Play along at home. Track the balloon yourself. HBAL617. Over Alabama last I looked. Nuke it. Won’t hurt anyone. Kill a few Republicans maybe. (with apologies to Huck Finn). Live Flight Tracker - Real-Time Flight Tracker Map | Flightradar24
Don't want to shoot it down over land, it's a balloon, miles up, can't really control where all the parts end up. Over water may be a different story.
Really? According to Donald Trump Jr., the folks of Montana, I guess using their six-shooters and rifles, would be happy to shoot it down and let the parts all fall on themselves.
Satellites have predictable paths, so stealth spy aircraft still have a use. Not sure about balloons, though, as I'm sure radar can easily pick them up.
I am skeptical of the intelligence gathering threat from this balloon. It’s just going where ever the jet stream takes it but if it’s nearing Tuscaloosa I say we bring it down maybe we’ll get lucky and it will Take out the football stadium.
I agree with the sentiment that is more of a probing our defenses and see how we respond than an actual improvement over info their satellites can gather. If things get hot on Taiwan we may see a crap ton of these coming our way, armed.
Under FAA regs, altitudes above 60,000 feet revert to class E airspace, which is essentially unregulated, so I'm sure this is no accident.
Will be fun seeing how they spin us cancelling the SOS meeting over it. But it is kinda hypocritical, there’s no chance we are t spying on them too. We are just more sophisticated about it.
I would hope the powers that be are looking into ways to detect these things before they are over our territory and take them out.