Balloons

[SABRES 0311]

16 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

The answer from the “expert” was that the US has “tweaked “ its surveillance radars to better detect them since the Chinese balloon situation.   
 

If true that is a terrible answer for a lot of reasons.

So we can track aircraft smaller or equal in size to the first balloon but had to tweak our radar? Ok

Bold: Yes

[K-9]

1 hour ago, Pimlach said:

I saw this last week on main stream news media, I think CBS.  The questions asked “why are we seeing so many of these unmanned vehicles now!”

The answer from the “expert” was that the US has “tweaked “ its surveillance radars to better detect them since the Chinese balloon situation.   
 

If true that is a terrible answer for a lot of reasons.   

I put little stock in that expert’s answer. In the article I linked up thread, it’s explained how we tracked the Chinese surveillance balloon from the moment it was launched on Hainan Island, no tweaking necessary. We are seeing more of them because more of them are being launched. The sky is filled with various types of balloons at any given time. Heck, nearly 2,000 weather balloons are launched each day around the world and that’s just weather balloons. 

[steveoath]

I find it interesting the amount of coverage this got, even over here, compared to this....

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/climate/ohio-train-derailment-chemical-spill-health.html

[LGR4GM]

3 hours ago, steveoath said:

I find it interesting the amount of coverage this got, even over here, compared to this....

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/climate/ohio-train-derailment-chemical-spill-health.html

Well you see America is an oligarchy of corporations so when one of them f's up the rest try to minimize the exposure.

Edited February 15, 2023 by LGR4GM

[MattPie]

8 hours ago, Pimlach said:

I saw this last week on main stream news media, I think CBS.  The questions asked “why are we seeing so many of these unmanned vehicles now!”

The answer from the “expert” was that the US has “tweaked “ its surveillance radars to better detect them since the Chinese balloon situation.   
 

If true that is a terrible answer for a lot of reasons.   

 

7 hours ago, SABRES 0311 said:

So we can track aircraft smaller or equal in size to the first balloon but had to tweak our radar? Ok

Bold: Yes

My guess is "tweaking" the radar was just lowering the signature that gets noticed. The original design was probably set for something like light aircraft (like a Cessna or an Ultralight) because that was the threat they were thinking about. Lowering that threshold likely means they'll be getting tons more alerts that they have to run down only to find it's a lost Mylar balloon from a kids party or whatnot. Hopefully not so many that they just start ignoring them, which is the way alerts usually work; after enough false positives people just stop checking (myself included). So, if you're an engineer that's not a terrible answer, just changing requirements.

[Pimlach]

5 hours ago, MattPie said:

 

My guess is "tweaking" the radar was just lowering the signature that gets noticed. The original design was probably set for something like light aircraft (like a Cessna or an Ultralight) because that was the threat they were thinking about. Lowering that threshold likely means they'll be getting tons more alerts that they have to run down only to find it's a lost Mylar balloon from a kids party or whatnot. Hopefully not so many that they just start ignoring them, which is the way alerts usually work; after enough false positives people just stop checking (myself included). So, if you're an engineer that's not a terrible answer, just changing requirements.

The term radar signature is associated with the target (the air vehicle).  One trade-off for long range radar detection of very small targets is false alarms.   There are others that I won’t get into.   Surveillance of our boarders is, or should be, extremely serious.  

Because of signature, physically small Cessna aircraft can look fairly big to a modern radar and they are not hard to detect, and physically large B2 bombers can appear tiny and be very difficult to detect.  Advanced threats (air vehicles) can be designed to have a very small  radar signature.   We do not need to hear that the US or NORAD are not looking at everything because of false alarms.  That would be bad.  

I don’t put much stock into politicians or TV experts on these matters. 
 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Pimlach

[shrader]

I took my son to the store for a helium balloon yesterday.  Is there anything better for a one year old?  He watches the thing all day.  Maybe the US needs a building full of 1 year olds to track things like this.

[Eleven]

53 minutes ago, shrader said:

building full of 1 year olds to track things like this

Congress?

[MBD]

12 hours ago, Eleven said:

Nothing's being kept secret.  We just don't know much yet.  Here:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-14/us-says-mystery-objects-likely-private-craft-not-tied-to-spying?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify wall

There's no need to engage in conspiracy theories at this time.

Yes we don't know much yet...because they're keeping that information under wraps.  If you want to play semantics and say that's not keeping anything secret, so be it.  

And why is saying they're our own balloons a conspiracy theory?  This was a thread started to talk about the balloons.

Edited February 15, 2023 by MBD

[matter2003]

13 hours ago, MBD said:

Probably our own balloons.  Why the secrecy otherwise?

Balloons don't do what the pilots that shot it down claim it was doing(at least the Alaska one). Also pretty sure highly trained military pilots could easily discern if these objects were balloons.  Always baffles me when people actually believe most of these reports...as if Military pilots would write a report about a balloon they saw. It would be like saying a trained vet wouldn't be able to identify a Black Lab properly if you brought it to his office.

Edited February 15, 2023 by matter2003

[French Collection]

3 hours ago, Pimlach said:

The term radar signature is associated with the target (the air vehicle).  One trade off for long range radar detection of very small targets is false alarms.   There are others that I won’t get into.   Surveillance of our boarders is, or should be, extremely serious.  

Because of signature, physically small Cessna aircraft can look fairly big on a modern radar and are not hard to detect, and physically large B2 bombers can appear tiny and be be difficult to detect.  Advanced threats can be designed to have a very small  radar signature.   We do not need to hear that the the US or NORAD are not looking at everything because of false alarms.  That would be bad.  

