“Let’s get a tally of the expense of shooting these last 4 (or is it 5 now????) “objects” so far. Sidewinder missiles $400K a piece. No less expensive way to take these down? Don’t we have drones that can intercept this without launching a missile at it? Was watching Battle Bots earlier, and those guys could build something less than $400k to take care of this”
The problem with your solution is that these balloons are at 70,000 feet or higher, and the official ceiling of the F-22 is 65,000 feet...so you generally need a missile (I sincerely doubt that any of our drones that cost less than $400K each could reach that altitude). HOWEVER, we’ve been working on lasers for defense of aircraft from missiles...and the cost in electricity to power up each shot of the laser is something on the order of $10. Yeah, you read that right, TEN BUCKS. I don’t know if the lasers would be effective, but with the atmosphere being so thin at that altitude it seems that they would be more effective than on a strategic bomber at, say, 50,000 feet shooting at a missile. The questions are: a) do we have any of these lasers ready (or nearly ready) to put on a plane and brought fairly close to the balloon and b) will shots from the laser puncture enough area on the balloon to bring them down relatively quickly, or are multiple shots required?
What about c) Do want to give away that we have this capability?
Seems like this whole thing could be an operation to determine our response times, strategies, and capabilities.
“The problem with your solution is that these balloons are at 70,000 feet or higher”
None of the recent balloons has been higher than 63,000 feet.