Act trois: Confirmed object shot down over Lake Huron. Begin the rampant speculation on why we're not being told who is doing this, please. update: Apparently the object over Huron was responsible for that radar signature over Montana the day before.
Because wild accusations make you look like a geopolitical amateur We know whose they are. They know whose they are. Firing on known-Chinese UAVs over the US is always going to have a diplomatic angle while firing on "unidentified" UAVs over the US just makes the Chinese look shady. From a game theory standpoint, painting "CHINA" on the side (like the first one) says "yeah, that's us, we overflew your country, what are you gonna do about it." Shooting it down says "you are not the boss of me." If you then say "we shot down a bunch of CHINESE UAVs" you're saying "CHINA REALLY MAKES ME MAAAADDDDD!!!!!" whereas saying "yeah we shot some stuff down, w/e I do what I want" basically dares China to throw a chair at you from across the stage of the Jerry Springer Show. Like I said - the whole ridiculous dust-up over the "he threw a missiwatim!!!" one gave the government cover to pick those things off whenever they want. The end-game is they stop telling us about it and just get zappy-zappy.
Yes, of course the objects are from China. The only other feasible option was Russia, and they're kinda busy right now. I was three-quarters hoping I could troll out some "Truth is Out There" alien-o-philes from the lurkers' woodwork. Instead, sigh, just another well-measured response from kleinbl00 and someone pimping HVAC services in Houston. I mostly agree, but I think it bears mentioning how asymmetric the costs probably are. Surely scrambling a pair of F-16s or -22s and burning a missile costs quite a bit more than pumping some hydrogen into a latex sphere, fastening some cheap peripheral electronics to the thing, and lettin' 'er rip into the jet stream. The variations in geometry of these objects has been pretty entertaining, though. I think it's 1. sphere, 2. cylinder, 3, dunno, and 4. octagon (a 2D octagon? is it extruded or something? funny). Again, the politics angle; Yeah, a unanimous but toothless vote to condemn the Chinese spy balloon(s) in Congress. Who cares? This is the Trump era. The republicans are doing almost all of their federal legislating via a culture war in the court of public opinion, on Twitter and in media interviews/monologues. Obviously, there is nothing Biden can do (in this situation or others) that will elicit their public praise. So if this increase in domestic airspace shootdowns (the only time in U.S. history??) is primarily because of the Biden administration feeling bullied into it by the republican response to the initial, obviously Chinese balloon, they need to get the fuck over it. I'd love to see the Chinese shoot our shit down, if only to see dumbdumb twitter lose their minds 10x as much as they're losing their minds right now. And to stop talking about aliens.
"Asymmetrical costs" has been an American flex since the Berlin Airlift. It's kind of the point - "you can spend $9.95 on a gopro and a weather balloon and we can spend $1.2m on an AIM-9X to take it down but you know what? You're gonna run out of balloons before we run out of ways to shoot them the fuck down." Obviously it doesn't hold true forever but it holds true long enough to come up with another approach. The competition is "who wants it more" and "HE THREW A MISSIWATIM!" wins. Something not recognized by the general public is that never once was a U-2 overflight clandestine. The United States didn't make much of that? And the Soviets didn't exactly brag about how much effort they put into it? But O Holy Fuck there were expenditures. Plane overflight was doomed from the first mission because it was real clear that the desire for destruction was unconstrained. It's entirely possible the Eisenhower administration was baiting the USSR into shooting down an American spyplane so that we'd have carte blanche with satellites, something we knew cold we'd be better at (as soon as we got them off the ground). FUN FACT: Soviet moon missions used captured CIA Kodak stock (from balloon overflights no less!). It QED is not. Even the Republican Party is engaged in war with the Crazy Wing of the Republican Party. I believe we are in the middle of the messy war to determine the Post-Trump Era but the fact that Serious People are playing "Desantis vs. Trump" games shows that Trump is no longer the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Here's what's important: On Ukraine, the fight is should we/shouldn't we support Ukraine against Russia. The Democrats are pretty much at "of course" while the Republicans are a mix of "evil empire must always lose" and "but Russia pays my bills tho." On the Chinese balloons? the fight is "should we shoot them down" or "should we shoot them the fuck down." The dovish position is basically "are we sure that was really necessary? Don't answer that I'm making a point here." Again, I'm pretty sure the Air Force needed one (1) justification to go guns-hot whenever they bloody well felt like it. They got it and proceeded to act accordingly. 
Powers was shot down by an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 "Guideline") surface-to-air missile[15] over Sverdlovsk. A total of 14 Dvinas were launched,[16] one of which hit a MiG-19 jet fighter which was sent to intercept the U-2 but could not reach a high enough altitude. Its pilot, Sergei Safronov, ejected but died of his injuries. Another Soviet aircraft, a newly manufactured Su-9 on a transit flight, also attempted to intercept Powers's U-2. The unarmed Su-9 was directed to ram the U-2, but missed because of the large differences in speed.[a]
Again, the politics angle; Yeah, a unanimous but toothless vote to condemn the Chinese spy balloon(s) in Congress. Who cares? This is the Trump era.
primarily because of the Biden administration feeling bullied into it by the republican response to the initial, obviously Chinese balloon, they need to get the fuck over it.
'd love to see the Chinese shoot our shit down, if only to see dumbdumb twitter lose their minds 10x as much as they're losing their minds right now. And to stop talking about aliens.
