I had a work-study job in college at our small local airport working for the FAA. I mostly clipped new FAA communications into 3-ring binders and tore off expired ticker tape weather reports for a couple of hours a day.
My boss was old school government employee, straight and square. One day we were talking and he handed me a FAA business card with a UFO reporting 800 phone number. Odd I thought, and put it in my wallet.
Years later I lost my wallet in a phone booth (am old). I got a call from someone who found my wallet and wanted to return it. He came over with the wallet which had everything still in it, including cash. The only thing missing was the UFO card. I've never seen another one.
I think the government claimed after the first one they increased the sensitivity of the "airborne thingamajiggie" detector they have. Which is one of those answers that raises far more questions than it addresses.
Still think the occupation governments in both Washington and Olympia are a far greater threat to me than any airborne thingamajiggie, though.
ET never called me racist.
So the government workers were basically ignoring everything that showed up on their radar?
Like Homer Simpson at the Nuclear plant
No I think it was more they had tuned the radar so that they didn't show up at all. So I guess like when he dumped a bucket of water over his console to stop all the alarms from going off.
No, like a lookout not reporting every seagull he sees. Not everything that reflects radio waves is an enemy aircraft, so you're always going to be culling signatures that are too small or too slow. If you build a radar station to watch for bombers and ICBMs crossing the arctic then a balloon flying at or below windspeed isn't what you're looking for.
I assume the radars are connected to computers that screen out contacts based on some kind of criteria table. NORAD still thinks they need to be looking for formations of Bears and Migs to appear over the North Pole. They tune out small and slow objects.
Most innocuous explanation is that they increased sensitivity (or lowered reporting threshold or whatever) because they're more wary of potential attacks from China or Russia, possibly because they're preparing for a conflict around Taiwan.
I'm guessing it's a total nothingburger and that these baloons are almost completely inconsequential.
China has satellites, so do they really need balloons to spy on the US? They are probably just weather balloons, and even if they are not, the info they're gathering vs the info China can already get from their satellites, or hell, from Chinese Nationals in the US, instructed to deploy a drone, is probably barely worth the cost of shooting them down.
In all likelihood, these things are probably always up there, all the time, have been for years, and someone just now decided to raise a kerfuffle about them.
I highly doubt anything of real significance is actually going on.
The Chinese response was amusing - they didn't deny spying with balloons, but rather said 'You STARTED it by spying on US with balloons!' - which the US denied.
Is the US lying, and they are floating spy balloons over China? Again, it seems unlikely because satellites exist, but it could be exactly the sort of response testing you're thinking of, going both ways.
The funniest possibility, of course, is that the winds are blowing both American and Chinese weather balloons out over each other's territory, and both nations think each other's weather balloons are spy balloons, because of course they do.
anything chinese outside their borders is primarily for espionage.
Yes, but you realize balloons go wherever the wind carries them, right?
I'm on-board with the "they've always been there" position. I do think they have their uses though. We don't actually know how good China's spy satellites are, so that alone could justify sending out a balloon to observe a few key locations. Besides, balloons are so much cheaper, and how we go about shooting one down could be the info they're meant to gather in the first place. That could mean observing our weapons and reaction times, or by agents within the military observing how that information is collected and acted upon. Hell, in 2023, both sides are probably collecting information on how we react to it.
I think it's a pure distraction from the evidence proving US involvement in the Nord Stream bombing.
I agree about distraction, but still this is the first time in my life that government is talking about and shooting down random stuff in the sky that they claim not to know what those things are.
They probably saw how well the Chinese spy balloon hoax went, and just remixed it.
Biden and his handlers of whatever origin you believe in.
You're assuming that they're actually shooting anything down. It's probably all fake.
Most likely a distraction but as someone who has been into UFOs since third grade I’d love for it to be ET
Pretty much. Been into paranormal stuff since I was single digits. My mom made us go to the library every week and I’d check out a stack of books on ghosts, Bigfoot, ESP, aliens, etc. my mom was happy that I was reading lol.
But like I said in this case I’d say that it’s most likely a government engineered hoax or distraction
It's pretty wild to listen to old Art Bell (F) episodes from the 90s when he talks about that stuff, especially with the benefit of 30 years' hindsight. You can find old episodes online; it's my go-to when I'm out gardening.
His guests and callers truly were a special breed: they always thought that if they could get these generals and bureaucrats who covered everything up in front of a Congressional inquiry than the Honorable John McCain (they all loved John McCain for some reason, which makes his fall from grace by the hand of Trump all the more impressive) would get them to reveal the truth.
