Posted on 02/13/2023 5:12:24 PM PST by Macho MAGA Man
According to US officials, the Air Force F-16 that shot down an object over Lake Huron on Sunday missed its first attempt.
“A second Sidewinder air-to-air missile was needed.” Fox News reported.
It is unclear where the first missile landed.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...
Hope the brakes on the airplane weren’t on fire like at the Super Bowl.
It’s designed to take down a $60 mill airplane. So $440K is a bargain.
20MM at 60,000 feet? Against a balloon with no interior/exterior pressure differential?
Somebody doesn’t understand flight ceilings and how to drop a balloon.
Entirely unrealistic.
Pretty much. Welcome to the US military. We were so proud of “shock and awe”. Americans cheered. So did the military industrial complex and our “contractors” who got to use million dollar missiles to destroy 10 thousand dollar bridges that we spent ten million to rebuild.
That is how our military works now.
I suppose they cannot use “guns” because they don’t know where the bullets will land, but wouldn’t they be able to calculate the approximate landing spot for 20mm rounds? Find a big empty spot and give the aircraft a bearing to attack on...... then again, we did not down the Chinalloon over Montana because the state is so crowded that it would certainly land on a person or cow.
I was just thinking that seems high for a 50ish year old missile.
Is there any actual, non-joke, journalistic-type coverage of this octagon? Including a photo?
Guns wouldn’t work actually. Long story.
An airborne laser would be the answer.
Israel has a laser system (“iron beam”) that shoots down both small projectiles and hundreds of incendiary balloons the Arabs send over to drop little bomblets and to start fires. It cost nothing to shoot.
Be easily stuck on the top of a cargo plane.
RE: and hundreds of incendiary balloons the Arabs send over to drop little bomblets and to start fires. It cost nothing to shoot.
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Interesting.
If I heard of that I forgot it.
Great idea for the Chinese. Lots of balloons and only some are a danger but which? Like the bean under one walnut shell out of three.
The pilot doesn't have control of the self destruct. From the AIM-9D manual (AIM-9X similar):
The primary function of the TDD of the fuze is to sense the target and cause warhead detonation at the point of maximum kill probability. When the missile passes within a predetermined distance of the target, the TDD sends a firing signal to the explosive train in the S-A, causing initiation of the warhead booster and detonation of the warhead. In case of contact with the target, a signal from a piezoelectric crystal in the rocker arm of the servo initiates the explosive train in the S-A. If the missile passes out of range of the target, a self-destruct feature in the GCG detonates the warhead through the firing circuit of the S-A after the burnout of the gas generator grain.
The balloons that the Chinese are using are called super pressure balloons in the LTA world.
They use pressure to rigidize and pressure stabilize a low stretch balloon envelope.
It is critical to avoid solar heating of the gas in the balloon to prevent over pressure. To accomplish this the balloon envelope materials use a white solar reflective coating or tint to reflect solar radiation and keep the balloon materials as close to the outside ambient temperature as possible.
By definition, this makes the balloon a very difficult target for an IR missile guidance system to target and track.
About the best you can do is bore sight the missile on the center of mass of the balloon and hope it hits the target. The octagonal "UFO"s are most likely super pressure balloon or air frame structures covered with balloon cloth and shaped to form an antenna or radar dish type configuration for ELINT signal gathering ISR missions. The .gov dirt bags are using hint of extra terrestrial origin to bluff, baffle and BS the American public to deflect from Biden's collusion with the Chinese to allow them to survey Americas most sensitive defense installations /p>
Is that Eddie Rickenbacker?
𝘈𝘐𝘔-9 𝘚𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵.
A little off topic, but back in 2011 I was TDY to Tyndall for Combat Archer, a missile exercise, when one of our F-15’s wound up spearing an F-16 drone with either an AIM-9 or a 120 because they couldn’t detonate it. Into the the Atlantic that drone went.
I can easily imagine a scenario arising from some crisis, where we suddenly discover that we have no ammunition, or some large part of our fleet can’t sail, or most airplanes can’t fly, etc...
And everyone will ask WTF did $850 billion a year go????
Intersting info, thanks !
Yes.
Actually if at the correct altitude, that would be ideal. Might even be able to close in and get a better look at what target is.
According to the US Naval Institute, a captain aboard the USS New York spotted a sphere in the sky, and ordered it to be shot down, believing it to be a "Japanese balloon weapon".
According to Lanson B. Ditto, who was serving on the ship (actually the USS Langley) at the time, the crew fired about 300 rounds at the object before realizing it was celestial.
“About noon on December 9, 1941 we were steaming south on open seas when a plane was sighted," Ditto said of the incident.
The team still couldn't get a good shot at it, which isn't surprising as they were aiming about 82 million kilometers too low.
"Pretty soon, word came down from the navigator," he added. "It was determined that this was the planet Venus. It turned out that we had fired 300 rounds at the planet Venus."
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