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Temstar

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
FoC24l6XkAEAzf2.jpg
My understanding so far is it's actually quite a tricky target to engage. It's flying so high that even if F-22 climb to its ceiling and release an AIM-120 the balloon is at just about the edge of the missile's capability.

It would be hilarious if under all that pressure Biden ends up ordering for it to be shot down, and they have to launch a THAAD interceptor to take it out.

If would be extra hilarious if AIM-120 or THAAD is used and misses, as I doubt that's the sort of target they were designed to engage.
 
plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
GZDRefugee said:
We're not gonna talk about how it reached Montana without tripping air defense radars? The fuck are they gonna do against hypersonic glide vehicles if their observation is this shitty.
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Most modern radars work using Doppler principles, which relies on speed differences to find contacts. A mostly plastic balloon drifting in the wind will have very low radar signatures which makes them surprisingly hard to detect.
 
siegecrossbow

siegecrossbow

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Temstar said:
View attachment 106517
My understanding so far is it's actually quite a tricky target to engage. It's flying so high that even if F-22 climb to its ceiling and release an AIM-120 the balloon is at just about the edge of the missile's capability.

It would be hilarious if under all that pressure Biden ends up ordering for it to be shot down, and they have to launch a THAAD interceptor to take it out.

If would be extra hilarious if AIM-120 or THAAD is used and misses, as I doubt that's the sort of target they were designed to engage.
Click to expand...

J-10C did it with a PL-10. No reason why F-15 or Raptor with higher service ceiling can’t repeat with AIM-9X or even cannon. AIM-120 is too expensive I think.
 
escobar

escobar

Brigadier
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms that the airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.
So, all those similar balloons, which been detected previously over Hawaii, Guam, CONUS in recent years on multiple occasions are all civilian airship. Ok
ju.jpg
 
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Temstar

Temstar

Brigadier
Registered Member
escobar said:
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirms that the airship is from China. It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course.
View attachment 106519
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>mainly used for meteorological research
>limited self-steering capability
>deviated from planned course

Sounds about right to me but those terms will just make the Americans even more paranoid.
 
P

pevade

Junior Member
Registered Member
Atomicfrog said:
We got these type of shopping carts in multiple stores. You have also grocery cart release key that you can put on your keychain. It's just that hobo are steeling shopping carts and it's a way to lock them on carts holder... that's a funny way to disinform people about that usage.
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escobar said:
NORAD apparently didn't catch it (initially) -- people spotted it from an airplane!
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It would kinda make sense that NORAD didn't catch it. After all, it was a slow object that was moving at a high altitude. NORAD probably was programmed to ignore such objects because its primary use was to track ballistic missiles which fly much faster than a balloon.
 
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