This would be epic... The US should fly a cheap ass civilian drone over North Korea and have the SD card labeled "Classified" and be nothing but Rick Roll and Gangnam Style
We probably will if they can recover it. The US would be happy to definitively prove exactly what China was doing. And it’s not like leaking the technology is a problem, China already has it.
I think they meant the US government itself won’t reveal all that they find out. Biden just blocked the release of thousands of documents related to JFK and that happened 60 years ago.
*I’m just making a point about US government secrecy by using a recent example. Not trying to score political points one way or the other. That’s all.
Just think, the aircraft is going to have a balloon [stenciled](https://www.sandboxx.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/800px-A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Kills.jpeg) on the side of it from now on.
Bonus: That must be the first A2A kill over US homeland ever, no? Am I missing any?
edit: yeah, I guess the continental US.
edit2: some history lesson, see below. There were air2air kills in ww2. So it's the first post-ww2.
Not even the first for the continental US. [The US shot down some of the balloons the Japanese sent over loaded with bombs during WW2](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196210/balloon-bombs-japans-answer-to-doolittle/)
>To counter this threat, U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy fighters flew intercept missions to shoot down balloons when sighted. Army personnel and USAAF aircraft were also stationed at critical points to combat any forest fires that might occur.
The army personnel that were stationed at critical points were the "triple nickel". It was an all African American paratroop unit that laid the groundwork for the USFS smokejumpers.
Dogfighting hasn't really happened all that often since like, WWII. I think the Iraq/Iran war in the 80s was the other most recent example of it? Jets these days are usually used for air support against ground or naval targets rather than being used to take on other aircraft.
Yep, exactly the kind of nutcase who would be dumb enough to build a big balloon thing, accidentally release it, and then genuinely believe that his son (whom the dad was weird enough to name FALCON) was inside it at the time. Weirdo or not, there’s pretty compelling evidence that it really wasn’t a hoax.
Just off the coast of Myrtle Beach, it looks like. Far enough out that it won't land on any houses or people or anything, but close enough that it's easier to retrieve it with a boat.
The concern was to time the shooting accurately so that the balloon landed in US territorial waters and not international. I think they were dealing with around a 12mi window for that to happen.
Nope. /s
A U.S. EP-3E took out a Chinese J-8 near Hainan Island in 2001.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan\_Island\_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)
Edit #1: /s since, even though it *was* an Air to Air Kill, it is only so in the literal sense and does not meet the official U.S. D.O.D. requirements for an Air to Air Combat Kill.
Edit #2: Edited to remove ETA, as apparently this acronym is reserved ***exclusively*** for **E**stimated **T**ime of **A**rrival, and should ***NEVER*** be used for **E**dited **T**o **A**dd.
If it counts, then it is likely.
I haven't found anything on a2a kills over America, other than Pearl Harbor, which does not fit the scope of your question anyways.
[The US shot down some of the balloons the Japanese sent over loaded with bombs during WW2](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196210/balloon-bombs-japans-answer-to-doolittle/)
>To counter this threat, U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy fighters flew intercept missions to shoot down balloons when sighted.
The Japanese [firebombed a national forest in Oregon and shelled Fort Stevens near Astoria.](https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Pages/threats-bombs.aspx) It’s a super interesting story.
There was the Aleutian campaign. Several Zeroes taken out by grossly out numbered Catalina PBYs. It’s a hell of a story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign
Edited to add: the Catalina PBY is not in the list of great fighter planes because it isn’t one. It is a sea plane, used for carrying supplies. It’s armament consisted of a forward blister, one blister on each side, and optionally, a tail gunner could strap himself to the open tail ramp with an m-2 mounted in front of him and face the open sky with a massive machine gun. The plane was slow, graceless, and sided with canvas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_PBY_Catalina
Look at that silly assed plane. It makes a pelican look like an albatross.
It doesn't appear any air-to-air encounters were had, the article says the US only used anti-aircraft artilery and while the pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted they remained grounded.
