China weather balloon or spy craft

tahanson43206 · 2023-02-11 19:01:15

The Canadian shoot-down was a joint US/Canadian operation, apparently. I'm hoping we get to learn what these smaller objects are.

A standard weather balloon is about the size of a small car, so I'm wondering if standard weather balloons are being shot down.

On the ** other ** hand, with miniaturization, a standard weather balloon could probably carry some sophisticated electronics.

In any case, it appears that folks in the US and Canada are a ** lot ** more alert these days.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-02-11 21:10:00

More tech knowledge leads to US blacklists 6 Chinese entities over balloon program

The six entities are Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology Co., China Electronics Technology Group Corporation 48th Research Institute, Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology Co., Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Co., Guangzhou Tian-Hai-Xiang Aviation Technology Co. and Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group Co.

kbd512 · 2023-02-12 05:16:03

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

The Chinese don't have any weapons apart from ICBMs that can reach American shores, so they're using nominal value decoys to distract small-minded people to cause them to fixate on a non-threat here in America while they go after our allies in Taiwan. It's a diversion.

If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

If these were weapons, then we were definitely unprepared for them. They were obviously unexpected if we're just now finding them in large numbers over American airspace. Regardless, we're shooting down balloons that might have $50,000 worth of surveillance equipment, if that much, using missiles that cost upwards of $600,000. I don't know what the exact replacement cost is for FY23, but that was FY18 cost.

The AIM-9X Sidewinder missile that was used to shoot down the Chinese balloon costs taxpayers $427,000.

Hopefully the missiles come down in price now that Raytheon has orders out the wazoo from the US military and our allies. True cost is very difficult to evaluate because replacement costs, rather than the actual cost of the weapons fired is used, under the assumption that if you fire enough of them then you need to replace them. Weapons acquired years ago or upgraded will have a lower actual cost, in general. Most of the billions of dollars of hardware we've sent to Ukraine is older or surplus stock and the quoted value is replacement cost. Well, we're not replacing M113s with new M113s. We now have enough M2 / M3 Bradleys that we're not going to use M113s ever again, but we have many thousands in storage, which actually cost the tax payers money to maintain (unlike the Russians, we don't simply put older weapons or fighting vehicles in a storage yard and then never do anything to maintain them- every year we spend billions to repaint and clean them, remove rust, change the oil, make sure the rocket motors and warheads are still functional, test electronics, etc), so we sent them to Ukraine to help our ally. Stingers are $25,000 or thereabouts.

Anyway, the guidance software and seeker / thermal imaging technology is broadly similar between all of our imaging infrared guidance systems. The Sidewinder, RAM (Sidewinder-based point defense missile, but tube launched and used to bring down incoming anti-ship missiles and drones), Stinger, and Javelin all share strong seeker commonality, with technology and takeaways from one program applied to the rest. At one point, we were trying to achieve seeker and software commonality, but I don't know if that program ever came to fruition or not.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-02-12 12:15:20

Is the news media starting to confuse the balloon with UAP events or is there a link?

427,000 bucks to blow up a Balloon? 700 + Balloons or UFOs seen over Canada last year alone
if there is an idea a military industrial complex exists and if that conspiracy is true
So how much could they potentially make from Canada fighting off a Balloon or UAP invasion

327 Million to boom the UAPs or Ballons in one year alone? that is the cost of the missile alone and not other costs?

427,000 X 768 = 327,936,000 Bucks

AARO is an office within the United States Office of the Secretary of Defense that investigates unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other anomalous phenomena, sometimes termed unidentified aerial phenomena or UAP, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) was a program within the Office of Naval Intelligence used to "standardize collection and reporting" of sightings of UFOs. UAPTF was detailed in a June 2020 hearing of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was an unclassified but unpublicized investigatory effort funded by the United States Government to study unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP). The program was first made public on December 16, 2017. The program began in 2007, with funding of $22 million over the five years until the available appropriations were ended in 2012. The program began in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The UAPTF issued a preliminary report in June 2021. In July 2022 it was announced that the UAPTF would be succeeded as an organization by AARO. On April 12, 2021, the Pentagon confirmed the authenticity of pictures and videos gathered by the Task Force, purportedly showing "what appears to be pyramid-shaped objects" hovering above USS Russell in 2019, off the coast of California, with spokeswoman Susan Gough saying "I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations."

