Suspected Chinese spy balloon found over northern U.S.

Maybe an enlarged prostate is causing your leaking…

 

What makes you think NORAD missed it? Because they didn't tell you?

 

Maybe it's making the BBQ world tour, seeing as to how that guy in Billings was featured.


Next stop, Austin.

 

because the hosers didn’t shoot it down over Yellowknife.

 

Maybe we don't *want* to shoot it down and instigate a conflict. Or maybe we don't want to shoot it down over another country. Maybe we do similar spy missions over China and don't want those shot down in exchange. I suspect NORAD knows a tad bit more about this thing than they are sharing with you or I.

 

Lets all shoot our guns in the airline and try to hit a balloon that's flying higher than commercial air traffic.

 

Lost in the three bus metaphor is how they're arranged

III or

--- or

\\\ or

∆

???

 

Yeah and with what gun lol. A bullet is lucky to get to 10 thousand feet if fired straight up and that’s using a high grain bullet.

 

What if they jump and shoot at the same time? Or use a ladder? Or get on their roofs? Or the top of a Ferris wheel? If there's a will, there's a way, bro.

 

Predictable and Trump would find any reason to whine regardless of what choice we go with.

 

Very bizarre.

1. Why use it to spy when spy satellites already do the job just fine and with far less commotion or risk
2. Why would you use a balloon to deliver a nuclear payload even for an EMP pulse given it's much easier to do it with a ballistic missile. And it's much easier to shoot down a balloon then an ICBM

So neither reconnaissance nor weapons delivery make sense here. And given that there are two balloons and they demonstrate maneuverability, it doesn't seem to be accidental.

Hopefully once it's over a body of water they can start strafing it with machine gun fire and force it into a descent where they can recover it via a ship. Then we can find out what's in it.

Such a strange thing for the Chinese to do.

 

Or to see if they can do it and no one notices. The US may have been perfectly happy to have China not know we were tracking it.

All countries are continually pushing the envelope to see what they can do and get away with. The only reason we know about this one is that it was spotted by the public.

 

the unquestioning confidence in the competence of our government is baffling.

and as odd as it may seem to you, Canada is part of NORAD, has its own Air Force, and is imminently capable of shooting it down themselves. it flew for a long period of time over a part of Canada that is extremely sparsely populated.

they didn't shoot it down because they didn't know it was there.

 

The unquestioning hatred of anything Biden does is baffling to me.

You don't think there's any possible reason we might not shoot down anything and everything that flies over US (or Canadian) airspace? You don't think there's any strategic advantage to not exposing our knowledge, or following it and seeing what its mission might be, etc? If the US believes its not a danger, why not use it to gather our own intelligence? The real world is a lot more complex than "bad guy = must kill it now".

Which is more likely:

1. One of the most advanced military detection systems in the world didn't detect something regular people were able to spot and thus didn't shoot it down.

2. Said system knew about it but had reasons for not shooting it down.

 

everyone knows it's there now. there's no "strategic" benefit in not shooting it (or dragging it) down.