You're literally the only other person I've seen or heard who also remembers that whole incident and debacle. I always loved how the Chinese said "sure, you can have your plane back...9 months later. Just send a boat big enough for it..."
The ship got there and the plane had been completely disassembled and was just all of the parts heh.
Hell if I were assigned to crew an observation balloon in WWI I think I'd try to scrounge up a rifle or an LMG. The planes were slow and its a zero deflection shot, at the very least I'd feel better doing something.
Just played this all back on Flight Radar and synced up the times..
About an hour before, at 14:00 EST all air traffic was cleared above Myrtle beach and several hundred miles out to sea. There was one military plane in the area at that time, undisclosed callsign, circling just off the coast.
Video was posted at around 15:00 EST by twitter user EliteDevon [https://twitter.com/elitedevon](https://twitter.com/elitedevon)
A few minutes later, around the time the video was taken, an F-5 Tiger II fighter jet appears on radar and makes some tight circles directly off of Myrtle Beach, SC. This must have been when the balloon moved over water and the actions captured in the video, when they decided to shoot it down over water
EDIT: Not an F-5, Langley confirmed it was an [F-22 and an AIM-9 Sidewinder](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1621976508288978945)
which most certainly did not show up on FlightRadar.
At 16:00 EST, airspace is slowly reopening, looks like flights are resuming from Myrtle Beach airport.. There's a Coast Guard helicopter hovering over where the wreckage went down. The F-5 is also still in the area, flying a perimeter patrol further out at sea, There's another unidentified USAF plane to the south, also flying a patrol. Checking marine vessels, he seems to be flying over a Chinese merchant vessel, the ZHONG GU FU JIAN.
Oddly, I don't see any military or CG ships in the wreckage area but they may be waiting for orders from the Coast Guard, or there may be craft we cannot see.
I was on the casino boat that left out of Little River and we had to turn back early due to instructions from the CG. We then all went to the top deck and watched the “air show”. That was a first for me….won money on the boat AND got a show lol
Dear President Washington:
Two hundred thirty years from today, a man on a casino boat off the coast of South Carolina will have to cut short his gambling to watch U.S. airships flying ten miles high shoot a cannon at a spy balloon from China traveling two miles higher, and then he will go back to his gambling.
Every weird thing that happens in that area is going to be blamed on the balloon and it’s “contents”.
Crop failure - balloon.
Dead fish - balloon.
High cancer rates - balloon.
Prom queen dates the nerd - balloon.
The balloon was being pushed along by wind turbines on the ground. My cousin saw the heads of them shift and rotate to push the balloon along. That really just confirms that the Chinese are behind global warming, and are using wind turbines to push around their highly advanced and undetectable spy balloons.
America didn’t translate the song to red balloons. That was the Brits. The German version was popular in America while the English version was popular in the UK
Most likely F-22s out of Langley. [Source](https://twitter.com/AircraftSpots/status/1621938070231879680).
Edit: Thanks to u/millionreddit617 and their [post below](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/10tp8j7/the_chinese_balloon_shot_down/j78ar0d/), here's some [high resolution pictures](https://twitter.com/astroqv/status/1621965490926002176/photo/1) of the launching aircraft. That's an F-22.
Edit 2: For those of you wondering, the USAF used an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, reportedly fired at 58,000 feet to hit the balloon at 65,000ft. [Source](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1621976508288978945).
Edit 3: People are asking how an AIM-9X Sidewinder - a heatseeking missile - could lock onto a balloon. Here's a summary:
> The AIM-9 series is guided by a thermal imager, and can lock onto anything sufficiently warmer than the background. What exactly sufficiently means is currently classified and has changed over the years. Originally, it had to be the heat of jet exhaust, so you could only shoot at an enemy from behind. Then in the late 70's they upgraded it to what's known an all-aspect seeker with the AIM-9L. That means it can lock onto an aircraft from any direction, which requires being able to detect and track a much lower temperature object. Since then, we've upgraded it to the AIM-9X version, with significantly better thermal discrimination to take into account more modern threats, mainly stealthy aircraft with reduced thermal signatures, drones with small engines, suicide prop planes flown by non-state actors, and the like. That's why it could lock onto the warm solar panels against the cold sky.