I don’t put much stock into politicians or TV experts on these matters. 
 

I have learned a bit about radar watching The Last Ship on Prime. Whether it is accurate or not is another matter but the US Navy are constantly using radar to find and identify things.

Edited February 15, 2023 by French Collection

[kas23]

15 hours ago, Indabuff said:

Found it interesting that 1000 rounds were fired at a balloon two decades ago and the sumbitch was still afloat.

Funny thing is that the Chinese media is lambasting the US for having to use a missile to shoot it down. My wife’s from China and gets entertained from reading the propaganda. 

[LGR4GM]

1 minute ago, kas23 said:

Funny thing is that the Chinese media is lambasting the US for having to use a missile to shoot it down. My wife’s from China and gets entertained from reading the propaganda. 

What else would we use to shoot down something the size of 3 school buses? Chinese propaganda makes less sense than American propaganda sometimes. 

1 hour ago, Eleven said:

Congress?

well played

[matter2003]

15 hours ago, Indabuff said:

Found it interesting that 1000 rounds were fired at a balloon two decades ago and the sumbitch was still afloat.

Think that's interesting?  Look up the Battle of Los Angeles.

[shrader]

1 hour ago, Eleven said:

Congress?

That might just be the worst possible thing someone could ever say about my son.

[Buffalonill]

 

[Indabuff]

1 hour ago, matter2003 said:

Think that's interesting?  Look up the Battle of Los Angeles.

I completely forgot about this, thanks!

[Pimlach]

1 hour ago, kas23 said:

Funny thing is that the Chinese media is lambasting the US for having to use a missile to shoot it down. My wife’s from China and gets entertained from reading the propaganda. 

Chinese propaganda machine at work, they are worried about it so they are making a fuss. 

The missile that shot down the Chinese Balloon was an AIM 9X but modified with no warhead.  Because we (meaning the US Military) want to recover everything inside the balloon, they relied on the missiles kinetic energy to take it down with no additional explosion.   It was smart, and it worked.  Hopefully we recover everything inside the Balloon to find what was inside. 

 

[MBD]

4 hours ago, matter2003 said:

Balloons don't do what the pilots that shot it down claim it was doing(at least the Alaska one). Also pretty sure highly trained military pilots could easily discern if these objects were balloons.  Always baffles me when people actually believe most of these reports...as if Military pilots would write a report about a balloon they saw. It would be like saying a trained vet wouldn't be able to identify a Black Lab properly if you brought it to his office.

So they were UFOs?  That could be considered an even bigger conspiracy theory.

[matter2003]

13 minutes ago, MBD said:

So they were UFOs?  That could be considered an even bigger conspiracy theory.

Why? The Pentagon basically admitted they exist within the past year and the military knows they exist because they stalk their nuclear submarines on a regular basis. Also, where do you think the name for the band "Foo Fighters" came from?  That's what pilots flying in WW II called UFO's because they were all over the place.

https://www.history.com/news/wwii-ufos-allied-airmen-orange-lights-foo-fighters

 

I get people want to believe none of this actually exists so they don't have to process what this means for everything from our place in the universe to their religious beliefs to a whole host of other things, but people aren't going to have much of a choice soon...there is a reason for this about face pivot from the US Government in the past few years on this, and all I will say is it should be an interesting decade going forward as the veil is pulled away a little more each year with what they tell the public.

Edited February 15, 2023 by matter2003

[Weave]

32 minutes ago, matter2003 said:

where do you think the name for the band "Foo Fighters" came from?  That's what pilots flying in WW II called UFO's because they were all over the place.

Today I learned….

[SABRES 0311]

At this point there isn’t a whole lot of information to say what is going on without a doubt. 

 

 

[Zamboni]

Testing response and reaction. To see if EMP attacks are achievable. That theory is just as crazy… As paper and cloth masks preventing almost anybody from getting Covid 😂

 

[Pimlach]

35 minutes ago, MBD said:

So they were UFOs?  That could be considered an even bigger conspiracy theory.

No need to jump from a Balloon to a UFO conspiracy. 

They were all unmanned air vehicles.  There are lots of them out there.  Some in the civilian world, some in the military world, and a few can found in both. 

The military knows more about them than they want to say.  

Pilots probably sent an IFF (identify friend or foe) interrogation signal to confirm they are not either US military or allies.   The pilots and aircraft sensing can determine its size, shape, airspeed, heading, and then the determination on what to do gets made.  All of this information can get data linked to a command base if the determination is to be made off-board.   If the aircraft does not belong there is can be taken down.   

Happens all the time without making the evening news.  

[matter2003]

10 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

No need to jump from a Balloon to a UFO conspiracy. 

They were all unmanned air vehicles.  There are lots of them out there.  Some in the civilian world, some in the military world, and a few can found in both. 

The military knows more about them than they want to say.  

Pilots probably sent an IFF (identify friend or foe) interrogation signal to confirm they are not either US military or allies.   The pilots and aircraft sensing can determine its size, shape, airspeed, heading, and then the determination on what to do gets made.  All of this information can get data linked to a command base if the determination is to be made off-board.   If the aircraft does not belong there is can be taken down.   

Happens all the time without making the evening news.  

 

Seems a little odd the pilots would be baffled and wondering how they were actually cruising at that altitude without falling out of the sky as they reported seeing no known propulsion system on the vehicle tho wouldn't it?