KentVillan Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 There's a piece in the FT (paywalled) saying that Taiwan has been noticing these over their airspace in recent months. My guess is it's been going on for ages, is just standard espionage, NATO do it too, and for whatever reason the US have decided to make a big song and dance about it now. The UFO thing is literally just a commander refusing to rule anything out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 13, 2023 VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2023 Just now, KentVillan said: There's a piece in the FT (paywalled) saying that Taiwan has been noticing these over their airspace in recent months. My guess is it's been going on for ages, is just standard espionage, NATO do it too, and for whatever reason the US have decided to make a big song and dance about it now. The UFO thing is literally just a commander refusing to rule anything out. FWIW, the latest 'new Nostradamus' bloke has been predicting WWIII to break out this year, triggered by a plane being brought down on or near Taiwan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted February 13, 2023 Moderator Share Posted February 13, 2023 14 minutes ago, bickster said: No clue, that's your field not mine I'm investigating the use of balloons as taxis Being serious for a moment, and obviously the words are in the tweet, not yours, and also while it's sort of not something the common reporter, or reader might think about, or know - but there's a big clue in the word "reflector", even if they don't know anything about radar. It's like saying "the device was fitted with mirrors to block the light" - most people would say "...er. hold on....mirrors reflect light, Wouldn't they make it more visible, not less?" And that (obvious when you think about it) principle equally applies to corner reflectors - they are typically used to increase the RCS (signature size) of an object which would otherwise be more difficult to detect by radar. If you want to decrease the signature of an object, you either need to coat it with a (very, very, expensive) coating, or change its shape so that it has as few as possible surfaces which will reflect a radar signal back towards to dish from which it was transmitted - so that's why if you look at a stealth jet you can see that they are all angled straight edges which will deflect the signal away from the direction it comes from, while a non-stealthy aircraft will typically have the usual aerodynamic shape which presents a sizeable profile to the radar. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the very basics of it. or TL:DR reporting sometimes would benefit from doing more than just repeating whatever they're told without having a bit of a think first. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danwichmann Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 China are saying they have objects off their coast and ready to shoot them down. Either some deflection or an interesting twist. Quote China ‘Ready to Shoot Down’ UFO Seen Near Shandong Province China says it is preparing to shoot down an unidentified flying object (UFO) spotted off the coast of Rizhao, a city located around 150 kilometers southwest of Qingdao. A viral screenshot of a notice – issued yesterday, February 12 by the Jimo District Department of Marine Development – states that fishing boats in the nearby area should take necessary precautions. It identifies the GPS coordinates of the UFO as 120.51 degrees latitude east and 35.37 degrees longitude north. The notice requests nearby fishing boats to photograph and assist with salvaging debris, wherever possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seat68 Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 Sounds to me like @blandyknows a lot about this facsimile technology. The sort of technology only red china might know about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post chrisp65 Posted February 13, 2023 Popular Post Share Posted February 13, 2023 1 minute ago, Seat68 said: Sounds to me like @blandyknows a lot about this facsimile technology. The sort of technology only red china might know about. My job here is simply to monitor various message boards and chat rooms and spot the ones that give themselves away. Some hole in their cultural camouflage, some little oddity in their speech patterns. Anything that would mark someone out as being not what they appear. The clues can be tiny, just little gaps in everyday knowledge little mistakes that highlight something is amiss. Gravy, on fish. 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted February 13, 2023 Moderator Share Posted February 13, 2023 17 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said: I wonder how small "very small" is. In theory how small could you make an object that could beam back information to a country on the other side of the world? Thumb sized? Could you launch a couple of hundred thousand of those and just wait until one drifts over something useful? That's a good question. There are really 3 or 4 ways of sending information "back" to a country on the other side of the world - if something is really high up, then the radio horizon is (distance beyond which a straight line signal can travel before it gets blocked from the other end by the curvature of the earth) is a very long distance - so from high altitudes, 60,000 feet say (which was where this ballon was said to be flying at) the radio horizon is about 350 miles. So Even at that height if you're using a standard radio transmitter and antenna, you'd need to have a receiver within that 350 mile distance - maybe a ship, say. Or, you could extend that range by having a receiver in the air, also at altitude - then your horizon moves much further out - so in effect you could relay information via one or more other balloons or aircraft. This would mean the size of object isn't really constrained by the radio, but by the other kit - whether that's solar panels, steering mechanism, sensor equipment, means of generating lift (e.g. helium/hydrogen) - so pretty small, but not tiny. The second way of sending data back would be via bouncing it via satellite. In essence a flying mobile phone, for example. But mobile phone coverage over the oggin isn't much cop, so maybe you'd have to use a bespoke system - Starlink, for example. Starlink antennas are a bit bigger than a mobile phone antenna - maybe a foot square. And then there's actual satellite systems built for the purpose Iridium, Intelsat etc. (those are western ones, mind), or G-SAT, which is Russian. I guess the Chinese will have theirs too. So again, you're looking at antenna size, power source size, equipment size and propulsion/ lift requirements size. Given it gets dark, batteries and solar panels will mean that to have