link. Unless the balloon was air-gapped and operating passively, it had to communicate its data somehow. I doubt the Chinese or whoever expecting to get the balloon back unless it really was a weather balloon gone haywire haha  

My biggest issue is that this might embolden China or whoever sent it. 

But if it is aliens then anything goes lmao. 

I forgot about this thread and the UFO news for a couple days. Goes to show my ADHD attention span!

Congratulatoins on your top shelf reply. Yes, toe was mine. I looked it up but you would have to find a supersonic projectile with fragmentation and or explosive characteristics. Voyager had a nuclear reactor. Don't you think that miniaturizations of h-bombs would be useful, in that they would incinerate the target instead of letting a possibly toxic entity hit streams and resevoirs. Respect the Earth. Oh god

[atomicinumatt]

6 minutes ago, Farg said:

Congratulatoins on your top shelf reply. Yes, toe was mine. I looked it up but you would have to find a supersonic projectile with fragmentation and or explosive characteristics. Voyager had a nuclear reactor. Don't you think that miniaturizations of h-bombs would be useful, in that they would incinerate the target instead of letting a possibly toxic entity hit streams and resevoirs. Respect the Earth. Oh god

So voyager did not have a nuclear reactor but instead a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

This works more like a battery and operates off of radioactive decay, and the heat it produces. There are no fissile reactions. They are also tiny in size and output and are only useful for research purposes. You cannot really make a weapon out of it.. 

Edited February 16, 2023 by atomicinumatt

[Farg]

3 minutes ago, atomicinumatt said:

So voyager did not have a nuclear reactor but instead a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.

This works more like a battery and operates off of radioactive decay, and the heat it produces. There are no fissile reactions. They are also tiny in size and output and are only useful for research purposes. You cannot really make a weapon out of it.. 

You've been lied to. But so have I. I'm kinda pissed about it.

[ghostrek]

A lot of people been thinking there's an invasion of the United States underway and that's where  not I think this is not ever likely but whatever 

 

Spoiler

Unless space aliens or distant relatives of mine

 

[atomicinumatt]

1 minute ago, Farg said:

You've been lied to. But so have I. I'm kinda pissed about it.

I mean I know what we use in space vehicles for power haha if we were indeed lied to and their were nuclear reactors on satellites and the like, we would know about them from when the blow up in the atmosphere from time to time.. There are rigorous treaties about nuclear materials in high altitude and space. Though I guess these could be lied about, but as I said, it would be well known rather quickly if nuclear payloads were going to space en mass. 

[Farg]

12 minutes ago, atomicinumatt said:

I mean I know what we use in space vehicles for power haha if we were indeed lied to and their were nuclear reactors on satellites and the like, we would know about them from when the blow up in the atmosphere from time to time.. There are rigorous treaties about nuclear materials in high altitude and space. Though I guess these could be lied about, but as I said, it would be well known rather quickly if nuclear payloads were going to space en mass. 

Spoiler

What is the sun? Is it sound we observe and feel, or just feel until that "phase" is over. You gotta learn to go around the mountain, not into it's snow capped crags despite their questionable beauty. BTW, I see now, said the 300 dancers.

 

Edited February 16, 2023 by Farg

[atomicinumatt]

1 minute ago, Farg said:

  Hide contents

What is the sun? Is it sound we observe and feel, or just feel until that "phase" is over. You gotta learn to go around the mountain, not into it's snow capped crags despite their questionable beauty. BTW, I see know, said the 300 dancers.

 

Well, the sun is just a mass of hydrogen and helium formed from the molecular cloud that our solar system coalesced out of. The immense mass and pressure, and subsequent heat, fuse the hydrogen into helium. The sun will continue to do this until it falls out of hydrostatic equilibrium, expanding into a red giant, and ultimately becoming a white dwarf.

Sorry, not sure what your question was, but there you go.   

[tsar4]

13 hours ago, Doom Metal Alchemist said:

BECAUSE of Boston, I don't think AS is going to attempt anything like that ever again.

Ok, so maybe it's Richard Heene up to his old tricks.

[tsar4]

[PhilosipherStoned]

I now have sources that have identified the company that made the balloons.. That I think are pretty reliable, but they are people who are more familiar with China and the way the government works with so called private 'civilian' companies... and by their description of the relationship it would be like us sending one of the UAV's I flew to China without proper clearance, and crying that a civilian company made it for me as a superpower, and they were just doing their thing as a private company how dare you shoot it.

I assume others may have beat me to that, but I can post the comments I've gotten from people foriegn and national in the matter that are like... Yeah they basically saying....

 

Edited February 17, 2023 by PhilosipherStoned

[Sieg67]

1 hour ago, tsar4 said:

I feel like I'm missing some context.

[tsar4]

Just now, Sieg67 said:

I feel like I'm missing some context.

F Troop episode with Count Heindreich von Zeppelin (Harvey Korman)

[Gemini]

KEEP LOOKING UP!

Rest in peace, Jack Horkheimer.

Edited February 17, 2023 by hornedlizardman

[tsar4]

Story on local radio today was that the one shot down over Alaska might have been a research balloon from Illinois.  Apparently the thing had been up for a few months and had circled the globe 3 times, but suspiciously stopped reporting in right after the balloon over Alaska was taken down.

[Master-Debater131]

Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/china-spy-balloon-collected-intelligence-us-military-bases-rcna77155

The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.

China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.

 

The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration’s efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon’s ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.

[Icarus27k]

Balloon

 

The U.S. is tracking a high-altitude balloon flying over the Western part of the country, U.S. officials told CBS News. Military aircraft have spotted the balloon and determined it is not a threat, but its origin and purpose are still unknown, the officials said.

 

Sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the balloon was drifting east in the jetstream on Friday at an altitude of more than 40,000 feet. Its presence prompted enough concern that the military sent aircraft to investigate.

One official said the balloon was over Colorado earlier in the day and was expected to be over Georgia by Friday night. The official said the balloon appeared to be made of Mylar and had a small cube-shaped box, about two feet long on each side, hanging below it.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/military-tracking-balloon-western-us-military/

 

[Jman]

Here we go again…