Bear in mind that daylight is short right now up north. Sunrise today in Whitehorse, for example, is at 9.49 am, and sunset is at 6.40 pm.
I have no idea how important visual examinations by pilots are, to identify the things, but shorter days would reduce that, if it’s part of the package.
There are a grand total of three nations which could plausibly have an intention and capability to launch a nuclear strike against us, and there are ways to determine the origin of a bomb that don’t require visually identifying the way it was deployed.
https://www.science.org/content/article/surprise-nuclear-strike-heres-how-well-figure-out-who-did-it
Forensics aside, it wouldn’t take long to identify the culprit, because the two nations not responsible would immediately be bending over backwards through diplomatic channels to prove to us that they weren’t involved and we shouldn’t annihilate them.
This is, of course, 100% moot, because none of those three countries would ever dream of launching a first strike against us, because there’s no way they would be able to prevent the retaliatory strike that would destroy them as a nation, and two of those three would likely not even be able to do enough damage to take us down with them.
The real world is not an episode of 24, nor is it a Tom Clancy novel from the '90s.
“A nuke silo blowing up” wouldn’t produce a nuclear detonation. A nuclear warhead has to be triggered in a very precise way to cause a chain reaction and allow fission to occur - otherwise all you’ve got is a “dirty bomb” conventional explosion with nuclear material being spread by the explosion, which is a lot different than a nuke going off. There’s no way one could be confused for the other or that a nuclear weapon could self-detonate on accident.
I am sure you are quite correct. On the other hand, intelligence agencies make their living by doing things you would not think are quite possible. I try not to underestimate them.
Launch a balloon from a fishing trawler or a submarine. have it stay low for 200 miles and then rise to altitude. float it over any large city in California or the NE corridor and detonate an EMP. It would destroy the electrical grid to the tune of trillions of dollars in infrastructure and economic damage.
Who sent it up? How do you retaliate if you don’t know? How much did it cost them? How long would it take to rebuild the damage?
There’s a reason to fear countries like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. They’re run by crazy people with deadly weapons.
The real world saw a massive attack against NYC, The Pentagon, and the US Capital with only 1 of 5 weapons destroyed and that was done by civilians. It cost $5 in box cutters.
Sure, but that was carried out by a terrorist organization that had the motive to do such an attack and little to care about consequences.
China has no real reason to send a nuke-laden balloon to detonate over American airspace - there would be everything to lose and little to gain.
China has no reason to cut off Australian trade because of a perceived insult. China has no reason to take over Taiwan. China has no reason to enslave Muslims and destroy Mosques. China has no reason to spy on it’s citizens and jail them for political opinion.
If the life of their own people has little value where does that put those in surrounding nations?
That balloon over the continental UN wasn’t some innocuous woopsie. It was a deliberate exercise in political power. It wasn’t about a specific threat. It was a demonstration of an infinite number of threats that are possible with a little imagination and very little money invested.
And in your opinion, would such a terrorist group accept help from an outside source? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
[quote=“Magiver, post:645, topic:979228”]…
float it over any large city in California or the NE corridor and detonate an EMP.
[/quote]
Well, first you have to invent a workable non-nuclear EMP.
Can these balloons be controlled to reach certain places?
Maxim #29 - “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.”
Well, when you’ve got Marge Greene saying that China ordered Biden to let the balloon fly over the country …
We are arguing about that, but given the known path of the jet stream, maybe, kind of sort of.
If these are Chinese balloons and they have a military purpose, I doubt it’s to launch any kind of attack. Others have posted good reasons why it would be crazy for the Chinese to actually attack this way.
More likely, a military mission would be to:
But my guess is that the first one may have been a Chinese spy balloon, but the others we are shooting down could be just regular old weather balloons we ignored in the past, but now in a panic we’re intercepting them. It probably doesn’t help that our radars have filters to not show sky junk like balloons, and those filters have been turned off. So now we’re probably getting lots of false positives and being forced to respond to them in case they aren’t.
New UFO shootdown over Lake Huron:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/12/politics/lake-huron-high-altitude-object/index.html
Wall Street Journal on Huron UFO:
Right on all counts, in my opinion. And I have mentioned this before, but will say it again: US media, across the board, drives public opinion in this situation. They are having constant updates, with an interview from this or that former Air Force officer telling people about EMPs and how they could knock out the US in one strike. Basically clickbait reporting from our largest national news agencies.
Regarding the Montana “radar anomaly” incident:
China has good reason to do all of those things. Economic pressure against Australia may intimidate them into compliance. Taiwan has never been accepted by Mainland China as a seperate nation, not since the losing side of the Chinese Civil War retreated there in the 1950s. As to the last two points, regarding Muslim dissenters and dissenters in general, China is an authoritarian nation. They are very concerned with dissenting populations and try to crush them ASAP. Again, don’t make this a tempest in a teapot. It was one balloon that maybe was spying, maybe not. Now we have million dollar aircraft patrolling the continent and downing anything in sight.
How likely is it that the US has sent up its own spy balloons? I’ve always assumed various nations have all sorts of aerial spy devices floating or flying around up there.