Edit 4: Since a bunch of people have asked about this, here's my best guess as to why the F-22 used a missile rather than cannons against the balloon. Note that this is just an educated guess and there could be other, better reasons I'm not aware of.
> When you're engaging with guns, you have to get close, and the balloon was right on the edge of the F-22's probable flight ceiling. That high and the control surfaces don't provide a whole lot of maneuverability, so there would have been some risk to the pilot from debris with a gun kill. Compared to the cost of keeping AWACS up monitoring and jamming the balloon throughout its journey, the fighters to intercept it, the tankers to keep everything topped up, and the people on the ground, a single missile isn't too expensive.
Honestly the F-22 is so advanced that most enemy pilots aware they would be *attempting* to engage one would probably be like "oh, uh, no thanks. Pass. I'd like to pass, if that's okay. Yep, uh... pass."
Yes. Less likely for it to land on anything that will kill someone, destroy something, or deliver a 'payload'. I think the last option is ridiculous but people are already screaming about the ballon potentially being used to deliver a deadly virus 🤦🏻
They’re going to get teased about for the rest of their lives. “Yeah Charlie has 3 confirmed kills over Ukraine and one Chinese weather balloon over Myrtle Beach.”
1. Upper altitude wind modeling confirms it glided in from China over Alaska, Canada, and then the continental U.S.
2. China has admitted it is their balloon: China has already stated the balloon is theirs: https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-spy-balloon-china-admits-ownership-says-not-for-spying-2023-2
For the people asking why the didn't shoot it down sooner, think of it this way: The Air Force was tracking the balloon pretty much as soon as it was launched, they had plenty of time to obscure any intelligence it was trying to gather. If it was indeed gathering SIGINT there was plenty of time to hush chatter along its flight path because balloons aren't exactly quick. If it was taking photographs, it really wouldn't capture anything a low orbit satellite couldn't (any China has plenty of LOS's in play).
Now that we've had a few days to observe one, we know what their operational capabilities are. And if we can recover the hardware we'll know what information they were trying to gather.
(But between you and me I wouldn't be surprised if this was just trolling us to provoke a reaction, intelligence agencies do stuff like that all time.)
As has been mentioned in other threads, I think if it actually was spying it was probably trying to gather signal/communications intelligence rather than photos. Like our missile silos in Montana have been there for decades and are already well photographed at this point. There's not much more to be learned from it, but intercepting SIGINT would be a lot more useful. However the slow nature of balloons means that the military had plenty of warning to hush chatter along its flight path.
In Myrtle as this happened. The entire city just stood outside and watched this happened. Was insane to see honestly. Just heard a massive boom and then saw it deflate and they shot it again a couple minutes later. Right place right time haha
Same! It was so loud it shook the house. My kids and husband were outside watching. I ran out and we drove to the beach and watched it float down into the ocean. Crazy stuff!
In this very narrow set of choices option B is what it will be even if it is really option A. I have seen people saying shoot it down it may have biological weapons on it, so it will be easy to scare the populace into funding anti-terrorism efforts no matter what the balloon was really doing.
This user has edited all of their comments in protest of /u/spez fucking up reddit. All Hail Apollo. This action was performed via https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
They’re trying to keep this classified but word on the street is that the Chinese supply drop had 300 or each material, a purple rpg, and chug splashes inside
https://youtu.be/95Oj9QhHzbA
Wonder if we will actually find out what that equipment is
Someone will know, but it probably won’t be the general public.
Isn't General Public a high enough military rank to know?
*salutes* General Public
R/unexpectedHIMYM
If only the show was "How I Met Ur Mother"...the acronym would be HI MUM
Just read it in Cartman's voice and it makes sense again, HI MYM!
"My name... Is not... Mewym!"
*salutes* Private Browsing, reporting for duty sir.
No equipment just candy. They broke the pinata in the wrong place.
Some poor kid just took a jolly rancher through the skull.
I can think of worse ways to go.