Well, I don't mean shooting down U-2s, since we don't fly those anymore, I mean the hypothetical "10 U.S. balloons over China since the start of 2022". Why did it take more than a week to trot out that claim? Of course it's already been categorically denied on our end. I strongly tend towards believing our intel/military people on this one, simply due to the sophistication of our satellite tech. But maybe we have a need for in-situ comms sniffing over there that can't be accomplished on the ground, idk. I guess I'm curious why they kept tempting fate with the U-2 when Powers was shot down in 1960. Didn't even initiate the Black Cat squadron until '61. Hard to believe that it wasn't just like you imply, knowingly sending aircraft and pilots to their deaths or capture. Dude how long do you think it takes to ride an ejected pilot's chair with parachute down from 70k+ feet? That's gotta be like something around 30 minutes. Got a whole military junta welcoming party by the time you touch down. btw, I love the stories of the SR-71 in its heyday, when they'd be like "missile locked on to us, sir". "OK, full throttle", and that was the end of that. U-2slow would've been the meme. But yeah, maybe we're a few weeks out from the Chinese fabricating a U.S. balloon take-down. Would not surprise me at all. Still, any UAV shootout exchange, real or fabricated, does not scare me nearly as much as the increasing desperation of Vladimir Putin.
For human-ish blob (edit: on a parachute) weighing 100 kg dropping from 20 km, I got around 14 minutes under the simple equation of motion, with drag proportional to speed squared. It'd probably be closer to 10 minutes for stratified atmosphere, but I can't be arsed to calculate it that precisely. :PDude how long do you think it takes to ride an ejected pilot's chair with parachute down from 70k+ feet? That's gotta be like something around 30 minutes.
Did you use the cross-sectional area of a parachute, or a person? How'd your foot heal up, btw?? Been too long, good to see ya around :).
Cross-section of parachute, yes, sorry for confusing wording earlier. It mostly corresponds to 1.7-2.0 air resistance coefficient in all those plug-n-play calculators on the internet if you want to cut corners. Foot's OK. What's puzzling is that I can jump rope and do dexterity ladders like it's nobody's business, but running gives me pins and needles progressing to stabbing pain. So kinda not doing that.
I mean, I get what you're saying. It's not likely that we fly U-2s over anywhere we aren't on extremely convivial terms with. I care about this stuff entirely too much and one thing I can say with certainty: the US really likes an asymmetrical frontier. We're somewhere between 250k and 300k rounds per insurgent killed in Afghanistan, depending on how you ask. That's around three metric tons of ammo. It was argued during the Vietnam War that we could have paid every man, woman and child in North Vietnam $57k a year to put down any weapons and declare us the victors and come out fiscally ahead (pretty much the way the Treasure Fleets worked, incidentally). We know SR-71s/A-12s never flew over the USSR because it didn't take long for the USSR to make some truly hot-shit missiles. We know the SR-71s/A-12s overflew China... until they got some truly hot-shit missiles. 'member this? We have zero fucking reason to fuck around with balloons. The overwhelming political sentiment in the US towards China is "take their money and slap their bitch asses down if they forget their place." China, on the other hand, is busily establishing themselves as the only transcendent empire in the history of mankind and if you disagree on any level you're an enemy of the people. Dollars to donuts: Chinese spy satellite overflights are a known quantity in the US intelligence community. If the Chinese actually wanted to learn something new they'd have to get creative. On the other hand the United States had launched something like 6,000 espionage balloons by the time Xi was a Party member so it's safe to say we cut that shit out ages ago or else little boys would have US Spy Balloon trapper keepers the same way they have SR-71s. Proxy bullshit? The incursive shit we did against Soviet Air Defense was really fucking hairy. Provocative AF. As soon as it became clear that things could escalate we scaled back... but only riiiiiiiiiight up to the edge. Mostly. Flight "double Oh Seven are you shitting me" So we poked China with Taiwanese pilots because (1) we could deny we had anything to do with it (2) We could pretend we weren't doing it just to piss off the Russians. But as soon as we figured out that the Chinese were saltier at the Russians then they were at us, we quit cold turkey and that's pretty much where we spent the rest of the Cold War. A while, yeah. I think terminal is somewhere between 20 and 30 feet per second at sea level but probably a fuckton more that high up. Chute might not even do anything for the first 10-20k feet. They're definitely gonna have time to suss you out. I think there's a lot of bravado there. These guys? Mach 8. A lot of the US' cloak of invincibility comes from knowing who to pick fights with. I think we decided to up our anti-foo-fighter game in 2018, and we needed an excuse to pop some pigeons. 'cuz here's the thing - soon as those things start shooting back we're in a whole new ball game. This whole kerfuffle, my guess, was "are you fucking kidding me with these balloons" followed by "well shit maybe we get lasers now." All the rest of it is posturing.Well, I don't mean shooting down U-2s, since we don't fly those anymore,
I guess I'm curious why they kept tempting fate with the U-2 when Powers was shot down in 1960.
The intelligence gathered by the Black Cat Squadron, which included evidence of a military build-up on the Sino-Soviet border, may have contributed to the U.S. opening to China during the Nixon administration by revealing the escalating tensions between the two communist nations. Shortly after Nixon's visit to Beijing, all reconnaissance flights over the People's Republic ceased, and the Black Cat Squadron was officially disbanded in the spring of 1974.
Dude how long do you think it takes to ride an ejected pilot's chair with parachute down from 70k+ feet? That's gotta be like something around 30 minutes.
btw, I love the stories of the SR-71 in its heyday, when they'd be like "missile locked on to us, sir". "OK, full throttle", and that was the end of that. U-2slow would've been the meme.