Chinese water balloon

[voice]

[flatandy]

The yanks shot something down over Alaska earlier today. I wonder what it was this time.

[voice]

They just shot another one down over the Yukon.

www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64614098

[flatandy]

So, an interesting thing. It appears that NORAD's radar maybe always saw these things but its algorithm is designed to throw away stuff that doesn't matter. One of the filters may have been slow moving objects. Which is why they're suddenly spotting lots more of them. But it might also be that changing the algorithm to spot these things means that the US is going to burn through a lot of sidewinders blowing up children's balloons and pelicans.

[voice]

Me and some mates here were joking when Canada said it had shot one down in the Ykon that some kids probably wailing to their mum that someone just popped their birthday balloon.

[perrykneeham]

There was a spectacularly wincey moment today when a Whitehouse spokesman said that this administration had found these balloons when the previous administration had not.

Are we to believe that Norad is restaffed with political appointees after an election.

[mids]

Clearly the Chinese wouldn't have dared ballooning the US with Trump in charge. They only feel emboldened with Biden there now.

[flatandy]

Feb 14, 2023 8:35:33 GMT perrykneeham said:

There was a spectacularly wincey moment today when a Whitehouse spokesman said that this administration had found these balloons when the previous administration had not.

Are we to believe that Norad is restaffed with political appointees after an election.

I think they do this because people who were in or supported the previous administration were using it as a political weapon asking why Biden hadn’t popped the balloons.

The response is of the form: “Nobody was popping these balloons: if we’re guilty of it, you’re guilty of it too”

“If these are the terrible threat to national security for which the political wing is responsible that you’re claiming, then you’re responsible for shocking breaches of national security and at least we did something about it”

It’s tripe, but it’s the easiest way to, erm, burst the bubble of people trying to make political capital out of this.

[flatandy]

I still love all stories about software throwing out outlier data and then we discover that it’s the outliers that are important. Back in the late 70s, the early ozone observation satellites saw a massive hole in the ozone over Antarctica and threw out the data because it was outside the band that they considered normal so they assumed it was an error with their sensors during the low sun of the Antarctic spring.

It was only when (interesting how these stories overlap) a few British high-altitude weather balloons went up and did ozone measurements and found extreme numbers did they ask the yanks to double check and everyone realised we were on the verge of getting properly f**k*d.

[perrykneeham]

I can well imagine that the Chinese were aware of this and deliberately sought to emulate something that they suspected would be ignored. There are probably hundreds of met balloons in circulation.

I'm also prepared to accept that the Yanks will have tried this trick themselves at some point.

[voice]

The first one they shot down might be proof Chinese spy staliyes are a bit shtie and you can bet the yanks were analyzing it very closely as it drifted on by, and now they have the wreckage they might end up learning a lot more about china's capacity than they learned about the USs.

[perrykneeham]

Oh yeah, they will have interrogated the arse out of it. The Chinese, far from being inscrutable, have been very clumsy here.

[voice]

[Psalms]

I heard they found some, a few, Chinese bits of hardware off the first one, hardly seems plausible that all can't be found yet

[voice]

Yeah, why aren't they using that magic wand and getting the stuff sooner, I mean it must be a conspiracy right psalms, just has to be eh?

[flatandy]

So… those three extra “threats to domestic air travel” that were shot down over the weekend now appear to be “benign”. They’re probably weather balloons from the University of Thunder Bay, or actually balloons that caused tears when kids let them go at their birthday party.

It’s a great way of getting the US to burn through its missile stockpile.

[rick49]

Accused Pentagon leaker should be held before trial, DOJ argues
news.yahoo.com/accused-pentagon-leaker-held-trial-052509793.html

[rick49]

It’s a great way of getting the US to burn through its missile stockpile.

bidens sending all of our stockpile to ukraine, and if it halted right now, restocking will require at least 5 years.

Here’s How Long It Will Take To Replenish US Weapons Stocks Sent To Ukraine

"Only one of the six weapons where stockpiles have fallen dangerously low is projected to reach normal levels within five years, assuming no further deliveries to Ukraine, leaving the U.S. scrambling for alternatives, Mark Cancian, a former artillery officer and Pentagon acquisition official, found in a report published in CSIS."
dailycaller.com/2023/01/22/replenish-weapons-stocks-ammunition-ukraine/

if china attacks taiwan, they're screwed because we will have little to send them.

[rick49]

Javelin restock-8 years
Stinger Missiles-18 years

[flatandy]

What's the alternative? That we shouldn't be providing these weapons to Ukraine?