Pentagon releases selfie taken by US pilot showing Chinese spy balloon in air
Source: CNN Politics
A US Air Force pilot looked down at the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovered over the Central Continental United States February 3, 2023. Recovery efforts began shortly after the balloon was downed. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Defense)
CNN — The US Defense Department has released a selfie taken in the cockpit of a U-2 spy plane, as an airman flew above the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down by the US military earlier this month. The selfie, taken by the pilot of the U-2, shows the shadow of the aircraft on the balloon and a clear image of the balloon’s payload as it crossed across the continental United States. CNN first reported the existence of the selfie.
The balloon was first spotted by the US on January 28 and ultimately shot down by the US military off the coast of South Carolina after crossing the country. A senior State Department official said earlier this month that fly-bys “revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations.”
Officials said they’d decided against shooting the balloon down over the US because of its size, fearing falling debris could hurt civilians or property on the ground. Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, later said the balloon was 200 feet tall with a payload that weighed a couple of thousand pounds.
Officials also maintained that the balloon was not capable of conducting significant intelligence collection, in part because the US took steps to protect against it immediately upon spotting it.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/politics/pentagon-china-balloon-selfie/index.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
(it's what the "selfie" thing reminded me of although when "Top Gun" came out, they didn't have cell phones).
The USAF Thunderbirds solo pilots perform the famous mirror formation, with Thunderbird 5 inverted
above Thunderbird 6.
as there were descriptions released so no doubt they took pics for further identification.
The problem, just like those damn quadcopters ( "drones" ), is that you have all kinds of stuff being launched with some of it capable of reaching altitudes where planes are flying and I sure as hell wouldn't want one that is not registered to be there, end up getting sucked into an engine of a plane that I am in.
It's bad enough when you have the damn Canada geese that can bring a plane down, let alone just overall bird strikes -
Apparently one group may be the owner of one of the objects but they are trying to give time to see if their Pico balloon was actually one of things shot down or whether it is just having a communications issue if the solar power on it was insufficient and that is why it suddenly "went dark" during the same timeframe when NORAD was engaging these unknown objects.
And again, if something is flying at 40,000 feet in airspace and is not transmitting any ID, then it risks being shot down.
There was an article that had an explanation about use of those AIMs-
Low De Wei and Gregory Korte
February 13, 2023 at 1:02 PM EST
As mysteries continue to swirl around the balloon and three other so-far-unidentified objects shot down by the US in recent days, at least one thing has been clear: the weaponry used to knock them out of the sky. Be it the original, alleged Chinese surveillance balloon downed off South Carolina, or the objects targeted over Alaska, Michigan and Canada, all have been shot down by the same type of missile — the AIM-9X Sidewinder.
Here’s what you need to know about it:
(snip)
Why are they being used to shoot down UFOs?
Using a missile helps minimize the risk to the pilot of the jet fighter by allowing them to stay at a much larger distance from the target, according to Iain Boyd, the Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado. “It would have to go much closer to the target to use a cannon and there have been reports of the aircraft sensors being interfered with,” he said. While the Sidewinder wasn’t designed for shooting down flying objects like balloons, they are cheaper and less likely to destroy payloads on the flying object that officials want to recover, unlike a radar-guided weapon like the AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range missile, said retired US Air Force Colonel Michael Pietrucha. Their heat-seeking abilities may also make them more well-suited for doing so, he said. "You've got two conditions. In the daytime, you have the sun heating the balloon -- you're shooting from up-sun because it sees this giant sunlight reflection and will absolutely guide on that. And at night the balloon is warmer compared to the night sky," said the former irregular warfare operations officer and electronic warfare instructor who flew 156 combat missions in F-4G and F-15E jets. Even if the flying object does not generate heat, the missile will still be able to find it as “it’s the relationship to the background that matters more,” Pietrucha added. "The way you shot down balloons back in the day was incendiary ammunition against a hydrogen balloon. But that was 100-plus years ago."
(snip)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-13/us-is-shooting-down-unidentified-objects-ufos-with-439-000-missiles
It's interesting to see half of DU whine about why something "wasn't shot down before crossing the U.S." and the other half whining about why something was "shot down" at all.
when a decision was made that any debris from those smaller objects might not be recoverable.
There was an almost 3 week gap in time between when this spy balloon was spotted and that pic was taken and when that photo was released. I.e., the photo was taken Feb. 3 and today is Feb. 22.
The other objects were spotted and eventually shot down Feb. 10, 11, 12, so it's not out of the realm of possibility for any pics that might have been taken and are clear enough to make sense to release, to eventually be released. In a couple cases (Yukon and Lake Huron), those objects were over Canadian airspace and any info release may be subject to Canadian law/discretion.
I think you are conflating issues now to make a silly political point and waving it away by characterizing it as "going in circles" is a bunch of nonsense.
so I expect that is up to Trudeau as to how much info would be released about them.
One of these may have been a Pico balloon and the owners have apparently been waiting to confirm either way as they claim there have been times when it has gone "silent" before resuming communications.
