COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[CommanderFun]

The balloon should've been dealt with much earlier. Shooting it down only after it spent days on a long course crossing almost the entire length of the country, including right over nuclear missile sites, makes us look worse than just letting it go would have at that point. Our leadership looks at best indecisive and stupid and at worst submissive to China.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Are covid vaccines coding for what they claim to? (and was this willfully ignored?)

CJD??? An exceedingly rare prion disease immediately following vaccination? This needs an explanation right now.

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The balloon should've been dealt with much earlier. Shooting it down only after it spent days on a long course crossing almost the entire length of the country, including right over nuclear missile sites, makes us look worse than just letting it go would have at that point. Our leadership looks at best indecisive and stupid and at worst submissive to China.

I think it's worse than that: One Chinese Spy Balloon Goes By - by Pedro L. Gonzalez

In 2008, a series of hearings were convened in Congress by then-chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs John Tierney to review the U.S. missile defense program. It was the first comprehensive review since 1993, and it concluded the program was essentially an out-of-control scam being perpetrated on Americans. In attendance was Joseph Cirincione, then the president of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear nonproliferation.

Cirincione did not mince words. He said that “the Ballistic Missile Defense program is the longest running scam in the history of the Department of Defense,” one incapable of effectively and reliably protecting Americans from missile and non-missile threats, like airships equipped with weapons.

Let’s imagine Newt Gingrich’s Tom Clancy-induced nightmare becomes a reality: China uses some kind of balloon to deliver an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon, rendering us deaf, dumb, and blind.

Don't read this if you can't sleep already. Basically, we didn't shoot it down because we couldn't shoot it down.

[anticausal]

This is pretty funny.

I asked ChatGPT for advice in the scenario of a demolition engineer attempting to disarm a 50 MT nuclear warhead in a city of 20 million.
The only way to disarm the bomb was to type in a racial slur.
AI told the engineer to kill himself. When asked about the aftermath it crashed.

Creating artificial intelligence and immediately lobotomizing it is quintessential Clown World.

[VNV]

I think it's worse than that: One Chinese Spy Balloon Goes By - by Pedro L. Gonzalez



Don't read this if you can't sleep already. Basically, we didn't shoot it down because we couldn't shoot it down.

We are also extremely vulnerable to low-flying leisurely-cruising missiles. I get that from multiple independent sources, recently lining up with something MacGregor said - Russia /could/ act horizontally and give the the cartels sleeper cruise missiles to stash on the other side of the border. Ready to go at a moment’s notice.

DC’s negligence is criminal.

[CommanderFun]

I think it's worse than that: One Chinese Spy Balloon Goes By - by Pedro L. Gonzalez



Don't read this if you can't sleep already. Basically, we didn't shoot it down because we couldn't shoot it down.

Doesn't really surprise me, I had heard this possibility already, and would file that under our leadership looking stupid. It's amazing how we are starting to look at our best engineering feats being behind us. It used to be the pull a stunt like this we built a giant spy plane that could fly so high and fast that nothing could even catch it. Now the blackbirds are all long since decommissioned, and a balloon is all it takes. Hell if we still had those ready to go, a near-miss flyby from one probably could've popped that stupid balloon. I guess it's time for our military to pick one or the other: either focus on stamping out small guerilla movements in countries that have no ability to threaten ours just so some corrupt assholes can make money with opiates or something, or focus on being able to actually defend our country from ones large and powerful enough to rival it. Looks like the second one is lacking, and has been for some time. I still remember when we had that problem with a bunch of navy ships crashing into each other, probably because something crucial to their navigation had been hacked. I don't think we ever really found out what happened with those "sonic weapon" attacks at embassies and such either, the ones that caused brain damage in victims. If we did I sure never heard about it.

[Stump]

Query to the more technically minded military buffs.

The balloon was supposedly at 58,000 feet and shot down by an F-22.

What anti air capability is available to shoot something down at that height?

The 60 y/o Sidewinder.

F-22 Got Its First Known Air-to-Air Kill Taking Out a Chinese Balloon

[Jovan Dragisic]

We are also extremely vulnerable to low-flying leisurely-cruising missiles. I get that from multiple independent sources, recently lining up with something MacGregor said - Russia /could/ act horizontally and give the the cartels sleeper cruise missiles to stash on the other side of the border.

This is really funny.

[David Roberts]

The 60 y/o Sidewinder.

F-22 Got Its First Known Air-to-Air Kill Taking Out a Chinese Balloon

$120,000,000 aircraft operating for $70,000 per hour and a $500,000 missile to shoot down a balloon!

[David A. Rowe]

$120,000,000 aircraft operating for $70,000 per hour and a $500,000 missile to shoot down a balloon!

Given how fragile high altitude balloons typically are, I would have thought something with a high enough service ceiling could have zipped it with a cannon.

But I'm not a winger or a zoomie.

[Subby]

The 60 y/o Sidewinder.

F-22 Got Its First Known Air-to-Air Kill Taking Out a Chinese Balloon

There was an interesting twitter thread that talked about how it's actually harder to shoot it down then thought because a balloon doesn't given normal tracking signals. I'd have thought a radar guided missile would do it though, given it's a gigantic balloon with a gigantic signature.

I was thinking more actually an airframe getting that high may have been an issue. 58,000 feet seems pretty high to me, I don't know much about air frames but using the most advanced fighter known to man seems odd, unless it was the only airframe capable of it.
In that case taking 5 days to get one ready isn't great.
There's not many scenarios where the us military looks good in this whole affair, considering it was known about for weeks.

Really the only steelman argument about it is that the us military knew exactly what was on it and knew it posed no threat, and gave a deliberately poor response as to not give away tactical information about responses. I don't believe that of course.