China's spy balloon barrage earns six of its companies a spot on US entity list The US Department of Commerce added six more entities to its blacklist on Friday on grounds of national security after an errant Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down over the US last week. The DoC's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) tweeted: Commerce is adding entities in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to …
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As of the time of writing, 4 down, 95 to be shot down
Is Nena big in China?
Let's hope this ends better than in the song.
99 years of war left no room for victors.
There are no more war ministers nor any fighter jets.
Today I'm making my rounds, see the world lying in ruins.
I found a balloon, think of you and let it fly (away).
(translation of the original German lyrics)
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They only have themselves to blame, it was obvious if the payload suffered a total lost of its floatation aid ie. balloon, then even from 20,000 ft it is going to hit the ground hard.
The US are going to have to get better at in-flight capture and intercept at results in a more controlled descent.
"from 20,000ft"
After you get past a certain distance from the ground, if dropped you reach terminal velocity and stop accelerating before reaching the ground. That distance varies with the object dropped, but it's well under the height of all of the objects.
"going to hit the ground hard."
Yeahbut ... That balloon was rather large ... I would imagine the drag caused by the bits still attached to the hardware would have kept the hardware well below its unadorned terminal velocity.
And no, the water, being uncompressible, wouldn't have cushioned the impact. Much.
But apparently they already know who supplied the parts for it.
I was kinda hoping the Chinese would "prove" it was a weather balloon by publishing the parts list and assembly diagram. But no.
Oh wait, here is a Github account
https://github.com/zjuPeco/Helping-Balloons-Navigate-the-Weather
/s
I suspect that is one of the reasons for using a missile and letting the object have a hard landing; with an array of broken fragments it is easier to claim it was something other than a weather balloon...
But if the US actually want to gain anything useful they are going to have to land an intact object.
"FBI official said"
Said. Yes, that's what they _said_
I'd bet that they knew what the thing could do based on a cursory glance when they pulled the thing out of the water. Even I could figure out what a camera, different shaped/sized antennae etc would be for just by looking at it.
This whole event has shown us multiple things, that China's satellites are much worse then we thought, that they can't do in orbit interception (the US has at least one reusable space plane and Russia has a few interception satellites that can be used a few times each) and that they don't understand that other countries are run differently to China (they could have just purchased a small civil aviation plane in the name of a US citizen and put the equipment in the back and then flown over the sites legally).
> "What we also know is that it could maneuver; that it had propulsion capability and steerage capability and could slow down, speed up; and that it – it was on a path to transit over sensitive military sites,"
So, much like a U2 or SR-71. I feel there is much "pot calling the kettle black" in this latest situation.
I wonder if Santa Claus be giving USA airspace a wide miss this coming christmas?
Any kite-fighting enthusiasts out there?
As I understand it, the object of this sport, which is practised in many countries, is to cut the opponent's kite-line. Normally, the losing kite is thus destabilised and flutters to the ground, but with a sufficiently long 'tail' of line dragging below it, it may be that some can go on flying indefinitely.
How easy is it to see a long piece of thin string from a passing supersonic fighter?
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Meanwhile, The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and The World Meteorological Organization are silent.
Won't they scream "For Chr1st sake, don't down all or weather forecasting balloons ?"
Laughing here of this utter non-sense.
This has not been a total Brit site for a l-o-n-g time. I've been here for around 17 years, even done a few posts here and there. The site was recommended by a relative, started reading the articles, checking Odds and Sods quite frequently. Told some techie friends and coworkers about this great site that featured tech stories and humor about some tech problems we had all run into.
Would you believe that some of the news reported on here isn't given in the US?
I find it hard to believe that the Brits aren't on here more, but I guess the aging group that we are from the early days of computers, internet, networking, building, repairing, and fixing the problems that arise from the interface between the chair and keyboard is starting to get in it's dotage.
Also, we from the USA have been supporting the advertisers by purchasing their products from time to time.
Sometimes the phrase I ordered it from (name a store) since it was talked about on the Register came about, followed by the statement "You ordered that from England?"
So we've helped keep the site open. You're welcome.
PS: You'll have to get in line for that 51st state thing. Puerto Rico and a bunch of islands in the Pacific are ahead of you.
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They need a less destructive way of bursting the balloons. The AIM9 family of missiles are short range heat seekers. Since I doubt you'd get much of a signature from the balloon itself they must be targeting the payload.
You know, the thing they're hoping to carefully analyze afterwards.
What they need is a much slower plane so that they can fill it with holes instead of blowing it to bits. unfortunately they have been too high for helicopters, maybe an ac130 gunship?
And yes I know about the previous failed attempts to shoot down a wayward weather balloon, but these latest ones are reportedly much much smaller so they won't need too many holes to bring them down
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Shooting them ALL down for awhile makes political sense, at the moment. However, over the long term identification of true threats vs. nuisance devices seems necessary.
Also, blasting the skies the 20mm cannon fire, rockets and missiles will eventually result in self inflicted injury. I propose a rocket powered high altitude recovery vehicle (HARVEE) launched from a chase helicopter that could go up there, look at the balloon, allow threat determination and if warranted latch on to it and ground it safely in a predetermined area.
It would move like a quad-copter with rocket engines on outriggers, possibly hexagonal. Some kind of robotic arm to engage the balloons would seem necessary.
NASA space landing vehicles seem like a good place to find already developed technology and engines to do this.
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