[wildcard_redneck]

Using supersonic jets to shoot down balloons with missiles that cost half a $ million each is the height of stupidity. What the United States military needs is a small prop-propelled blimp drone that can be easily transported, rapidly inflated, and operate an extremely high altitudes. Arm it with a rapid fire shotgun and it could poke just enough holes in the offending ballon to sink it slowly to the ground for examination and you are done.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

The Soviet Union built such an aircraft because thousands of balloons were sent over the Soviet Union in the early 1950s.

Difficult to detect and largely out of reach at altitudes of up to 100,000 feet, the floating aerial spies provoked the Soviets into developing their own high-flying balloon-busting interceptors.

That was the genesis of Subject 34 or “Seagull,” produced by the Myasischev Design Bureau...The single-seat Subject 34 was the first in a series of ultra-high-flying jet planes from Myasischev. While there is limited information about the lone Seagull, the aircraft carried a RD-36-52 jet engine with more than 26,000 pounds of thrust.

In the center mounted on top of the fuselage sat an upward-facing, remote-controlled 23-millimeter GSh-23 gun — the balloon buster. The design could have potentially included two anti-aircraft missiles. A nose-mounted radar would search for targets.

Subject 34 never saw action. During a Dec. 24, 1978 taxi test in a snowstorm, pilot K.V. Chernobrovkin “had not meant to take off but in a snowstorm became airborne to avoid hitting the wall of snow on the right side of the runway,” aviation historian Yefim Gordon wrote in his 1992 book Soviet X-Planes. “In zero visibility he hit a hillside.”

The American balloon program fell out of favor by the late ’70s in favor of spy satellites, invalidating the need for a balloon interceptor.

The Soviet Air Force liked the Stratosphera enough that it commissioned another follow-on design, the M-55 Geophysica, in 1985 (shown below) — the first one flying in 1985, for a total of four produced. This new aircraft, designed for environmental science, included a new shorter wing, redesigned surfaces, new flight controls and a stronger structure allowing for greater takeoff weight and endurance. While the M-55 shares a similar profile to the M-17, it is a fundamentally different plane.

Excerpts above from "The Soviets Built a High-Flying Jet to Shoot Down Balloons," by Robert Beckhusen, August 8, 2017

Wikipedia...

Myasishchev M-55

The Myasishchev M-55 (NATO reporting name: Mystic-B) is a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft developed by OKB Myasishchev in the Soviet Union, similar in mission to the Lockheed ER-2, but with a twin-boom fuselage and tail surface design. It is a twin-engined development of the Myasishchev M-17 Stratosphera with a higher maximum take-off weight.

To combat these high-altitude balloons, Myasishchev proposed Subject 34 a single-seat turbojet-powered twin-boom high-aspect-ratio aircraft. Armament of the single-seat balloon interceptor was to have been two air-air missiles (AAM) and two GSh-23 cannon with 600 rounds per gun in a dorsal turret. Before Subject 34 could be developed into operational hardware, the threat receded due to the success of the Keyhole reconnaissance satellites of the Corona program and the emergence of the Lockheed A-12.

The first prototype of Subject 34 was completed in secret at the Kumertau helicopter plant in Bashkirya, but whilst carrying out taxi tests, in December 1978 piloted by K. V. Chernobrovkin, the prototype Chaika lifted off to avoid hitting snow banks and was destroyed after hitting a hillside in zero visibility.