High Altitude Objects Over North America

[Joey D]

So since this is quickly becoming a daily occurrence and the US isn't specifically saying they're of Chinese origin, perhaps a dedicated thread is in order until we find out more.

Timeline of Events:

• Saturday, Jan 28th a high altitude object is detected entering US airspace over the Aleutian Islands
• Wednesday, Feb 1st a high altitude object is spotted and photographed over Billings, MT
• Thursday, Feb 2nd the high altitude object is confirmed to be a balloon and of Chinese origin
• Saturday, Feb 4th the high altitude Chinese balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina by an F-22 Raptor, making it the plane's first confirmed air-to-air kill of an enemy ever
• Friday, Feb 10th another high altitude object is detected over Alaska and shot down by an F-22
• Saturday, Feb 11th a high altitude object is spotted over the Yukon in Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asks the US to use its F-22s to down the balloon
• Sunday, Feb 12th a high altitude object closes the airspace over Northern Michigan before being downed by an F-22 F-16 over Lake Huron

That makes four three confirmed kills from the F-22 of high-altitude objects and one from an F-16, 1 being a Chinese spy balloon with the others being of unconfirmed origin. They are likely spy balloons, but until the DoD confirms that, it's speculation at this point.

===

The activity over Northern Michigan (where I live) was pretty interesting today. Here's the flight path of the E-3 that I was able to catch a couple of glimpses of when it flew over:

And the Stratotanker:

I only heard the Stratotanker and what I assume were F-16s scrambled from Duluth or Madison, but I couldn't see them.

 

[Veinz]

China Says It’s Preparing To Shoot Down Unidentified Flying Object Near Yellow Sea

Authorities in China are preparing to shoot down an unidentified flying object currently over Shandong Province, according to Chinese state media.

www.forbes.com

 

[Tornado]

Lmao China trying to get sympathy by flying their own 🤬 over their country

 

[Blitz24]

I love how our future wars might be fought in retro fashion.

Balloon Fight anyone?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Shame Dotini didn't make it this far.

 

[Grand Prix]

 

[Sprite]

Shame Dotini didn't make it this far.

From a BBC Artical

Dotini would be all over this like a rash!

 

[Joey D]

Dotini, probably:

It's a bit weird how many people have latched onto the aliens theory though and believe full disclosure is coming. I believe aliens are out there and have likely visited Earth. I believe the government know more about it than we do. But, if the US was really shooting down ET, we wouldn't we have a clue. It would be so tight lipped that not even the media would be able to touch it.

What's likely is that these objects have been flying over the US for years and we know exactly what they are and who sent them. It's just that since it's in the media at the moment we're shorting them down to avoid public outcry.

If there really is a conspiracy though, the one where we're doing this to distract from the terrible eco disaster of the train derailment in Ohio seems reasonable.

 

[Keef]

Let's not get bogged down on whether or not aliens are involved.

It's actually much worse. China has spent years wearing down Taiwan's air forces, putting hours on their airframes, fatiguing their pilots, increasing maintenance time and cost, and getting them psychologically used to incursions, creating a new normal. And now we're spending money to shoot down stuff over our own territory? Imagine if thousands of these things just kept coming and coming. What are we going to do, shoot them all down? Take chances and let them pass, assuming that not even one is actually a weapon?

The number of bodies and resources that country has available to simply annoy others and cause chaos is astronomical. We thought Russia is a country that throws bodies at a problem, China basically can't run out. If China lost 50,000,000 people in a war they wouldn't even notice, **** they've done that to themselves multiple times.

Anyways, the F-22 operations were probably useful. in more ways than one. We probably treated it like a test and had all our own detection technology pointed at that F-22 to see and understand exactly what happens when that thing engages a target. We've tested it before sure but this time it was "real". The Canadians were probably watching as well to see how effective that thing actually is. Pretty neat.

 

[Famine]

I've always been in awe of advanced civilisations that can traverse the unimaginable distances between stars in craft that must approach or exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, only to make first contact by dropping slow, easily shot down dirigibles into high aircraft cruise altitudes.

 

[Joey D]

What are we going to do, shoot them all down?

Military industrial complex be like:

 

[Veinz]

It’s just weird how they are suddenly shooting these things down now, but meanwhile they’ve seen things like this for years.

 

[MatskiMonk]

It’s just weird how they are suddenly shooting these things down now but meanwhile they’ve seen things like this for years.

Is it that weird? Once the public becomes aware of it, it gets politicised. It could easily be the optics of the situation that drives the reaction far more than any real threat (if there is one). Everyone's spying on everyone else, Joe Public just aren't used to watching it happen on CNN.

 

[Veinz]

Is it that weird?

Yes for sure, I don’t recall something like this ever happening over here.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Is it that weird? Once the public becomes aware of it, it gets politicised. It could easily be the optics of the situation that drives the reaction far more than any real threat (if there is one). Everyone's spying on everyone else, Joe Public just aren't used to watching it happen on CNN.

Yeah, I think this is right. And I'm also reasonably confident that China isn't lying when it says that we have balloons over them too - none of this seems all that unusual. During the Cold War, we flew constant surveillance flights over the Soviet Union. The only thing that has changed is public awareness.