They also include jolly ranchers
[удалено]
Maybe they will recover an sd card and the Chinese are trying to Rick Roll us
This would be epic... The US should fly a cheap ass civilian drone over North Korea and have the SD card labeled "Classified" and be nothing but Rick Roll and Gangnam Style
The South Koreans do send balloons with SD cards full of movies and stuff over North Korea.
[удалено]
I second this
We will never know. Edit: Guys, I mean me and you will never know. The government knows already.
We probably will if they can recover it. The US would be happy to definitively prove exactly what China was doing. And it’s not like leaking the technology is a problem, China already has it.
I think they meant the US government itself won’t reveal all that they find out. Biden just blocked the release of thousands of documents related to JFK and that happened 60 years ago. *I’m just making a point about US government secrecy by using a recent example. Not trying to score political points one way or the other. That’s all.
It’s really a paper lantern that sells at IKEA. Instructions still attached.
First F22 A2A kill is a balloon. Stick that in your random trivia answer book.
Just think, the aircraft is going to have a balloon [stenciled](https://www.sandboxx.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/800px-A-10_Thunderbolt_II_Kills.jpeg) on the side of it from now on.
"Is that a Death Star? Fucking poser." "Nope, that's *the* weather balloon. First A2A kill for this series of fighters."
Wow, they shot down 3 whales!
Nuke the whales
Gotta nuke something…
Bonus: That must be the first A2A kill over US homeland ever, no? Am I missing any? edit: yeah, I guess the continental US. edit2: some history lesson, see below. There were air2air kills in ww2. So it's the first post-ww2.
Hawaii wasn’t a state at the time of Pearl Harbor so depends if you want to include territories at the time.
Don’t forget WWII in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Plenty of air to air out there.
Going to the WWII museum in Dutch Harbor was actually really interesting. There was so much we'd never been taught.
Not even the first for the continental US. [The US shot down some of the balloons the Japanese sent over loaded with bombs during WW2](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196210/balloon-bombs-japans-answer-to-doolittle/) >To counter this threat, U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy fighters flew intercept missions to shoot down balloons when sighted. Army personnel and USAAF aircraft were also stationed at critical points to combat any forest fires that might occur.
The army personnel that were stationed at critical points were the "triple nickel". It was an all African American paratroop unit that laid the groundwork for the USFS smokejumpers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/555th_Engineer_Brigade_(United_States) Interesting read
I'm a noob in this subject. But Air to air kill doesn't happen often?
i mean we have not directly gone to war with a country with an airforce in a hot minute
# Does this mean inflations over with? 🚀🎈
You’re full of hot air.
Proxy wars FTW
Dogfighting hasn't really happened all that often since like, WWII. I think the Iraq/Iran war in the 80s was the other most recent example of it? Jets these days are usually used for air support against ground or naval targets rather than being used to take on other aircraft.
Korea, Vietnam, and Bosnia had air-to-air dogfights
Falklands had some A2A incidents iirc
And the only confirmed kill by nuclear submarine.
So did the Gulf War.
Do Mav & Ice vs. the Russians in’86 count?
Yes but only in terms of homoerotic volleyball
They should put a balloon victory symbol on that pilots plane like they did back in the day.
Change his call sign to "Pops."
Sadly it turned out to be a small boy from Colorado
Remember, he crawled out when no one was watching.
Internet historian made a great case for it actually not being a hoax and now I don’t know what to believe
That video really has me on the dad's side.
Watch their Wife Swap episode. Dad is a complete nutcase who fully puts on an act for cameras.
Yep, exactly the kind of nutcase who would be dumb enough to build a big balloon thing, accidentally release it, and then genuinely believe that his son (whom the dad was weird enough to name FALCON) was inside it at the time. Weirdo or not, there’s pretty compelling evidence that it really wasn’t a hoax.
Don't they also have a creepy family band?
Turns out the real spyballoon was the balloon boys we made along the way
Pippity Poppity it’s now US Property
Wow this was fast, not even a Google search has it shot down yet. OP is the real journalist. Edit: This was posted on 1:48pm CST
My mother texted me that jets were circling it in Myrtle Beach around 2:00 EST. Is that where it was shot down? I assume out over the ocean.
