City of Billings says the video is unsubstantiated:
How do “they” know these balloons are from China if they don’t have continuous monitoring, which appears to be the case? It doesn’t seem to have any writing on it.
You mean how did they know before China confirmed it?
So wait until it floats over the Atlantic and then take it out?
We need a defense against these balloons.
The western US is still in a drought. Imagine balloons dropping incendiaries in the dry season.
Exactly my thought. We’ll see if that’s what happens.
Or, if it comes close to the space elevator, we can snag it from there.
Apparently, Canada (and NORAD, so the US saw it too) did see it, since last weekend, actually:
From the item:
Anyone who saw Nope knows that’s no Chinese balloon.
IMHO it’s probably meant as a form of psychological warfare. China probably wants ordinary Americans to start thinking something along the lines of “China can fuck with us in this way and we can’t do anything about it? We have all these advanced weapons and yet we can’t shoot down a simple balloon? Maybe we should not fuck with them.” Why else would China admit that the thing belongs to them?
It’s been done.
It’s not impossible; I used to bull’s-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they’re not much bigger than 5 feet.
And now there’s this “explosion” from Billings, Montana. MHO: If it’s real, she wasn’t the only person who saw, heard, or recorded this.
But from that wikipage
So not drought conditions and not the dry season. The Western US is still technically in a drought, but it’s been a very wet winter this year and Fu-Go bombs wouldn’t be any more effective than they were in 1944-5. If they send one next August, then it could be very bad.
Not that I think this balloon is a Fu-Go or a spy or anything nefarious. I’m inclined to give China the benefit of the doubt and say it’s most likely a wayward research balloon.
You think a massive balloon from China is a research balloon? A country that is enslaving Muslims and arrests anybody who criticizes the government? A country that constantly invades the airspace of Taiwan and threatens to attack it?
Sure, why not? It’s not like China is so unified that everything they do is part of a big anti-Western militaristic program. Consider that the US has a huge military, yet there’s lots of things we do that are not part of that military. For example, the reversed situtation where a NASA or NOAA (note: non-military organizations) balloon accidently drifts over China. If China went batshit crazy about it, it’d be written off as overreaction.
Also note that being “massive” is a requirement to get a balloon with a sizeable instrument package to the upper atmosphere. There’s nothing necessarily nefarious about it being massive.
WOW. Your acceptance of an unannounced unapproved intrusion of US airspace is noted.
The Chinese have been sending up large balloons for an unknown purpose for several years now. They have been often seen over Japan, and also over the Andaman Islands, Costa Rica and even Hawaii.
See this image first posted at Metabunk.
It’s a bit late to start worrying now.
Perhaps we should airdrop some motorcycle SEALs onto the balloon to deal with it.
Unless the Chinese are also spying on the Andaman Islands and Costa Rica, I think this suggests a random ‘lost’ balloon. The US represents 5% of the Earth’s land surface, so one might expect accidental overflights occasionally.