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Russian invasion of Ukraine

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The baloon would be above ambient, in daylight.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

LeSving wrote:

Apparently the first “kill” ever with the F-22. It used a Sidewinder 9X. This missile is IR guided, and the balloon has nothing giving of excess heat.

Interesting. I suppose the F22 does not have guns? Sounds pretty expensive way of doing it, wasting a whole missile for something a carpet knife can kill.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

IR guided doesn’t mean it need a high radiation source of IR. It just need to be “different from noise”. Apparently the charge wasn’t activated on the sidewinder, it’s been used as an arrow to puncture the balloon.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Interesting. I suppose the F22 does not have guns? Sounds pretty expensive way of doing it, wasting a whole missile for something a carpet knife can kill.

It has guns, but minimum speed and manouverability of a f22 at FL640 is not great, and I thnk they wanted to get the devices in the best state to retro engineer it.

Last Edited by greg_mp at 06 Feb 14:55
LFMD, France

greg_mp wrote:

Apparently the charge wasn’t activated on the sidewinder, it’s been used as an arrow to puncture the balloon.

Clever!

greg_mp wrote:

It has guns, but minimum speed and manouverability of a f22 at FL640 is not great, and I thnk they wanted to get the devices in the best state to retro engineer it.

Ok, makes perfect sense.

I do wonder what they’ll find.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

I do wonder what they’ll find.

Weather balloon stuff I would think.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

Weather balloon stuff I would think.

Whatever that balloon was, it was no ordinary weather balloon. I’ve handled those and seen them and you can see the daily stuff these balloons produce. None of them is capable of flying that far, none of them has a payload of the size which was shown on various telelense pictures.

It is also interesting that the instrument package whatever it was did apparently not have a parashute but fell straight down. A package this size without a shute can cause massive problems if it comes down in the wrong place. That is why all meteorological packages are light weight, have styropor hulls and a shute.

Either it was a scientific instrument package or it was something very different. Also don’t forget that weather services are national entities. They usually do not collect data outside their own territorry or at least not on other continents. If you do something like this, it would have to be on a WMO mission. Which this thing most definitely was not.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 06 Feb 18:10
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

If you want to spy on a foreign country, floating a massive balloon overhead is a strange way to go about it, especially if you have literally hundreds of reconnaisance satellites in orbit. The only capability high-altitude loitering platforms have over satellites is that they can stay in a given area for a long time, which can give real-time information in a way satellites can’t. They will also see and hear with a bit more precision because they are at 20km high, but given that satellites have optical resolutions measured in centimetres these days (and more than 90% of the atmosphere is below 60,000ft) not sure that matters.

So there are really only two likely explanations – (1) the thing was genuinely off course (weaher balloon or spy balloon intended for a different purpose), or (2) China wanted to send a message.

Biggin Hill

So there are really only two likely explanations – (1) the thing was genuinely off course (weaher balloon or spy balloon intended for a different purpose), or (2) China wanted to send a message

There is some value in doing things using the very amateur way, take salisbury poisoning case, KGB wanted it with the strange way

Last Edited by Ibra at 06 Feb 20:05
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

That was a serious sensor array below that balloon. US News channels are talking of the lenght of 3 busses, whatever that means. So that is a much larger balloon than any weather balloon I’ve ever come across. And again, it is absolutely crazy to fly a payload like that without a parashute. If it had crashed over built up areas, it could kill people and do quite some damage to property.

A normal weather balloon payload is less than one pound and about 30×30×20 cm long.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Mooney_Driver wrote:

And again, it is absolutely crazy to fly a payload like that without a parashute. If it had crashed over built up areas, it could kill people and do quite some damage to property.

Given the mass, would a parachute really have made much difference? You would be crushed if to got on top of you even with zero vertical speed.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden
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