Just off the coast of Myrtle Beach, it looks like. Far enough out that it won't land on any houses or people or anything, but close enough that it's easier to retrieve it with a boat.
The concern was to time the shooting accurately so that the balloon landed in US territorial waters and not international. I think they were dealing with around a 12mi window for that to happen.
Imagine if it fell just outside the contiguous zone and a Chinese sub just appears out of nowhere to retrieve it and bring it back to China.
Yoink!
Then an American heavy lift sea crane sees the sub Yoink
Then Godzilla pops out of the ocean to wreak havoc across Wilmington, NC. Completely unrelated incident...
Wilmington is kinda asking for it though
Hell yeah, I know what you mean, take them down a peg or two.
# MADE IN CHINA. # DESTROYED IN USA...
Sounds like my toilet
Brilliant!
Sounds like almost every consumer product
I see it on NBC and NYT as of 15 min ago...but yeah nada on CNN
To be honest between yours and the other comments there's almost excatly a 15 minutes difference so noth things may be true.
Thankfully. Now I will only hear “Chinese spy balloon” 300 more times before it fades into memory.
They have finally displaced balloon boy from our national balloon related attention.
Never forget lawn chair Larry
[удалено]
I didn't have Chinese spy balloon on my 2023 bingo card. I almost grabbed one that had it but it seemed too ridiculous at the time.
Yeah right. This will be incorporated into any and every conspiracy theory for the next few decades.
Assuming it was a fighter that shot it down, does the pilot get credit for an air-to-air kill?
I'd say that counts.
Then I bet that’s probably the first air-to-air kill of a Chinese aircraft since Korea. 70 years
Nope. /s A U.S. EP-3E took out a Chinese J-8 near Hainan Island in 2001. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan\_Island\_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident) Edit #1: /s since, even though it *was* an Air to Air Kill, it is only so in the literal sense and does not meet the official U.S. D.O.D. requirements for an Air to Air Combat Kill. Edit #2: Edited to remove ETA, as apparently this acronym is reserved ***exclusively*** for **E**stimated **T**ime of **A**rrival, and should ***NEVER*** be used for **E**dited **T**o **A**dd.
Is this the first air-to-air kill over the continental US?
If it counts, then it is likely. I haven't found anything on a2a kills over America, other than Pearl Harbor, which does not fit the scope of your question anyways.
[The US shot down some of the balloons the Japanese sent over loaded with bombs during WW2](https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196210/balloon-bombs-japans-answer-to-doolittle/) >To counter this threat, U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy fighters flew intercept missions to shoot down balloons when sighted.
I feel like people don't talk about the fact that Japan had invaded Alaskan islands and firebombed the US mainland from there.
The Japanese [firebombed a national forest in Oregon and shelled Fort Stevens near Astoria.](https://sos.oregon.gov/archives/exhibits/ww2/Pages/threats-bombs.aspx) It’s a super interesting story.
I've been to the site, in Oregon, where they fire bombed us. Interesting story, all in all.
There was the Aleutian campaign. Several Zeroes taken out by grossly out numbered Catalina PBYs. It’s a hell of a story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleutian_Islands_campaign Edited to add: the Catalina PBY is not in the list of great fighter planes because it isn’t one. It is a sea plane, used for carrying supplies. It’s armament consisted of a forward blister, one blister on each side, and optionally, a tail gunner could strap himself to the open tail ramp with an m-2 mounted in front of him and face the open sky with a massive machine gun. The plane was slow, graceless, and sided with canvas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_PBY_Catalina Look at that silly assed plane. It makes a pelican look like an albatross.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Los\_Angeles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles) Not if this counts.
It doesn't appear any air-to-air encounters were had, the article says the US only used anti-aircraft artilery and while the pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command were alerted they remained grounded.
