An interesting development tonight, might or might not be related to the spy balloon that was over Montana yesterday, and is now somewhere around Missouri, the last I read. A lady in Billings, Montana, heard a jet going by really fast, rushed outside with her cell phone and was able to take a video of some kind of an explosion in the sky. She immediately posted it on Twitter, and I old see that the news people (Fox, CNN, ABC, etc) were all asking her for permission to use the picture and video. At this point, no one knows (or is saying) what happened, but the military is checking in and there are also pictures of helicopters seen flying over the town of Billings, where the explosion took place. Possible aircraft collision , or did they shoot something down ? Here is the picture from the video. https://redstate.com/nick-arama/202...mt-where-chinese-spy-balloon-had-been-n698409
I was reading an article about this on the Foreign Policy website. -The DoD says “It is not the first time that you had a balloon of this nature cross over the continental United States. It has happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration.” -They've not caused a stir before because they have flown out-of-sight of civilians. -They are better than satellites because they are not stuck in a geosynchronous path...they have learning technology to use air currents to carry them to their destinations. They are not propelled, but they are not just drifting. --The carried equipment is the size of 3 buses. --They are cheap. --They are tough to take down. -They have caused recent diplomatic riffs, but that's only because the low-flying one put it on the public's radar screen. A recent key diplomatic trip to Bejing was postponed. -China is using the Area 51 defense: "It's a weather balloon." I would not be surprised if the U.S. government were buying surveillance data on U.S. citizens from China. I read that this technology has been proposed in some states/locales to "track bad guys."
In WWII the Japanese used balloons to attempt indiscriminate bombing of the US using natural air currents. Only a handful made landfall.
Good point. The weather balloon can see nothing not seen by existing Chinese satellites. Another point - this is a balloon, not a controlled aircraft. It goes where the wind blows it. But what the heck, let's start a nuclear war over this obvious Chinese aggression. Point three - we could shoot it down easily while it is over an uninhabited area but this regime wants to cause fear over the non-event. Either I'm getting smarter or the world is getting stupider.
... and if I remember correctly, those few landed in forests where they started a few limited fires - not an effective weapon of war.
I seriously doubt the Chinese will start a nuclear war. They want this country intact. They have our leaders peeing themselves over the threat of a nuclear war. What is the purpose of the ballon that followed a path over our main ABM silos? Maybe it is just a test to see if the USA has any grit left or if we are ready for a takeover now. The communist Chinese control our country now and all that is left is to get rid of guns so the patriots can be enslaved. Look at what has happened over the last 60 years with China taking over most of our production, buying land in the USA, infiltrating our schools with all kinds of radical thinking, breaking down families, causing a viral pandemic, controlling our necessary drug production, and now controlling our leaders that were elected only because the Chinese aided them in election fraud and creating civil unrest. This is what this balloon represents. It represents a message of mockery to the USA. What are you going to do, go duck and take refuge under your school desk because you are frightened of nuclear war or do you have the grit to take it down? The answer is clear, our leadership has no grit and are puppets of the Communist Chinese. It was an attack on democracy that some idiot sat in Pelosi's chair but a Communist spy balloon flying over our nation's nuclear defense system is nothing. I don't care if it is empty, shoot it down. The Chinese are not stupid and won't start a nuclear war and neither will the Russians. They continually mock us and we cower in fear and fight among ourselves. If the Chinese were going to nuke us, they would have done so long ago. They want the USA intact and so far they are taking it. Our current administration is giving it to them. .
What is the purpose of the ballon that followed a path over our main ABM silos? For the second time, high altitude balloons do not 'follow a path' other than the path where they are blown by the wind.They have no way of going in any other direction, with an exception which I will describe. If their random flight took them over a missile site it means nothing. There are lots of missile sights spotted throughout the midwest and other places. Now there is some small possible bit of control these devices may have. At different altitudes the winds may be going in different directions. By raising or lowering their altitude a balloon may be pushed by a windstream in a different direction than its original path but, as you can imagine, this is unreliable and nowhere near fully controlled flight. I'm seeing some speculation in the alt-media that this balloon is an low-yield nuclear EMP weapon. The pentagon says they're not measuring any radiation, plus, if it were the case that it's a weapon, there would be more than one. So I'm not buying the fear mongering. It's an off-course weather balloon. Occam's razor.