I used to listen to him when I had an overnight security job. I listen to the show on podcast sometimes and have found other paranormal podcasts since I work from home most of the week it’s nice to listen to. But yea it is interesting with the hindsight we have now
I believe there is some reality to it all. I’ve had some ghostly/spiritual experiences and as for the ufo thing I got some second hand testimony when I was in the Air Force. Granted it isn’t proof but it was from people I trusted. Although as a Christian I guess I kinda have to believe in the supernatural at least a little lol
i want one
If it was actually alien UFOs we wouldn't be able to shoot them down with our stone-age fighter jets.
I know. But a man can dream lol
I suspect that if you look hard enough you'll always be able to find unidentified objects of the size they've been shooting down in US airspace.
They 'turned up the detectors' and are shooting a few down now purely as cover for the Biden administration which looked stupid and weak letting a giant Chinese spy balloon float across the entire continental United States.
the new current thing™
NORAD looked retarded. Balloons are politically useful because they are worthless in everything but theatrics, so every politician from every angle wants to get involved in a popularly theatrical event that has zero actual impact. This is good, so NORAD gets to look less stupid as they shoot down a bunch of shit that was annoying someone anyway, and now they have political cover for it.
I would say that its just spy balloons, some orbital debris, and maybe a bit of sensor malfuntions. Once the first ballon got noticed everyone started looking closer at the skies and saw objects that they previously disregarded.
Or just actual aliens that came in peace and wanted to say hi and got greeted by a f22.
My bet is that whatever it is, the government knows exactly what those balloon thingies are, since they have the debris and i dont think the departments of intelligence would have much trouble reverse engineering the device if it was just a chinese spy drone.
Project Blue Beam
No theory, I just wanted to point out how dreadful/amusing it is that after years of memeing about "clown world" we now seem to be having international balloon fights. I will not be surprised if someone announces a military defense plan involving a giant circus tent to block out the balloons (but I will want off this ride).
I bounce back and forth on the UFO/alien stuff, especially now that the government's been making information more publicly available in recent years.
The most recent stuff from this last week or two is absolutely suspect though, the timing is just not even remotely subtle.
UFO just means government aircraft
The government either missed or ignored the balloon blowing in from China. Then they got caught, got humiliated, and blasted it to save face.
Then they cranked up the sensitivity on the radars and started blasting everything slow moving "object" they could find in an attempt to look strong and tough. The result is a bunch of routine, unremarkable private balloons for weather monitoring, hobby use, and small scale science getting shot down with $400,000 missiles. Soon a crying 12-year-old will be on TV asking why Biden shot down his science fair project.
No UFOs. No Chinese spy balloon blitz. Just a dumbass president and his clown administration getting embarrassed and completely freaking out in response. It's a miracle no civilians have been shot down and killed yet.
I heard that each missile costs upward of $6 million. As in millions of tax dollars are being funneled to private corporations with every event.
Technically….
The whole F22 program has cost $100bn and only been used to shoot down balloons!
Couldn't the military just employ some older FLAK gun or something? I mean I know they don't exactly keep those on hand anymore, but it would seem perfectly suitable for the job without being nearly as costly. Especially if this ever became a regular thing.
Depends on the kind of flak gun, but you're probably right about the height being out of range there. i didn't realize they were floating the things over from that high up.
And yeah, likely safer to use missiles in that situation, especially since I'm not even sure how reliable those guns are at that kind of altitude.
It's actually a really curious military scenario too. Using reasonably old-school tech that probably outranges a lot of ground to air weapons, outranges drones, can be totally unmanned, and costs so little to produce and deploy.
As Ernsithe says, flak doesn't have the range. The bigger surface-to-air missiles like Patriots and S-300s probably do, though: that's what did in the other attempts at designing bombers and spyplanes that fly above the effective ceiling of the enemy's air defenses.
Aye. I did a quick search to verify the ranges and more or less confirmed what he said. Didn't check to see what specific G2A missiles would have the range, but given the numbers I saw, it seemed like it would've been specific to a certain class of ground to air missiles.
Being aware of some of these details now, I'm feeling like a lot of RTS games really screwed the pooch on how they usually balanced things. (IE, Red Alert. Poor MIGs)
They should have just used a big mirror + magnifying glass to pop the balloon
Yellow Peril