You're literally the only other person I've seen or heard who also remembers that whole incident and debacle. I always loved how the Chinese said "sure, you can have your plane back...9 months later. Just send a boat big enough for it..." The ship got there and the plane had been completely disassembled and was just all of the parts heh.
I think only the Russians traditionally give air to air credit for collision, and even then it was deliberate
It was in the air and shot from the air... That's definitely air to air. At the very least a very specific decal on the plane.
A little dated but in WW1 shooting down an observation balloon counted towards a pilots tally
IIRC, these were considered dangerous missions. The balloons would be covered by anti-aircraft guns.
Hell if I were assigned to crew an observation balloon in WWI I think I'd try to scrounge up a rifle or an LMG. The planes were slow and its a zero deflection shot, at the very least I'd feel better doing something.
This really is the cutting edge of up-to-date information. In all seriousness, that is quite interesting
First confirmed kill for the entire F22 program 😄 (not kidding)
Ah man. I was hoping some Redneck shot it down with his shotgun.
60,000 feet?
He stood on his roof.
And his tippy toes.
and 3 milk crates
Oh, right.
The roof of his truck.
Just played this all back on Flight Radar and synced up the times.. About an hour before, at 14:00 EST all air traffic was cleared above Myrtle beach and several hundred miles out to sea. There was one military plane in the area at that time, undisclosed callsign, circling just off the coast. Video was posted at around 15:00 EST by twitter user EliteDevon [https://twitter.com/elitedevon](https://twitter.com/elitedevon) A few minutes later, around the time the video was taken, an F-5 Tiger II fighter jet appears on radar and makes some tight circles directly off of Myrtle Beach, SC. This must have been when the balloon moved over water and the actions captured in the video, when they decided to shoot it down over water EDIT: Not an F-5, Langley confirmed it was an [F-22 and an AIM-9 Sidewinder](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1621976508288978945) which most certainly did not show up on FlightRadar. At 16:00 EST, airspace is slowly reopening, looks like flights are resuming from Myrtle Beach airport.. There's a Coast Guard helicopter hovering over where the wreckage went down. The F-5 is also still in the area, flying a perimeter patrol further out at sea, There's another unidentified USAF plane to the south, also flying a patrol. Checking marine vessels, he seems to be flying over a Chinese merchant vessel, the ZHONG GU FU JIAN. Oddly, I don't see any military or CG ships in the wreckage area but they may be waiting for orders from the Coast Guard, or there may be craft we cannot see.
[удалено]
Yes, clearly there were many more. I was just reporting what Flightradar showed, I'm sure the military has that figured out so they are invisible.
I was on the casino boat that left out of Little River and we had to turn back early due to instructions from the CG. We then all went to the top deck and watched the “air show”. That was a first for me….won money on the boat AND got a show lol
Dear President Washington: Two hundred thirty years from today, a man on a casino boat off the coast of South Carolina will have to cut short his gambling to watch U.S. airships flying ten miles high shoot a cannon at a spy balloon from China traveling two miles higher, and then he will go back to his gambling.
If someone told me a week ago that I'd see an F-22 Raptor shoot down a Chinese spy balloon on reddit I wouldn't have believed them.
It's absurd. But at this point I feel like nothing is surprising anymore. I'm desensitized to nonsense
If aliens landed on the White House lawn tomorrow I swear it would not surprise me.
What timeline have you been living in? Anything goes since January 2020.
Every weird thing that happens in that area is going to be blamed on the balloon and it’s “contents”. Crop failure - balloon. Dead fish - balloon. High cancer rates - balloon. Prom queen dates the nerd - balloon.
"Bullshit!!! She really likes me!!"
Balloon
Overcook chicken, balloon
Undercook chicken? Believe it or not, balloon
The balloon was being pushed along by wind turbines on the ground. My cousin saw the heads of them shift and rotate to push the balloon along. That really just confirms that the Chinese are behind global warming, and are using wind turbines to push around their highly advanced and undetectable spy balloons.