any endurance you're looking at quite a reasonable size of vessel, and the weight of that means quite a bit of lift is required. So to conclude - oh, I forgot the other method - HF radio - the (counter intuitive) relatively low frequency radio waves of HF (high frequency) radio will follow the curvature of the earth enabling beyond the horizon communication. But power demands are much higher and antenna size might be problematic, though notch antennas would probably be used. - yeah, so to conclude, if you've got a number of them relaying the data, or are using satellite links then pretty small - a few square metres at a guess, for satellite, and half that for a relay chain of them. I'm presumably about to be proven completely wrong if the US find something the size of a couple of shoe boxes or whatever was being used! I'm not a ballon designer so I'm just sort of working off stuff I do know a little about. But SWAP (size, weight and electrical power) is absolutely the determinant for the design, along with lift, and any cooling or heating needed to protect the electronics, plus then you've got the effects of solar radiation at high altitudes, which causes damage to electronics and equipment.... TL:DR - Couple of oil drums at a guess. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted February 13, 2023 Moderator Share Posted February 13, 2023 23 minutes ago, Seat68 said: Sounds to me like @blandyknows a lot about this facsimile technology... I just copied someone else's 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lichfield Dean Posted February 13, 2023 VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2023 53 minutes ago, Danwichmann said: China are saying they have objects off their coast and ready to shoot them down. Either some deflection or an interesting twist. Kim Jong-Un is chuckling to himself over the utter chaos his balloons are causing. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted February 13, 2023 VT Supporter Share Posted February 13, 2023 1 hour ago, Lichfield Dean said: Kim Jong-Un is chuckling to himself over the utter chaos his balloons are causing. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post blandy Posted February 13, 2023 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted February 13, 2023 They got a close up of one 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desensitized43 Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 It’s amazing how butthurt the Americans act over this when they’ve been running high altitude manned flights in U-2s over other countries for decades. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foreveryoung Posted February 13, 2023 Share Posted February 13, 2023 1 hour ago, desensitized43 said: It’s amazing how butthurt the Americans act over this when they’ve been running high altitude manned flights in U-2s over other countries for decades. I believe U2s were retired decades ago. All done with satellites now, no need for U2s or SR71s, although high altitude reconnaissance aircraft may still exist, we just wouldn't hear about them, aye @blandy ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MNVillan Posted February 14, 2023 Share Posted February 14, 2023 5 hours ago, desensitized43 said: It’s amazing how butthurt the Americans act over this when they’ve been running high altitude manned flights in U-2s over other countries for decades. I’m not a political or national security expert, but I think all of the “outrage” is politically motivated. If these things posed any actual threat, I am sure our national security team would’ve ordered it destroyed far before it was. As it happens, they basically let the thing float across the continental US. Then mainstream media catches wind of this and the conservatives jump all over it. “How can Biden let this Chinese spy balloon float over us and collect information?” Try to paint it as Biden and his administration are weak against China. So then, after a few days of political heat, Biden & his team said eff it, let’s just take it down to save some face with the American people. And now the precedent has been set - gotta shoot ‘em all down. There’s always the chance that they truly didn’t know what the hell it was. Of course, if that was the case, they made the right decision in figuring out what they were dealing with instead of recklessly shooting it out of the sky and running the risk of killing Chinese citizens (and potentially starting WWIII). But with the amount of money invested in our military and intelligence, I find that unlikely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blandy Posted February 14, 2023 Moderator Share Posted February 14, 2023 11 hours ago, foreveryoung said: I believe U2s were retired decades ago. There’s still some in use. Definitely for weather and meteorological stuff, but around 30 are still in service for what they’ve always been used for. They keep being upgraded and life extended. Balloons and satellites haven’t made them obsolete yet. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted February 15, 2023 Moderator Share Posted February 15, 2023 Benign commercial or research devices apparently - sounds like after they shot down the Chinese spy balloon they followed it up with a weather balloon and a couple of science projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted February 17, 2023 Share Posted February 17, 2023 Quote UFO shot down by $400K US missile may have been a $12 hobby balloon One of the UFOs shot down last weekend by the US Air Force with a $400,000 missile may have simply been a $12 balloon belonging to an Illinois enthusiast club, a report said. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently tracked gasbags that recently went missing was the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday. The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 feet off the west coast of Alaska on Friday. By Saturday, based on the balloon’s projected path, it would have been over the central part of the Yukon Territory around the same time a military Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same area of Canada, the outlet reported. The NIBBB — a group of enthusiasts dedicated to creating, releasing and tracking homemade balloons — declared its K9YO device “missing in action” on Saturday https://nypost.com/2023/02/16/ufo-shot-down-by-400k-us-missile-may-have-been-a-12-hobby-balloon/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted February 23, 2023 Share Posted February 23, 2023 Pictures from a US U2 plane Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post theboyangel Posted February 23, 2023 Popular Post Share Posted February 23, 2023 2 hours ago, sne said: Pictures from a US U2 plane And they still haven’t found what they’re looking for… 4 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts