Wait, are we talking space aliens, or undocumented interstellar immigrants?

Speaking of missile guidance...

US military's first shot at unknown octagonal object over Lake Huron missed, officials say

The second missile ultimately took down the target over Lake Huron, officials said

By Louis Casiano, Lucas Tomlinson
Published February 13, 2023
Fox News

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The U.S. military jet that downed an unknown object in the Michigan sky on Sunday missed on its first attempt over Lake Huron, officials told Fox News.

The Air Force F-16 jet was using Sidewinder missiles to attack the target.

"The first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile missed the target," one official said.

It wasn't clear where the missile that missed ultimately landed. The second missile took down the target. Each of the missiles costs more than $400,000.

None of the debris from the object has been found in the lake, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday. The Defense Department, or DOD, said President Biden, just before 2:42 p.m., directed an F-16 to fire an AIM-9x missile to shoot down an airborne object flying at nearly 20,000 feet over Lake Huron.

The downing was the fourth object to be destroyed since Feb. 4 when a Chinese spycraft was shot down over South Carolina.

A crane ship on the scene where a Chinese surveillance balloon went down in waters off South Carolina has raised from the ocean bottom a significant portion of the balloon’s payload, a U.S. official said Monday.

Officials have said the payload measured as much as 30-feet-long and had all of craft’s tech gear and antennas.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/20...balloon-saga-n530584

Perhaps we will now know more about what it was doing and who sent it.

flashguy

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Originally posted by Rightwire:
Wait, are we talking space aliens, or undocumented interstellar immigrants?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:


Asked by a reporter whether he has ruled out aliens VanHerck said: "I haven’t ruled out anything at this point."

Regardless of what they identify as, they have not been ruled out. General VanHerck is Comander of NORAD and USNORTHCOM. I can just imagine the White House Press Secretary hearing or reading General VanHerck's response, then doing a facepalm while thinking "Not this shit again."

Oh crap, we're doomed. Amazon has only one copy of Slim Whitman's All My Best LP left!

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
"After the transit of the spy balloon this month, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, adjusted its radar system to make it more sensitive. As a result, the number of objects it detected increased sharply. In other words, NORAD is picking up more incursions because it is looking for them, spurred on by the heightened awareness caused by the furor over the spy balloon, which floated over the continental United States for a week before an F-22 shot it down on Feb. 4." Link

Yup, a known issue with digital radar. In the old movies the radar operator had the cool round screen with the sweeping line going around, and a bright blip would pop up then slowly fade until the next sweep. This is raw analog radar.

With digital it is all processed by a computer. The software has built in assumptions, such as a minimum strength return or a minimum speed, before it decides to display it to the human. This declutters crap like an 18 wheeler on the highway going 80 mph off of the screen so the air traffic controller doesn't have to be bothered with it.

Weather radar is the same these days. An experienced user can glean a lot of information from the analog display, but digital sounds fancier and the systems are dumbed down to a low level human looking at it.

Can someone tell me why these balloons aren't being shot down with the planes' cannons?

Why are we wasting millions of dollars firing a guided missile at them when both the F22 and F16 have cannons?

It's a fucking balloon, not something taking evasive action.

Is there a reason other than simple waste and a pilot wanting to make a big boom????

quote:

Originally posted by Oat_Action_Man:
Can someone tell me why these balloons aren't being shot down with the planes' cannons?

Why are we wasting millions of dollars firing a guided missile at them when both the F22 and F16 have cannons?

It's a fucking balloon, not something taking evasive action.

Is there a reason other than simple waste and a pilot wanting to make a big boom????

Posted earlier by Sigfreund on why guns are not the best option.

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Originally posted by arabiancowboy:

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

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Originally posted by arabiancowboy:
I am curious why the fighter guys aren’t getting in close and engaging the balloons with guns.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Article from The Wall Street Journal. The full linked article mentions the Canadian effort to shoot down an “out-of-control” weather balloon in which more than 1000 rounds were fired at it, and it took six days for it to fall to the ground. ...

LINK

Thank you for posting that, clearly I missed it earlier in the thread.

Still seems worth trying if we want to recover the payload since we could always destroy it later if we do not like time or location of projected landing; but I’m not an expert in these kinds of things, so I’m just guessing.

Also with guns, any movement could end up with the payload being shot as well as the balloon destroying the part we'd like to captue.

Nearly impossible to shot down a balloon while the plane is traveling at a high rate of speed. The gun is fixed in the plane and even the slightest deviation of a fraction of a degree cause great variances downrange.


It's been tried by other countries and it's just a waste of ammo and effort.

These things need to come down. That being said, is this what prc is testing? Gauging our reaction and getting us used to bringing down these balloons? $400K to bring down one balloon?

What if prc, as an act of war, sends many balloons our way - some as dummies and some with destructive payloads? We'll spend considerable armaments to bring them down, especially not knowing which are dummies vs which are destructive. Cheap way for prc to get us to expend some of our critical ammunition.

Is this just tin foil again (I've been known to bring mine out once in awhile)? Or could this be a tactic?

In World War 1, downing an observation balloon was accomplished by biplanes only shooting 1-2 .30 caliber machine guns. What has changed in balloon technology that makes it so a 20mm or 30mm cannon can’t shoot it down today?