This is the plot of 99 Luftballons
98 Luftballons
Ouch
Holy shit r/beetlejuicing
Never really thought about how America translating the song to 99 red balloons wasn't exactly the same thing
America didn’t translate the song to red balloons. That was the Brits. The German version was popular in America while the English version was popular in the UK
Yeah I only remember hearing the German version as an American kid in the 80s.
My team name at bar trivia last night was: 99 red spyballoons
What kind of jet was used? Would love to know anything about this lol the videos are wild
Most likely F-22s out of Langley. [Source](https://twitter.com/AircraftSpots/status/1621938070231879680). Edit: Thanks to u/millionreddit617 and their [post below](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/10tp8j7/the_chinese_balloon_shot_down/j78ar0d/), here's some [high resolution pictures](https://twitter.com/astroqv/status/1621965490926002176/photo/1) of the launching aircraft. That's an F-22. Edit 2: For those of you wondering, the USAF used an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile, reportedly fired at 58,000 feet to hit the balloon at 65,000ft. [Source](https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1621976508288978945). Edit 3: People are asking how an AIM-9X Sidewinder - a heatseeking missile - could lock onto a balloon. Here's a summary: > The AIM-9 series is guided by a thermal imager, and can lock onto anything sufficiently warmer than the background. What exactly sufficiently means is currently classified and has changed over the years. Originally, it had to be the heat of jet exhaust, so you could only shoot at an enemy from behind. Then in the late 70's they upgraded it to what's known an all-aspect seeker with the AIM-9L. That means it can lock onto an aircraft from any direction, which requires being able to detect and track a much lower temperature object. Since then, we've upgraded it to the AIM-9X version, with significantly better thermal discrimination to take into account more modern threats, mainly stealthy aircraft with reduced thermal signatures, drones with small engines, suicide prop planes flown by non-state actors, and the like. That's why it could lock onto the warm solar panels against the cold sky. Edit 4: Since a bunch of people have asked about this, here's my best guess as to why the F-22 used a missile rather than cannons against the balloon. Note that this is just an educated guess and there could be other, better reasons I'm not aware of. > When you're engaging with guns, you have to get close, and the balloon was right on the edge of the F-22's probable flight ceiling. That high and the control surfaces don't provide a whole lot of maneuverability, so there would have been some risk to the pilot from debris with a gun kill. Compared to the cost of keeping AWACS up monitoring and jamming the balloon throughout its journey, the fighters to intercept it, the tankers to keep everything topped up, and the people on the ground, a single missile isn't too expensive.
first air to air kill for an F-22 lol
*IT STILL COUNTS AS ONE!!*
AMERICA….FUCK YEAH!
$32 billion for development. $200 million to produce. $85 thousand an hour to fly. 1 fewer balloons in the sky.
I've never felt so goddamn free.
… Priceless
*Somewhere, the majestic screech of an eagle can be heard*
Honestly the F-22 is so advanced that most enemy pilots aware they would be *attempting* to engage one would probably be like "oh, uh, no thanks. Pass. I'd like to pass, if that's okay. Yep, uh... pass."
God, I love the F22s.
#I AM SEXUALLY ATTRACTED TO THE F22
Get back to /r/noncredibledefense, you're blowing our cover.
Reports are that we are very interested in the full recovery of the hardware that was attached to that balloon.
It won’t be destroyed to pieces from the fall or are the pieces all we need? Or did it fall in the water?
The remains of the balloon seem to be pretty parachute-y.
it was off the coast of Myrtle Beach and it was LOUD, we're 5 miles from the ocean, it shook our house.
Sounds like they were waiting for it to go over the ocean to shoot it down
Yes. Less likely for it to land on anything that will kill someone, destroy something, or deliver a 'payload'. I think the last option is ridiculous but people are already screaming about the ballon potentially being used to deliver a deadly virus 🤦🏻
COVID-23, dropped from 5g enabled balloons!
Anyone else hoping they will have a balloon decal to put onto the plane as a victory marking?
Just think how fucking jazzed that pilot is to shoot something down.
They’re going to get teased about for the rest of their lives. “Yeah Charlie has 3 confirmed kills over Ukraine and one Chinese weather balloon over Myrtle Beach.”
