Posted on 02/06/2023 9:29:56 AM PST by bitt
Ward gives the details behind the F-22 shootdown of the Chinese Spy Balloon that occurred on February 4, 2023, the first kill by a Raptor in the history of that stealth fighter.
H/T srmanuel
AIM-9X looks like it hit the gondola payload, not the balloon envelope.
Which means there probably won't be much of value to find in the ocean off the coast.
Boy, I retired before the Raptor was in service, but I’d have killed to be the pilot for that mission. I’d put a balloon on my flight suit sleeve. No one could match that! ;-)
Is this the Babylon bee? Are they going to make this into a episode of “dog fights” on history channel, complete with the dramatic music? Did he do a victory roll?
Morons. The pilot is probably in post traumatic stress counseling now.
By hitting the payload, they destroy the evidence. How convenient for China Joe.
In the video Ward Carroll referred to the Aim 9x missile as an arrow not a shotgun, I wonder if that means the missile didn’t explode on impact, basically it was a giant needle that punctured the balloon causing it to deflate, instead of exploding.
My synopsis:
- Balloon had propellers for maneuvering
- The US had scrutinized and studied the instrument package thorougly
- Airports at Myrtle Beach, Wilmington and Charleston were closed in first clue that a shoot down was imminent
- F-22s were from Langley AFB in VA
- Call sign ‘Frank’ in honor of Frank Luke Jr who had shot down a bunch of balloons in WW1
- Balloon shot down with AIM-9X Sidewinder (range of 2 miles)
- Claimed missile hit ‘base of balloon’
- F-22 was at 59 kft and balloon was at 60-65 kft
- First A/A kill for an F-22
Annular blast fragmentation warhead.
So ... it’s an arrow with shotgun tip.
Didn’t Sylvester Stallone use them in one of his Rambo movies ?? LOL
The AIM-9X is equipped with a laser proximity fuse. It explodes when it senses it's near its target, not when it hits.
The missile contains a blast fragmentation warhead designed to blow shrapnel in a ring around the missile, striking the target.
Looking at the closeup video of the kill, it appears that the missile hit the payload, not the balloon envelope.
I thought the three balloons during Trump has been dispelled yet this guy was matter-of-fact about it? Why did they hit the payload? Why didn’t they shoot it down over sparsely populated Montana?
I agree, looks to me like they managed to take it down so as to not recover much.
The stuff hanging from the balloon looks like a solar array with some antennas at the ends.
The big black circle at the bottom of the balloon, lack of a hanging equipment gondola, and the pentagon saying it has propellers, according to the narrator, suggest that there is hardware inside the balloon above the black spot, possibly retractable in daytime. Airships used to have structure including walkways inside the envelope.
The video shows the sidewinder hitting the base of the balloon, as you say, which is counterintuitive if you accept the narrator statement that it was targeting in the optical band. It could be the black spot was hotter than the envelope, but I doubt it. The top part was reflecting direct sunlight.
My point is the missile probably hit the part of most intelligence value, and detached it from the balloon which would otherwise have made it fall and hit slower, like you would want.
Maybe they didn’t want to recover anything of intelligence value. Or maybe they thought the payload would self destruct more effectively if only the balloon were damaged. Maybe the black spot was hot because it was radiating a lot of power dissipation from electronics and the sidewinder was just doing what sidewinders do.
Ward Carroll is a stand up guy, very reputable. I think he was quoting a release from the DoD that made that claim officially before the rebuttals.
The three in Trumps administration claim has legs and is all over the place. This morning the claim was that this was "newly discovered information" inferring no one in the DoD ever told the Trump administration before.
It sounds kids on a playground arguing "Well, you did it too..." after getting caught.
“By hitting the payload, they destroy the evidence. How convenient for China Joe.”
***********
Kind of like wiping it with a cloth.
!! Baloney. This was all about SIGINT, not sightseeing or meteorology.
Nothing two orders of magnitude less significant than this comes out of China without being a closely calculated, CCP/PA event.
“ the first kill by a Raptor in the history of that stealth fighter.”
Sort of like an Abrams taking out a pickup truck
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