To me, in my my apparently over-simplistic view, this is political and military naïveté on a dangerous level. The bottom line is that we don’t KNOW what that thing is carrying. How about China (North Korea?) decided to put an EMP device on it, float it lazily across the middle of the country and watch us gawk and point fingers at it as they casually knock us back to the Stone Age. This country has gone just plain stupid.
You may be right. I'm not sure of anything here. Hopefully the craft will be taken down in some way and analyzed and we'll have definitive answers. I don't think they'll just let it continue on its merry way over the Atlantic.
The interesting thing is that the balloon wasn't following the wind currents. If you compare its path to the wind current during that time, they don't align with the path of the balloon. It should have gone northeast rather than southeast. It is also known that spy balloons are powered and can change course. This balloon has all the markings of a spy balloon. Weather balloons are launched all over the world twice a day to collect data. Meteorologists worldwide know where these balloons are and share information. It seems strange that this balloon doesn't resemble any weather balloon known. It is massive and capable of carrying a lot of weight in equipment that would be of no use to meteorologists. If they do take it down, we will never know the truth about it or what it contained.
Please post some links for your information. I'm especially interested in how a high altitude balloon with no engine, propellers or reaction motors can change course other than in the very limited way I've already described. By what means is it going against the wind? How does it differ in appearance from any other weather balloon? Throwing this stuff out there in you last post without specifics is just rumor mongering. Signed, Puzzled in Federalsburg This is just an observation, Faye, which I've made before and is not meant as a personal insult. I think you like to argue for the sake of argument. I have to leave for work now but when I come back I'll expand on the two types of weather balloons. Essentially there are throwaway one shot balloons and there are ones meant to be longer lived. Later, alligators.
I am going to overlook your personal accusation and opinion that I don't have the intelligence to make a post from my own thinking and just like to argue and rumor monger. I could cite numerous sources and supply charts of weather patterns during that time period and how they differed from the balloon course, but I don't see the point of citing sources and giving links. When the pentagon says it is a maneuverable surveillance gathering balloon of such size that it doesn't fit with any known "weather" balloon, and Blinken cancels his trip to China over national security concerns, then I would say that is enough evidence to warrant study on wind patterns and the course of this "strayed off course" so-called weather balloon. It was for me at least. I do have a good scientific mind and had rather put it to use than read links or others studies. I don't care to convince anyone of my finding and opinions, I am simply just sharing a synopsis of my personal research and good mind, howbeit female. Very few read long scientific articles and writing and such is a waste of time on a forum such as this and better posted on scientific sites. If you understand how weather balloons are launched to travel with wind currents, then the path of this balloon defies that path and shows it was intentionally launched from a site so it would travel somewhat with the currents from west to east and purposely over Montana where it tended to linger longer than what wind currents would allow it showing it had the ability to maneuver. After it was detected in Montana and made the news, it went southeast into those wind currents where it no longer is showing maneuverability. It is apparent to me that its guidance system was remotely turned off once it was maneuvered into the lower currents. The winds were blowing east northeast but somehow went southeast against the side current. Balloons without guidance don't do that. Then my study of wind current charts from that time to when it went southeast doesn't jive with a balloon that cannot be maneuvered. I had rather use my own mind than rely on cited sources and others studies. A forum full of links is not a discussion forum in my opinion.
I corrected myself in a subsequent post. This article claims that the balloons can rise & fall to plot a course through the wind currents to get to a specific destination. edit to add: I just noticed your comment on this:
Doesn't the wind move in different directions, depending on your altitude? Unlike a weather balloon, my understanding is that this has the ability to plot a course and rise/fall to catch a ride in whichever direction it chooses to travel.
According to what I have been reading, the Biden administration has known about this balloon for several days before it was reported over Montana. Because it was sighted by the public and reported in the news that it was over Billings, then the government had to acknowledge that it was there. It was over Idaho before that, but was not noticed and reported from there. The Pentagon has said that this balloon can be controlled, and it is not just aimlessly drifting, like China is trying to tell us, and it has managed to maneuver over most of our missile silos as it crosses the continent. Apparently, one of the government concerns is that it could be carrying some sort of a virus that is being dropped, or that it could have an EMP. The balloon is now drifting to a lower altitude and is being reported by more pilots than it was before also. The latest information seems to be that once it is across America and over the ocean, we will then take it down and see what it actually contains. By then, it will have already sent back to China whatever information it was sent here to retrieve. This article is from the UK Daily Mail.