We have fancy computers and HUD displays on modern jet fighters. Are you all telling me that a modern jet fighter can’t shoot a ballon down because it is too low tech and our pilots don’t know how to shoot a relatively stationary target in the sky? If so, let’s send up someone in a P-51 from the Confederate Air Force or a Tucano if a jet can’t take it down at the lower altitudes.

As a civilian looking in, it seems like that if the Canadians can’t shoot down a ballon with 1000 rounds of cannon fire that the problem may not be the cannon but the pilot missing the target.

Hopefully we have someone with experience who can explain this a little better.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Abraham Maslow

Maybe this should be an eye opening moment for some folks in the military, as well as other parts of government, to reconsider their approach to problems in general.

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:
In World War 1, downing an observation balloon was accomplished by biplanes only shooting 1-2 .30 caliber machine guns. What has changed in balloon technology that makes it so a 20mm or 30mm cannon can’t shoot it down today?

We have fancy computers and HUD displays on modern jet fighters. Are you all telling me that a modern jet fighter can’t shoot a ballon down because it is too low tech and our pilots don’t know how to shoot a relatively stationary target in the sky? If so, let’s send up someone in a P-51 from the Confederate Air Force or a Tucano if a jet can’t take it down at the lower altitudes.

As a civilian looking in, it seems like that if the Canadians can’t shoot down a ballon with 1000 rounds of cannon fire that the problem may not be the cannon but the pilot missing the target.

Hopefully we have someone with experience who can explain this a little better.

On another forum there's a thread about this and one of the long standing members is a retired F14 pilot and instructor and he went into great lengths why it doesn't work the way you're think Luke Skywalker killed the Death Star by turning off the computer system.

If you were to drive down the back straight at the Indy 500 track going 200 mph and I asked you to aim the car to shoot something stationary on the track, you'd have a really hard time doing that. The plane is traveling really fast and the gun is fixed and because of those factors, you have to start shooting early. If you're off in your aim a bit at close range, it's not as much of a problem but at speed, any closed gap and deviation is greatly magnified.

Another country tried this in the past and used 1k of rounds like you suggested. All they did was punch holes in it and it still was pretty much up in the air and floating around.

As far as we know, the F22 is the only plane that can reach 60k although others can reach 40k without a problem.

The F22 carries about 500 rounds of ammo with a 6k a minute rate of fire and that's gone in mere seconds. Then what? Descend and rearm? That's not effective. Same with the F35.

Air to air cannons have limited range and missiles are now the tools of air to air combat. A cannon shoots at a single target at a close distance and missiles can be locked onto multiple targets and much greater distances.

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:
In World War 1, downing an observation balloon was accomplished by biplanes only shooting 1-2 .30 caliber machine guns. What has changed in balloon technology that makes it so a 20mm or 30mm cannon can’t shoot it down today?

The observation balloons of WWI were tethered (and therefore stationary) at a far lower altitude- perhaps a thousand feet as opposed to more than more than 11 miles up.
These balloons were filled with flammable hydrogen, not inert helium.

With the far lower altitude, the atmospheric pressure was much higher than that at 11 miles up.

The planes shooting at them were going less than 140 mph and were shooting a mix of armor-piercing and incendiary rounds, which ignited the flammable gas.

I don't believe prop driven planes are capable of that altitude. Also the materials the balloons are made of today are far different than time gone by and hydrogen was also the lift gas which would ignite versus helium which is inert. One would have to make a large tear in the top of the balloon in order to vent the gas quickly.

OK. I had forgotten about the hydrogen vs helium. Thanks. It still seems strange that for a relatively stationary target, the most advanced fighter in operation can't strafe it down.

I thought some of the most recent incidents were at a much lower altitude but it appears I was wrong there too?

It sounds like we need this sooner than we were planning.
https://eurasiantimes.com/us-a...-for-f-15-eagle/?amp

(Echoing what's already been said...) Not any kind of expert in this, but from what I've read they actually did have trouble in WWI shooting down those observation balloons until they realized the balloons were filled with hydrogen, and they developed special incendiary rounds to take them down. Today, of course, balloons are filled with non-flammable helium.

As far as the current situation, several things. Even firing 20mm rounds, you punch relatively small holes that only cause small leaks, meaning a very gradual descent, not a real shoot-down. In the '90s the Royal Canadian AF tried to shoot down a rogue weather balloon. Even after shooting over 1,000 rounds of cannon fire, it took 6 days for the balloon to fall.

Second, Vulcan rotary cannons have an effective range of only about 600m. They're designed for engaging fast moving targets in pursuit. Firing on a relatively stationary target is not only difficult, but puts the aircraft way too close to the debris field. And in this case, there's a much higher danger of also destroying the payload with errant hits, impeding the recovery.

A missile burst is much more effective at quickly shredding the balloon for a fast descent, while protecting the suspended instrument package from collateral damage.

As a point of reference, the SPAD S.XIII that was one of the first balloon busters had a top speed of 131mph, and a stall speed of 65 mph.

The F22 Raptor on the other hand is Mach 2+ capable and has a stall speed around 160-180 knots.

As a pilot pointed out in a short video that I saw yesterday, it's a lot easier to hit a slow moving object when you're doing 70mph than 200+ You literally have to turn away before your in effective range to avoid running over the target.

Question for the pilots, is stall speed affected by altitude?

I would think air density would affect stall speed and air density would be quite a bit less at 60,000' than sea level.