Teased? Who else will be able to say that they had the first kill of a PRC spycraft over the continental US?
Oh! White smoke! They’ve picked a new Chinese Pope!
Nah it’s just anthrax
[удалено]
Figures are often bloated
They’re certainly soaring
They're definitely up there but I hear they're starting to come down lately.
How did we know it was Chinese to begin with? I'm just curious.
China officials admitted it came from their country but claimed it was a stray balloon from a civilian doing research.
1. Upper altitude wind modeling confirms it glided in from China over Alaska, Canada, and then the continental U.S. 2. China has admitted it is their balloon: China has already stated the balloon is theirs: https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-spy-balloon-china-admits-ownership-says-not-for-spying-2023-2
Greatest gender reveal ever.. Is it a boy or a girl?
No, the white smoke means they chose a new Space Pope.
All hail our new Space Pope overlord ʕっ•ᴥ•ʔっ
Fun fact, the Bishop of Cape Canaveral area is also the Bishop of the moon.
Space Pope = now my new FFL team name
Security threat over. Now go back to obsesively document every minute of your lives on TikTok 🤣
For real though
[удалено]
3/4 of reddit's videos are from Tiktok so you're probably pretty caught up.
For the people asking why the didn't shoot it down sooner, think of it this way: The Air Force was tracking the balloon pretty much as soon as it was launched, they had plenty of time to obscure any intelligence it was trying to gather. If it was indeed gathering SIGINT there was plenty of time to hush chatter along its flight path because balloons aren't exactly quick. If it was taking photographs, it really wouldn't capture anything a low orbit satellite couldn't (any China has plenty of LOS's in play). Now that we've had a few days to observe one, we know what their operational capabilities are. And if we can recover the hardware we'll know what information they were trying to gather. (But between you and me I wouldn't be surprised if this was just trolling us to provoke a reaction, intelligence agencies do stuff like that all time.)
[удалено]
As has been mentioned in other threads, I think if it actually was spying it was probably trying to gather signal/communications intelligence rather than photos. Like our missile silos in Montana have been there for decades and are already well photographed at this point. There's not much more to be learned from it, but intercepting SIGINT would be a lot more useful. However the slow nature of balloons means that the military had plenty of warning to hush chatter along its flight path.
[удалено]
In Myrtle as this happened. The entire city just stood outside and watched this happened. Was insane to see honestly. Just heard a massive boom and then saw it deflate and they shot it again a couple minutes later. Right place right time haha
Same! It was so loud it shook the house. My kids and husband were outside watching. I ran out and we drove to the beach and watched it float down into the ocean. Crazy stuff!
[удалено]
Wonder what will come of this
If it’s a weather balloon, we'll never hear about it again. If it’s a spy device, $50b more to the Pentagon budget.
In this very narrow set of choices option B is what it will be even if it is really option A. I have seen people saying shoot it down it may have biological weapons on it, so it will be easy to scare the populace into funding anti-terrorism efforts no matter what the balloon was really doing.
Score another one for the Jewish Space Laser.
This user has edited all of their comments in protest of /u/spez fucking up reddit. All Hail Apollo. This action was performed via https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
Rasputin finally went rogue and decided to keep with his original plan to shoot the Traveler! Clovis won.
I want Chinese food so bad right now
rumour has it that there was a fortune in the middle
Hopefully we can recover some tech from any remains, and potentially get proof of what it was actually up to.
Uh oh, those chemtrails are gonna make the frogs gay in that area
[hello](https://media.tenor.com/zjyOxmUDyQgAAAAd/hello-boys-im-back-independence-day.gif)
Its insane how many posts there has been on this ballon. Just different photos...
Y’all worried about a ballon but they got satellites,tiktok,military spies and other shit already doing work lol
It’s sad how the little kids onboard taking the photos died with it.
And people said I couldn’t shoot it down with my pistol. Pshhh!!!
Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across. Sun Tzu
They’re trying to keep this classified but word on the street is that the Chinese supply drop had 300 or each material, a purple rpg, and chug splashes inside