I'm convinced that's why the balloons haven't been shot down in the past. Learning our detection abilities is probably way more important for China than anything they would be able to take a picture of.

We spent multiple days soaking information from them and monitoring them from high altitude. We almost definitely know more about them than they know about our defenses.

The immediate assumption that the Americans are being snookered comes off like reflexive anti-Americanism.

People can see these with the naked eye (or with cameras). If our sophisticated defense systems are failing to match the naked eye... something is wrong.

Most of Canada is unoccupied wilderness. It's a crapload of ground to cover and no naked eyes to be found.

Then what's the point of surveilling that?

Climate Change, and Cute Polar Bear videos for YT.... ;)

My understanding is that only the balloon from last week was huge and easy to see with the human eye. I believe the other UAFs are much smaller. Also there were 3 or 4 during the Trump administration and noone noticed them with their naked eye

People think they notice lots of things with their naked eyes all the time and it doesn't make the news. Reports this week were that they didn't detect them in transit at the time, we only found out after the fact.

Another plausible theory is the Trump administration covered it up because of their deference to Xi in early 2020 (see: comments on COVID being under control).

Yeah, I don't think that's it. Detecting a balloon doesn't take any exotic technology.

Now a hypersonic missile, or a stealth plane -- that would be a test. But losing one of those would be pretty expensive.

I suspect finding a small balloon in the mind-boggling huge space that is American airspace is, can be surprisingly challenging.

My understanding is that these UAFs are much smaller than that first Chinese balloon last week.

It probably also costs a lot more money to shoot down a balloon than it costs China to put a balloon in the air.

I'm not a radar expert, but maybe someone who is can enlighten us?

They can detect an incoming missile, so I don't see the problem. Maybe the one today IS a lot smaller; I don't think we're getting a whole lot of details on that.

As for the money: definitely. The same would be true of drones.

From someone that has done a much smaller balloon launch, it's not the balloon that gets detected as much as the payload. Our civilian weather balloon launch had a metallic reflector in line specifically to make it more visible on radar. The images I've seen of the payload under the large balloon from last week didn't look all that stealthy in shape, but I have no idea what it was made from? If it was made of plastic, would that reflect radar?

The USAF (and any functional air force) has lots of flight time budgeted for its pilots: for training, patrols, etc.

Active duty pilots must fly X number of hours per month to maintain their fight status. Essentially, they practice like athletes (because they are literally athletes, among other things)

So intercepts like these, and even silly stuff like sports event flyovers, come out of their existing budgets.

To actually cost us money in some meaningful way they'd have to send over extremely large quantities of drones that absolutely blow out the existing budgets for our bases.

The missiles are expensive, of course: $400K a pop for those AIM-9X. But the budget for the USAF is ~$160B/year, so again, drop in the bucket.

If they do that, the USAF/US Army missile defense is going to zap their pesky baloons with lasers or regular ammunition.

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/12/07/us-army-laser-stry...

So far they're offering good sport for the USAF. I'm glad they decided to take action and shoot'em down instead of letting them pass undisturbed through US airspace. This should send a clear message to uncle Xi to keep his lantern festival at home.

    lasers or regular ammunition.

Bullets (technically, cannon fire) may not work as well as one would hope: https://eurasiantimes.com/1000-rounds-fired-why-canada-could...

Then stop using expensive missiles to pop a balloon. Are we so scared of a balloon to get into gun range? A short burst of 20mm would be pretty cheap compared to an AIM-9

Off the top of my head...

Ordinance has a best used by if not a shelf life. Use it or lose it probably matters to someone.

Missiles can detonate near a painted target, instead of needing direct contact. If the thing being exploded is hazardous (when exploded), you don't want to be flying nearby.

This is not an exercise. Combat time is valuable, even if shooting down drones/balloons.

Politically popular optics. Everyone likes a boom, just to be sure. What happens if it falls to the ground and on to someone or someone grabs the wreckage or worse, it's never found? Bad optics.

The common tactic of dismissing high stakes situations as idiotic, is intellectually lazy.

I was wondering if modern planes even still had ballistic weapons, since engagement range for missiles is measured in miles. For anyone else wondering, according to [0] they still have guns, since most missiles have a minimum engagement range so there is still a need for short range weapons.

[0] https://planenerd.com/why-fighter-jets-still-have-guns/

It's not even about the expensive missiles - in fact long range Surface-to-Air missiles would be cheaper compared to scrambling fighters around.

That is a lot of bang for the buck.

> Detecting a balloon doesn't take any exotic technology.

Don't they have radar signatures only rivaling that of a lawnmower?

I think its usually a bad bet to assume to know better than military intelligence that has been circling these balloons for several days now (and yes, they were right about Iraq, it just was ignored as pretext to invade)

If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

My gut feeling, having read all about how the balloon was NBD, and it wasn't worth the risk of shooting down over land, it happens all the time, etc., was that the publicity of an airspace incursion this time around required a response along the lines of, "F*CK YOUR BALLOON!".