The China Thread (Threat)

[Johca]

So, when I hear of the command and control being asked about taking care of the balloon problem on Wednesday all I can think of is perhaps he had taken an interest in teenage Wednesday Adams on Netflix and mentioning something about sniffing some hair.

 

[TLDR20]

An AIM-9X was used to shoot down the balloon; The -9X is an infrared/ heat seeking missile. Our other option, because no Phoenix, is the AIM-120, a radar seeking missile.

We smoked a balloon with no propulsion unit using a heat seeker instead of a radar-guided missile?

Interesting.

I wonder if they could utilize something to “heat it up” like a laser or some other form of illumination for the target.

 

[Johca]

 

[Johca]

Well, this meme seems to provide the best explanation yet.

 

[Gunz]

BITD (ie) the Cold War, we had a thing called the DEW system for Distant Early Warning…to detect Soviet bombers closing in on our territory. The idea was, we’d detect them early, send up interceptors and destroy them before they reached our shores.

We need to invest in Cold War technology. Or anti balloon balloons.

 

[AWP]

I wonder if they could utilize something to “heat it up” like a laser or some other form of illumination for the target.

The -9x can use an IRST pod to provide tracking information, but the -22 doesn't have IRST capabilities. They did as you suggested or the -9x's sensitivity allowed the shot to take place? If they were shadowing it before they would developed that information rather than "doing it live" off SC, right? Maybe heat signatures from the solar arrays?

Dunno, but it is interesting.

 

[TLDR20]

The -9x can use an IRST pod to provide tracking information, but the -22 doesn't have IRST capabilities. They did as you suggested or the -9x's sensitivity allowed the shot to take place? If they were shadowing it before they would developed that information rather than "doing it live" off SC, right? Maybe heat signatures from the solar arrays?

Dunno, but it is interesting.

Not to speculate too wildly, but I’m sure there were other birds in the area with unknown capabilities. I know of at least one bird that has an almost unlimited menu of additional sensors and suites that can fly much higher than the balloon.

 

[Marauder06]

I thought that this was an interesting read about the balloon situation from a legal perspective:

Guest Post: “The Chinese balloon shoot-down incident and the law: some observations”

 

[Johca]

The memes are getting more creative.

 

[RackMaster]

BITD (ie) the Cold War, we had a thing called the DEW system for Distant Early Warning…to detect Soviet bombers closing in on our territory. The idea was, we’d detect them early, send up interceptors and destroy them before they reached our shores.

We need to invest in Cold War technology. Or anti balloon balloons.

It sort of still exists in a "modern" form. Been updated in the past decade, since my time but it's digitized and routed to Ottawa. And off to wherever else needs it, like NORAD. This would have been detected and monitored. But because it's a balloon, some moron might have minimized the risk and didn't launch or called off interceptors.

 

[ThunderHorse]

As a guy that knows a little something about waterborne sensitive item recovery post-kinetic action, I’ll just go ahead and wait and see if we recover anything, one, and two, what we get from it.

And I’ll disagree with your contention that ‘step one isn’t blast it out of the sky.’ I absolutely think that’s step one, when we are talking about sovereign American territory/airspace.

If, step one is attempt to recover in air? Do that over the Aleutians. Step two is definitely blast that MF out of the sky before is reaches Juneau.

It's funny because the posts are telegraphic based on political persuasion.

I think almost all of us swore an oath to defend something or some such and our lessers are being allowed to make decisions that put our security at risk. But hey, I'm just some idiot who works in sports today and not on AD.

 

[RackMaster]

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[ThunderHorse]

The part that irritates me is the President saying he ordered it shot down on Wednesday but, essentially, the Pentagon overruled him. When does the Pentagon get to over-rule the CINC?

More importantly, why did he wait until Wednesday? Simply because it's presence was reported the press. This should've been shot down over a week ago when it entered U.S. airspace on the 28th and it would've never even made the news -- because it didn't have to.

It's incompetent decision making at multiple levels.

Well, MacArthur wasn't court martialed when he ordered Patton and Eisenhower to disperse the Bonus Army and torch their encampment. You know, a time we used TANKS on a peaceful protest.

 

[Johca]

Well, MacArthur wasn't court martialed when he ordered Patton and Eisenhower to disperse the Bonus Army and torch their encampment. You know, a time we used TANKS on a peaceful protest.

Yep, lot more to this than the Bonus Army as this event resulted in him being in the Philippines. While it's often mentioned " MacArthur left his
air force sitting undefended on the tarmac for hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The entire fleet of planes was destroyed later that day, but could have been saved with some quick action. That disaster led directly to MacArthur being order to abandon the Philippines, leaving thousands of soldiers to a terrible fate." It is seldom mentioned the Army Air Forces had the newest and numerically largest inventory of combat aircraft outside of the CONUS there in form of the recently constituted Far East Army Air Force. I'll have to dig for the numbers as far as the newest most advance fighter and bomber type aircraft on the tarmacs in the Philippines, but I seem to recollect the most advanced aircraft inventory was more than what was located in Hawaii. One has to dig through a lot of archived documents to find this little fact.

Read More: The Untold Truth Of General Douglas MacArthur - Grunge

 

[Johca]

Well, MacArthur wasn't court martialed when he ordered Patton and Eisenhower to disperse the Bonus Army and torch their encampment. You know, a time we used TANKS on a peaceful protest.

BTW, how about this historical tidbit of: "An airplane, rented at a nearby field, flew overhead dropping dynamite bombs on the strongholds of the strikebreakers." Been a while since I was researching this, but it's unclear who provided the aircraft, the pilot, and dynamite bombs.

The US miners' strikes, 1919-1922 - Jeremy Brecher

 

[Johca]

 

[DA SWO]

The -9x can use an IRST pod to provide tracking information, but the -22 doesn't have IRST capabilities. They did as you suggested or the -9x's sensitivity allowed the shot to take place? If they were shadowing it before they would developed that information rather than "doing it live" off SC, right? Maybe heat signatures from the solar arrays?

Dunno, but it is interesting.

Open source.
The F-22 uses the RADAR to cue, and mid-course correct the AIM-9X, which has a laser "trigger " at the mid-point of the missiles body.

Nellis based F-22's flew profiles against the spyplane as it drifted across the US. I suspect they were gathering RADAR and heat profiles for the eventual shoot down.

Find a good video of the hit. The missile appeared to impact above the panels and below the balloon, which means it acted more like an AIM-120 then a legacy AIM-9.

 

[TLDR20]

Open source.
The F-22 uses the RADAR to cue, and mid-course correct the AIM-9X, which has a laser "trigger " at the mid-point of the missiles body.

Nellis based F-22's flew profiles against the spyplane as it drifted across the US. I suspect they were gathering RADAR and heat profiles for the eventual shoot down.

Find a good video of the hit. The missile appeared to impact above the panels and below the balloon, which means it acted more like an AIM-120 then a legacy AIM-9.

Cool

 

[Marauder06]

 

[Devildoc]