Re: Popping the balloon

After this I stop. It is useless. They do not have real close up detailed pictures of our Missle silos and such. There is no cameras that can read the time on a wrist watch from a sattelite From a ballon at 60000 ft. YES.
You normally would bring down a balloon that you are trying to save its cargo with three or four planes with small calibre ammo because it would take several passes to get enough holes to start the decent.

You can almost regulate the decent by number of holes. It certainly will not drift much with several tons hanging from it. You just want to slow enough so it does not splatter like an egg thrown from 3rd story to the street.

Finally they were not worried about international waters. The balloon had just broken every international law concerning the sovereignity of a country that exists. They would not even think twice about picking up in international waters. They would only worry about the continental shelf which in SC goes about 100 miles then you are in deep water. i'm out. Enjoyed the conversation. Do not think I accomplished a single thing, however.

Message was edited by: prefab®

tigerfan22334

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Feb 4, 2023, 10:06 PM

prefab® said:

After this I stop. It is useless. They do not have real close up detailed pictyes of our Missle silos and such. There is no cameras that can read the time on a wrist watch from a sattelite From a ballon at 60000 ft. YES.

Yes there are. You wildly underestimate (or more likely are ignorant to) the surveillance capabilities of sub-orbital satellites. Also they literally don't need to, our missile silo placement that can be identified from above ground imaging is already widely known. There's no new information for the intelligence agencies of other countries to gain there.

prefab® said:

You normally would bring down a balloon that you are trying to save its cargo with three or four planes with small calibre ammo because it would take several passes to get enough holes to start the decent.

You can almost regulate the decent by number of holes. It certainly will not drift much with several tons hanging from it. You just want to slow enough so it does not splatter like an egg thrown from 3rd story to the street.

There was an extremely limited window in which to bring the craft down without creating a domestic danger or further international issue. That is not accomplishable with your preferred method, which like every other part of this argument you pulled out of your ###.

prefab® said:

Finally they were not worried about international waters. The balloon had just broken every international law concerning the sovereignity of a country that exists. They would not even think twice about picking up in international waters. They would only worry about the continental shelf which in SC goes about 100 miles then you are in deep water.

They were absolutely worried about international waters. There's enormous diplomatic power in being able to say "despite China's best efforts we did not overreact and maintained compliance with international law". The fact that we shot this down proves we could at any time we wanted to. The fact that we waited until there was no risk of it injuring a single American citizen shows that we did not deem any threat worth even the most miniscule risk of a single American life. The fact that we did not allow it to reach international water lets us say we operated in accordance with recognized international law and only claimed ownership of items shot down in US airspace and landed within US waters when the Chinese continue to claim it was nothing more than a weather balloon. There's more to diplomacy than showing power the rest of the world already knows we possess.

prefab® said:

i'm out. Enjoyed the conversation. Do not think I accomplished a single thing, however.

You didn't. If you want to convince me you need to come with more than half-brained idiocy.

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Popping the balloon

Supposedly, it entered undetected.

It’s a giant floating

Re: Supposedly, it entered undetected.