Ok - what are these flying objects the US keeps shooting down

[fissty]

First the ballon

Then a mysterious object the size of a car

now another BBC alert they are tracking another “ufo” across Canada…..

Chinese?

Aliens?

Could you quote exactly what it was he said?

Now I've thought of it I can't get the idea of giant Chinese Sky Lanterns out of my head.

USA has something similar in the balloon arena.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest

For info for many years the US had at least one tethered highish altitude balloon down way south in the States set up to provide against drug smugglers trying to get product into the States by aircraft at low level.

It wasn't a particularly covert operation though, the balloon location and other details were promulgated in publicly available aviation navigation warnings.

This article says it has been a massive failure of US intelligence being probed with adversary drones. www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos

@MallowPink

twitter.com/gbnews/status/1625098584763899904?s=46&t=zi006x_yJwV2QcMm7TjXIg

I think it's this interview which is being referred to.

Would recommend the latest episode of the Sinica podcast, very measured discussion of what the balloon was, why it caused the diplomatic furore that it did and why it happened now.

Have just speed read that article and it asserts that China/Russia have pulled off the biggest failure of intelligence ever using low cost low tech configurations of drones and balloons to identify the vulnerabilities of a wide range of military hardware and this has been going on for years under the radar so to speak. The UFO stuff has provided useful cover to have remained undetected for so long. In the Pentagon they must be going mental if true as to the size of their blindspot.

Thanks @covetingthepreciousthings - it sounds much less alarming in context!

Thank you for finding that..

Sounds like the standard description of the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) force which has been in place in the UK (and there is similar in many other countries ) continuously, 24/7, rain, shine or snow for many many decades now......

No signs in what the PM said there that the balloons have changed anything.

If it was extra terrestrial, I'm not sure how I'd feel. Partly excited, partly terrified.
We all laugh - but it's entirely possible we aren't the only life form that exists.

I’d be worried on behalf of any aliens visiting our planet. We’re a dumb and aggressIve species and they should probably stay away from us for their own safety.

Or perhaps we’re unknowingly part of an interactive pan-galactic reality show. Who knows?

If they’ve any sense at all they’ll turn round and go home.

Whilst I would have fear to some degree if this was found to be extra terrestrial in nature I would really want to know.

Pretty sure alien craft don’t have bits of string dangling from them, sounds more like the good old US of A has brought out the big kite guns.

I'll be very surprised if it turns out to be aliens rather than the Chinese. The fact that we're all debating about ETs rather than how China has likely been violating allied airspaces for ages is probably exactly what the US wants. And it's a nice distraction from the massive toxic cloud raining down on Ohio and its environs

I really don’t think it’s aliens 👽

Agree with other Ps that it’s most likely to be Chinese spyware.

If it is a major breach of western defences then publicly this will be quietly 'forgotten' whilst furiously analysing the scale and threat of the breach behind the scenes. It is a case of you don't know what your adversary knows and in the worse case scenario you must assume they know everything. Its as if you had a bug in your house for say 5 years with a neighbour who you had a bitter dispute with. If you find the bug then you are left thinking what do they know,what did I say. Someone has been asleep at the wheel.

Massive story with major ramifications.

Interesting though I'm not sure I buy that the idea that this was simply done to look into the ICBM silos - funnily enough they actually mostly remain closed up by default and certainly (and TBF as he says the video) the minute there was any chance of anybody/anything sneaking a peak inside the lid will be shut if open and any emissions will be wound down. I'd still speculate it was more a generic attempt at grabbing something/anything of intelligence value (including most especially the specific radar int mentioned earlier), but who knows?

No idea about his views on Chinese domestic policy, if what he says is true it is disturbing.

The Nimitz 'tic tac' UFO that could outpace any American fighter was several generations more advanced than anything the USA has in scientific and engineering understanding. It was suggested in the media it was a Chinese drone and that China was generations ahead.

But now the US is shooting these things down and they are 'Chinese spy balloons'.

So what is it? Have China advanced military aerospace weapons generations ahead of the rest of the World, or are they floating spy balloons?

Bear in mind that China and all the other big players in tech have satellites that can see what side of a coin comes up when you flip it. They don't need balloons.

Bear in mind that China and all the other big players in tech have satellites that can see what side of a coin comes up when you flip it. They don't need balloons.

Satellites aren't really up to some intelligence gathering applications or gathering some specific types of information. That's one of the reasons why even many nations with a satellite capability such as the US still carry on using fixed wing aircraft to fly around gathering intelligence related information....balloons are a bit niche to say the least but they may still have their uses.

Fundamentally there really is much much more to all of this than simply taking snap shots/images/pictures...

It was suggested in the media it was a Chinese drone and that China was generations ahead.

There was loads of speculation about those UFOs. I don't think the suggestion that they were possibly Chinese got any more traction than any other possible explanation.

I want 2020 back, the way this shit is heading.

If what we were told about them was true, then they were way beyond human technology. That doesn't leave a lot of options as to who built them.