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posted by takyon on Saturday February 04 2023, @10:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the pop! dept.

China balloon: US shoots down airship over Atlantic

The US has shot down a giant Chinese balloon that it says has been spying on key military sites across America.

The Department of Defense confirmed its fighter jets brought down the balloon over US territorial waters.

Three airports were shut and airspace was closed off the coast of North and South Carolina as the military carried out the operation on Saturday.

Footage on US TV networks showed the balloon falling to the sea after a small explosion.

An F-22 jet fighter engaged the high-altitude balloon with one missile - an AIM-9X Sidewinder - and it went down about six nautical miles off the US coast at 14:39 EST (19:39 GMT), a defence official told reporters.

US President Joe Biden had been under pressure to shoot the balloon down since defence officials first announced they were tracking it on Thursday.

Second balloon spotted over Latin America:

On Friday, the Pentagon said a second Chinese spy balloon had been spotted - this time over Latin America with reported sightings over Costa Rica and Venezuela.

See also:

US downs Chinese balloon, a flashpoint in US-China tensions
From China to Big Sky: The Balloon That Unnerved the White House
3 Navy Warships, FBI Now Hunting for Wreckage of Chinese Spy Balloon off South Carolina
Biden's 'Sputnik moment': Is China's spy balloon political warfare?

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Sunday February 05 2023, @02:07AM (2 children)

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday February 05 2023, @02:07AM (#1290321)
    When I first heard about it I thought they might be 'war driving' to find exploitable wifi routers, but then I found out what altitude they were running at and dismissed that theory. I also wondered if maybe it was dropping off lil spy drones over the sensitive areas.

    Or maybe they want to know if we're repositioning nukes. I dunno, all I can do is make up possibilities. I will say it's strange no matter which way you slice it because they obviously didn't care that they were caught doing it.
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by quietus on Sunday February 05 2023, @07:45AM

    by quietus (6328) on Sunday February 05 2023, @07:45AM (#1290342) Journal

    They might have been war driving (flying?).

    I remembered reading that a form of military communications used HF signals bouncing off from the stratosphere.

    Upon check, it turns out that the US military was seeking a modernization of so-called troposcatter communications [militaryaerospace.com] in 2013, for fixed-site and on-the-move long-range military communications as an alternative to satellite communications (SATCOM). The troposphere is the layer immediately under the stratosphere, and the tropopause the boundary layer between those two; and coincidentally also the range where this balloon was floating.

    In 2021 the US Army started introducing new communication technologies (the Tactical Integration Network), in 2 year capability sets. While the first stage was focused on 'dismounted combat manoeuvres'. The current set of testing (Capability Set 23 [janes.com]) is [officially] focusing on communication among Stryker [wikipedia.org] combat vehicles, according to Jane's Defense.

  • (Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday February 05 2023, @07:49AM

    by quietus (6328) on Sunday February 05 2023, @07:49AM (#1290343) Journal

    On the other hand, it might be that the Chinese military is experimenting with its own military version of Project Loon [idstch.com], and something went wrong.