Page 533 - Balloon News Today

Sir, we i think we should talk about this more explicitly in the classified session. but, yes, sir, we understand that this is part of the broader suite of operations that chinas undertaking to try and get a better understanding of us. .. i got it _ i mean, theres all sorts of suites of operations we have with whats going on in outer space. but the question is, did we know what that balloon was trying to gather? do we know what information it was trying to gather from the united states? it didnt...

Do whatever it takes to keep the country safe. we have something called the quick reaction alert force, which involves typhoon planes which are kept on 24/7 readiness to police our airspace, which is incredibly important. so, what are the challenges in dealing with these balloons? were going to bring back our graphic for this part. flying a spy plane lower in the atmosphere would be seen as an aggressive act and much more deliberate than just releasing a balloon into the wind. and meanwhile, a s...

Broken, where fighters have tried to shoot them down at lower altitudes using cheaper gunnery, youve had instances where hundreds or even thousands of cannon rounds have gone straight through the balloon, not gone off, in the sense that the rounds havent exploded because the skin of the balloon is too insubstantial to trigger the fuse. and so theyve just put tiny holes in them, which doesnt really cause them to leak at any particularly significant rate, and theyve just continued. and of course, ...

It also had some ability to be manoeuvred and guided, although only limited. it was flying at about 60,000 feet. but its thought that these kinds of balloons can go up to twice that altitude. and to really understand why theyre so useful to china, we need to look at a weather map. wind speeds vary hugely depending on how high up you are. and at the altitude where this balloon was flying, there is a very stable and predictable wind pattern between china and north america. so, what are the balloon...

Led north american air defense, norad, to adjust their radar settings. domestic political pressure may have played a part. this is the atrocity thats happening here to america. and if we dont speak stronger, china will continue to do this. scramble some more f—22 raptors, throw some lead in that sucker. trump wanted to nuke a hurricane. you guys wont even throw a dart at a balloon? there was outcry in america as to why a massive spy balloon had not been spotted and shot down earlier. but that ...

Around pilot life support and pressurisation of the cockpit. typically, aircraft are designed to operate at really extreme altitudes above that, like the u—2 spy plane or the sr71 blackbird, again, spy plane. crews would wear kind of spacesuits, full pressure suits, and most jet fighters arent equipped for that. also, where there have been previous examples of weather balloons, for example, or surveillance balloons from the us side that have kind of got lost or cables have broken, where fighte...

Do we know what the chinese communist government was looking for? senator, we have some very good guesses about that. and we are learning more as we exploit the contents of the balloon and the payload itself. 0k. what might the chinese be trying to find out? lee hudson covers defence and aerospace for politico. lee, what were these balloons doing, particularly these chinese spy balloons? so, it seems, according to the us intel community, that they were gathering not only images, but electronic w...

The answer is espionage. they carry sensors to collect signals and data as they fly over locations. us officials are analysing the wreckage they recovered from the sea in order to try and understand what exactly those sensors do and what china was after. you dont need to get into specifics, just, did we know what theyre trying to collect, yes or no? yes. — we understand that this is part of a broader suite of operations that china is undertaking... so, we knew what they were looking for. sir, ...

As balloons, but objects. if anything enters into our airspace, whether we know what it is or not, we will monitor it and well take appropriate action. one was seen over alaska and shot down near a place called deadhorse on february 10th. the next day, another object was shot down over the yukon in canada. and then on february 12th, a strange octagonal object was shot down by fighters over lake huron. these were lower and smaller than the first balloon, but they could have got in the way of civi...

Its now emerged that the other three unidentified objects shot down between february 10—12 were all, to use the jargon, benign. in other words, perhaps weather balloons or research balloons, but not spy balloons. so, what do we know about the original spy balloon? it was huge — 200 feet tall and helium—filled. there were solar panels to provide power, and sensors and instruments along the bottom. it also had some ability to be manoeuvred and guided, although only limited. it was flying at ...