U.S. literally needed two tries to shoot down a balloon with a $400K missile

Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 12:31pm

When I posted this snark I was simply mocking the stupidity of going through all of this trouble to shoot down balloons.
But it turns out that my sarcasm was just early.

The U.S. military jet that downed an unknown object in the Michigan sky on Sunday missed on its first attempt over Lake Huron, officials told Fox News.

The Air Force F-16 jet was using Sidewinder missiles to attack the target.

"The first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile missed the target," one official said.

Good Lawd! What if the Chinese include kite technology next time? With roman candles!
Congress should give the Pentagon another $800 billion to deal with this balloon/kite/fireworks threat.
Nevertheless, it's important to note that our military has got this under control, and is not making it an even bigger mess.

Citing U.S. officials, Tomlinson wrote on Twitter that a second Sidewinder air-to-air missile was required, and it is "not clear where the first missile landed."
...The cost of each Sidewinder missile is listed as "variable" by the Air Force, but a Newsweek estimate based on the defense budget for the 2021 fiscal year suggests that AIM-9x Sidewinders range between $430,818 and $472,000. The AIM-9X is the newest variant of the missile.
Jodi Vittori, a professor of practice and co-chair of the Global Politics and Security program at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service said that the Sidewinder is "relatively cheap, as far as air-to-air missiles go."

You would think that even a "relatively cheap" missile of $450K would have the same or equal GPS tracking technology that my $150 Android phone has.

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balloons of terror
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Submitted by fire with fire on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 2:20pm

but if you take this balloon bullshit seriously, you will go nuts. Life in post-rational America is simply insane. I suspect that the game plan is to drive us all to insanity. We should change the name of our country to Funny Farm.

The hip term for this is gaslighting, but that movie example is far less crackers than what we absorb on a daily basis from our primary sources of information and our government. I sincerely did not believe that they could cook up any story that is more coo-koo bananas than the Ukraine fable starring Nazis as victims.

But spy balloons and balloon dogfights in the sky are right there on the screen in front of us.

Good fucking luck to all who live in Funny Farm Nation.

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Submitted by doh1304 on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 3:11pm

how stupid it is to try to shoot a helium balloon with a heat seeking missile.

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On to Biden since 1973

Submitted by humphrey on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 4:35pm

machines?

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-UQ0-8ktAM]

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Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 5:28pm
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...is going to be a lasting part of US history. The muted, defensive Monday-morning new stories from the government-compliant media-monopolies suggest that the Pentagon is probably pretty embarrassed.

If they are smart, they'll come clean and identify the owners of, and the instruments found in all FOUR research balloons that were shot down by the US military, using advanced air-to-air missiles.

The downed balloons represent just four of the approximately 12,000 unmanned research balloons that were launched into the earths upper atmosphere during the past week.

If they try to bury it in classified bullshit, it is quite likely that the incident will be burned prominently into the US Historical narrative.

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Submitted by fire with fire on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 6:27pm

@Pluto's Republic and I'm not interested in arguing against your main point here:

If they try to bury it in classified bullshit, it is quite likely that the incident will be burned prominently into the US Historical narrative.

But I have seen absolutely nothing for the last several years to support an affirmative response to the the question posed by your opening passage: If they are smart But I still do not believe they are as stupid as their perverse policies. So I still manage to find room to hope for sanity in high places.

We'll see if this shit gets walked back.

If not, we'll also find out if there is such a thing as a US historical narrative beyond propaganda.

Hope springs eternal.

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Submitted by Pricknick on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 9:25pm
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@fire with fire
than the eternal optimist.

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Submitted by fire with fire on Wed, 02/15/2023 - 4:58pm

@Pluto's Republic .from her email blast:
.

Site logo image Caitlin Johnstone
US Officials Now Say Chinese “Spy Balloon” Flew Over The US Accidentally

Caitlin Johnstone
Feb 15

Listen to a reading of this article:

❖

The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials saying that the Chinese "spy balloon" we've been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all.

The article is titled "U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path," and throughout it alternates between the objective journalistic terms "suspected spy balloon" and "suspected Chinese surveillance balloon" and the US government's terms "spy balloon" and "airborne surveillance device". There is at this time no publicly available evidence that the balloon which was famously shot down on February 4th was in fact an instrument of Chinese espionage; the Chinese government has said that the balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that got blown off course, and the Pentagon's own assessment is that a Chinese spy balloon would not "create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit."

What makes the article so weird is that it actually contains claims which substantiate Beijing's assertion that this was in fact a balloon that got blown off course, yet it keeps repeating the unevidenced claim that it was a "spy balloon".

It looks like the spooks are trying to walk this back, but the mainstream media won't cooperate. check out the rest of it:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/02/15/us-officials-now-say-chinese-spy...

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Submitted by mweens on Tue, 02/14/2023 - 10:56pm

Channeling my best Tamarian from Star Trek, would be

Caligula, sending a Legion to Brittania, to collect seashells.

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Submitted by Shahryar on Wed, 02/15/2023 - 6:54pm
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that would have cost a lot less.

It's amazing how unhinged our society is. People I thought were smart turn out to be willing victims of the propaganda.

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Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 02/15/2023 - 8:06pm
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Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!