EXACTLY...We are letting an UNKNOWN object fly over our country. Insane. I want to see it head for Sacramento, NYC, DC...
The not having a pilot/weather man in these press rooms is getting bad. You go to airshows, go watch aerial firefighting operations, weasel rides on anything that flys, you do the 101st airborn open houses for a reason as aviation nerd, you pay attention to the shapes of the NRO air assets so you can spot the normal from a odd sun angle.
You realize the best ballast in a airplane is water, the getting rid of it is an open valve and positive pressure on a vent line. No sling, just need to have baffles on tanks that can slosh.
The show from a single or pair of fighter drop tanks with 50 lbs of unrecoverable fuel in is about the same, if it happens to crack from load of tumbling.
It is like people have not seen gliders drop their water ballast before. Vertical clouds given the right sun angle, weather and water temperature. The show is even better when firefighting planes get cancelled, the jet ones drop at 20k as not to crush some poor farmers barn on final. Given a dry layer of air, nothing hits the ground. Not like western firefigters fly over moist air often.