They’ve twigged our secret plan to convert Canada back to feet and inches.
+4. I worked in tech, and sometimes did interviews as a technical expert on a product we were trying to sell. You only taked when authorized and with a PR person in the room. (This was pre-Zoom.)
Same. The only time I talked to the media was at formal organized press events when specifically asked to do so. Typically a marketing manager and PR person would be present, at a minimum.
- Activate NORAD defense radars and record radar signature, strength, location… information useful to learn how to avoid or jam our radar in the future.
The one thing satellites can’t do that balloons can is active our defenses so that we show our hand. This is a very old technique and there are aircraft designed to do this, but balloons don’t shout ‘threat’ the way aircraft do and may not even be shot down.
But my guess is that the last two objects are mundane weather balloons or something, and that they were shot down because we are in a bit of a panic. It reminds me of the incident off of LA in WWII where people started seeing enemy aircraft everywhere after a false report. The movie ‘1941’ was loosely based on it.
Latest: yet another “object” was shot down today on the US side of Lake Huron. Is this now the fourth, or is it the fifth? It’s a bloody epidemic! Just heard this on the car radio, there’s nothing on the CBC website yet. Also, casual mentions by various officials seem to suggest that all these objects so far are balloons – either confirmed or suspected.
That’s possibly one explanation for why there’s a sudden rash of them. Or else China is up to something nefarious. Regardless, the two (at least) that were said to be at around 40,000 feet (and could easily drop lower) were definitely a threat to aviation even if they were weather balloons.
Fourth, according to the news stories I’ve seen.
China’s claiming to have an “unknown flying object” of its own, now.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/china-prepares-to-shoot-down-unknown-flying-object-near-coast/ar-AA17oC2T
We are going to have to start some sort of numbering system.
may I suggest:
yyyy-mm-dd/1234
In terms of shootdowns, one weather/spy balloon and three UFOs.
Wikipedia now has a list of list of high-altitude object events in 2023:
From the cited article:
After the news broke that China was preparing to shoot down an object, Hu Xijin, a wn nationalist commentator in China, wrote on Twitter: “This year can be called the year of UFO. It’s so mysterious.”
It’s not “mysterious” at all, since China is the likely source of all of them. China pretending to get involved in the shooting-down game is likely an attempt at deflecting blame. The only other western adversary that would have any interest in spy balloons is Russia, and they’re kinda busy right now.
Now this location makes me wonder. Assuming for the moment this is something nefarious being done by a state level actor, this makes me think of two bad things:
-
If this came from outside North America from Bad State X (BSX), it made it all the way to Lake Huron, pretty much right in the middle of North American, before being detected. That’s kind of bad.
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If this didn’t come directly from BSX, then it was launched undetected from somewhere inside of North America by agents of BSX. That’s a different kind of bad.
Best case scenario, there’s some weather geek in Manitoba or Northern Ontario who is mourning the loss of his balloon, while keeping his head down and hoping no one comes knocking on his door asking him WTF he was thinking.
CNN now has the story about the Lake Huron incident:
The Canadian defense minister described the Yukon UFO as cylindrical, which is a little weird. Sounds more like an actual alien craft.
Yay, NPR, in their 4PM eastern hourly news broadcast, actually said “unidentified flying object” in the story. After reading the debate in this thread about whether to call them UFOs, I’m so chuffed. 
Looks like there’s no text transcript:
I wouldn’t want to be that guy, if any of those objects happened to be the work of some local yokel. Both the FBI and RCMP are investigating the Yukon object. Creating a potentially lethal hazard to aviation is not something that is taken lightly. Creating a hazard to aviation for the purpose of espionage even less so.
Seems pretty obvious to me. We had 'Omuamua in 2017, and “the Ramans do everything in threes.”
Or a blimp, which would be more maneuverable than a simple balloon. Or a visiting craft from the VY Canis Majoris system, who came in peace and are now really pissed at us.
ETA: It occurs to me that if aliens from some distant planet picked this exact moment to pay a friendly visit to Earth, it would be epic bad timing! 
My question: does Trudeau come out of this looking better or worse than before?
He gets dramatic headlines, confirms a working and important relationship with the US, gets ammunition against his being soft on certain countries.
We will not soon learn what the government found out in advance about it, if they were even able to detect other ones (including the one previously in the US), whether this is more than a storm in a teacup, how much this cost or what they will learn from the remnants. The good news, however, is that using a chatbot one is able to procure a recipe for beavertails.
A lot of things are cylindrical shaped. However, studies suggest Pringles cannot fly.
I’d say it had no impact on how he is perceived. He’s taking credit for doing just exactly what was expected of any PM in that situation, nothing more. And the close working relationship with the US is not something that needs constant reminders.
You, however, are duly noted as having an obsession with beavertails. 
True enough. My silly comments do not imply there may be serious reasons someone would do this, getting the information you suggest. However, that does not necessarily make it wise, or the only way of getting information.
Whether one might detect these is one thing. What to do about it is another. If the Party Chairman has to attend his daughter’s wedding in four months, then no wonder he is suddenly concerned about the global weather patterns in fifty countries.