 

[Veinz]

It could be argued that the US does more spying than anyone else.

 

[Joey D]

Yes for sure, I don’t recall something like this ever happening over here.

I believe not since WWII when the Japanese floated balloons with bombs over North America. There might've been more incidents, but they're just not disclosed.

I think we're just being trigger-happy at the moment though. These balloons likely fly over all the time, we're aware of them, and actively engage in electronic warfare to prevent them from beaming anything back to China. However, the public found out about it and it became a political issue (because everything is a political issue). Since Biden had to do something, he ordered it shot down and now they're just shooting everything down to remove the political backlash from the equation.

It sounds like these balloons were there when Trump was in office too and I can't blame him for keeping the status quo and not ordering them to be shot down. Plus, his advisors likely told him it would be politicized and he didn't need any more of that going on. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama all dealt with these as well.

 

[Veinz]

It’s hard to believe that’s it aliens, but I’ll still entertain it and keep an open mind. It’s just a weird coincidence when a Navy fighter pilot like Ryan Graves comes out and talks about seeing strange things like this while flying around, even the US Government has acknowledged their existence.

It seems more than likely this has something to do with China or maybe even Russia, which takes us one step closer to WW3. I’ll take the aliens instead.

 

[Liquid]

It sounds like these balloons were there when Trump was in office too and I can't blame him for keeping the status quo and not ordering them to be shot down. Plus, his advisors likely told him it would be politicized and he didn't need any more of that going on. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama all dealt with these as well.

I'm surprised that Trump was able to stay quiet about something like this. I see it far more likely that he was told as little as possible about them.

 

[Pupik]

If there really is a conspiracy though, the one where we're doing this to distract from the terrible eco disaster of the train derailment in Ohio seems reasonable.

Stuff we're not talking about enough for $1000, Alex.

 

[MatskiMonk]

The only thing that has changed is public awareness.

The tech has come along way too, our capacity to spy on each other from space, or down a network cable, for instance.

 

[Joey D]

They're back flying over the house now:

There's a HC-130J from the USCG flying around Lake Huron too

I don't know if this is part of a recovery mission or they've spotted something else. I think the HC-130J can be refueled inflight so that might be what the tanker is/was supporting.

 

[Keef]

I believe not since WWII when the Japanese floated balloons with bombs over North America. There might've been more incidents, but they're just not disclosed.

I think we're just being trigger-happy at the moment though. These balloons likely fly over all the time, we're aware of them, and actively engage in electronic warfare to prevent them from beaming anything back to China. However, the public found out about it and it became a political issue (because everything is a political issue). Since Biden had to do something, he ordered it shot down and now they're just shooting everything down to remove the political backlash from the equation.

It sounds like these balloons were there when Trump was in office too and I can't blame him for keeping the status quo and not ordering them to be shot down. Plus, his advisors likely told him it would be politicized and he didn't need any more of that going on. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush, Clinton, Bush the Younger, and Obama all dealt with these as well.

China wasn't in the market for "spying on America" until very recently, like 10-15 years. This behavior is relatively new because if you'll recall for decades they were perfectly happy making all our trinkets and taking all our jerbs and making money hand over fist. China was not a political or military annoyance during our childhoods, they just sat back and got rich.

 

[Dennisch]

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/pentagon-memo-canada-small-balloon/index.html

 

[sirjim73]

Things are getting strange, I'm starting to worry.
This could be a case for Mulder and Scully.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Anyone have an idea why a Stratotanker would be doing loops out in the Pacific west of Big Sur?

I should mention there is an F5E out in the vicinity.

 

[Joey D]

Anyone have an idea why a Stratotanker would be doing loops out in the Pacific west of Big Sur?

View attachment 1230982


I should mention there is an F5E out in the vicinity.

It's not a USAF tanker. Here's the registration on it: https://flightaware.com/resources/registration/N571MA

Did a little more digging: https://metrea.aero/msm/

And some more digging, the F5E is a private plane too: https://tacticalairsupport.com/



===

There is a USAF EC-130 flying a pattern off the San Diego though:

 

[Tornado]

China accuses US of ‘illegally’ flying balloons across its airspace | CNN

China has accused the United States of “illegally” flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times since January 2022, claims that drew an immediate rebuttal from the White House, as bilateral tensions flare in the fallout from a Chinese balloon that was shot down by American...

amp.cnn.com

Yeah sure that's great China whatever you say.

 

[MonoTonouS]

I've always been in awe of advanced civilisations that can traverse the unimaginable distances between stars in craft that must approach or exceed the speed of light in a vacuum, only to make first contact by dropping slow, easily shot down dirigibles into high aircraft cruise altitudes.

Always amazes me people conflate traveling in vacuum to traveling in atmosphere which has millions of variations . It would be unwise to assume your intergalactic ship could fly in any planets atmosphere where it could be subjected to corrosive gasses , extreme heat, wind , liquids , electricity etc. The vacuum of space can be mapped and traversed with ease and is virtually uniform if you stay out of the way of any celestial phenomenon. What im trying to say is , just because you traveled the stars with ease , doesn't mean your ship can travel in atmosphere with ease , there are billions of planets with billions of unique atmospheric conditions which can vary within planet..