Posted on 02/15/2023 9:44:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Apparently, none of these dunces are aware of the Jet Stream!
Stupidity and Politics go hand-in-hand!
Yeah! That’s the ticket!
100% BULL SH!T.
The Gas-lighting States of America
Lots of choices for “covers” such as the early Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQc5gDXQGIs
And the truly great Ken Curtis (”Festus”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWR6FLnPack
Never said there is no threat.
What I said is, we can’t do it.
Threat or not, we can’t do it.
We can’t have our air defense people looking at screens full of thousands of balloons and migratory birds trying to detect a “threat”.
Nope.
And if they somehow decided a particular balloon at 90,000 feet is a threat, what could they do about it?
It takes a big expensive missile to shoot that high, and it all has to fall back on the homeland.
It’s all just a big bag of nope.
I will let you search for it.
In 2019, China showed a balloon carrying hypersonic missiles.
I guess we should just let them go.
With regard to shooting them down, I am sure our near trillion Pentagon budget can come up with a more cost effective way to bring them down. But, regardless, it is money better spent than sending it to corrupt Ukraine.
What a bunch a bull shit! Just happen to blow off course to fly over and surveil some of our major weapons facilities.
Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it's an imminent threat.
Setting intercontinental balloons adrift with missiles hanging underneath them is a way to start a war but not to win one. If they want to start a war there are much simpler and more direct ways to do so.
That system makes more sense as a special operations tool for taking out local defenses just prior to an assault deep in hostile territory. It doesn't make sense for sending halfway around the world floating on the winds, held aloft by a very thin membrane, such that any mishap could have it all fall into unfriendly hands.
If the DOD did develop a way to cheaply shoot down all low-Doppler targets, would that become policy? All weather and research balloons, and migratory birds, get zapped so we can feel "safe"?
The jet stream is NOT the simplistic path you see drawn on your local TV’s weathercast for the average Bub or Bubbette. Nor does it stay in the same place for long. Wind velocity (that’s a vector, not just magnitude) changes with altitude and doesn’t always match a prediction anyway. How often do passenger airliners have to make an unexpected adjustment? All the time, but they have far more capacity to maneuver, thank heavens. (Yeah, bad pun.)
Balloons can’t make quick adjustments — guess wrong, and your balloon can be 500 miles off course, getting worse, and no way to recover. I imagine the Chinese just figured “Well, if it’s going that way, maybe we can adjust and float over something else...”
Did your weather forecast “fail to verify” in substantial fashion? Good chance the jet stream did something not forecast.
in any event, a balloon, being blown of course is a ridiculous statement hence your post to me. there is no way a practical propulsion system could work with the sail area the size of that balloon against strong winds.
here is the jet stream at 12000m... about 40,000 ft notice the chart 90+ mph...
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=51;-96;1&l=wind-200hpa&t=20230301/0000
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