More 'UFO' making news

Object shot down ‘did not closely resemble’ Chinese balloon: White House
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-amer … 5cjxz.html

Sen. Chuck Schumer says the US believes that unknown aerial objects shot down over North America are balloons
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sen-chuck-sc … 25997.html

F-22 jets shot down unknown objects over Alaska and Canada.

Now, UFO spotted flying near China, authorities to shoot it down
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/273 … ot-it-down

China Spots Unidentified Object Flying Near Port City: Paper
https://news.yahoo.com/china-spots-unid … 00791.html

U.S. Jet Shoots Down Flying Object Over Canada
https://www.foxnews.com/world/norad-con … ern-canada

Putin 'is buzzed by colour-changing UFO' spotted by FOUR Russian planes as he makes speech threatening nuclear war against the West
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … r-war.html

Some local Hindu Indian residents from Ludhiana, Punjab claimed that they saw an unidentified flying object (UFO) in the sky., another similar incident also occurred
https://web.archive.org/web/20220531092 … 53170.html

Spaceship or butterfly? New UFO center causing a stir
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14666911

The two photos and two video clips of mysterious objects floating in the sky in Japan were uploaded to the website of the International UFO Lab based in Fukushima two days earlier.

768 Balloons or UAPs were seen last by Canadians in a year alone, you also frequently get harmonic reflection things ‘Tic Tac’, pings, ionized gas things on radar and little glowing winging aura ball unexplained phenomena all the time. You could create an industry of funding for constantly scrambling birds to check out what UFO thing someone reported. Which means that once they start shooting them down, Canada and the USA should be shooting down at least 2.1 of them per day.

Using the same missile to make what was reported as a UFO go boom! it will come at a price of 327 Million to take unknown things out of the sky

Maybe Canada and the USA can share the costs of blasting Balloons or UAPs from the skies?

History of UFOs?

What Were the Mysterious “Foo Fighters” Sighted by WWII Night Flyers?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-spac … 180959847/
Something strange was following the Beaufighter crews of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron.

Balloons and drones among 768 Canadian UFO reports from 2022: researcher
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/balloon … -1.6263801

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-02-18 08:09:11)

SpaceNut · 2023-02-12 15:18:02

Since the shooting down of the first off from the Carolina's there now has been 4 more which have been removed from over Canada and of the US as well.

GW Johnson · 2023-02-14 09:53:25

DOD is seeing more of these things because they are now doing more of the right things to actually see them. I'm speaking of radar detection. An unaluminized plastic sheet balloon envelope is effectively transparent to radar at any frequency. Any payload suspended beneath generates a frequency-dependent and aspect-dependent return echo, but it is small because the payload has to be small (or the balloon cannot fly). Any radar return will show a Doppler effect speed indication, but it will read low at wind speed from a balloon.

What they've been looking for are airplanes, missiles, and maybe drones intruding into our airspace. They've been looking with the only means available to them: radar. Such targets might have a low return echo (down in the background noise) if they are stealthy, but will show a high Doppler velocity indication representative of aircraft and missile speeds. They've been ignoring low-return echoes with low Doppler.

That is what has changed, generating the chaos we have seen for a response: they are now (finally) investigating targets that show low Doppler, and there are a lot of them. That is because a lot of people are flying balloons and other slow-flying stuff. It's a sort of "trash", and there is a lot of it. Most of this "trash" will be lower-altitude stuff, but a few people (and many countries' military) are clever enough to get high-altitude flight out of their balloons and other things.

Most of the low Doppler stuff flying at lower altitudes (at or under 20,000 feet like the Lake Huron object) are likely domestically-produced "trash". Not always, but likely. Stuff flying near the stratopause (like the two small things flying at 40,000 feet over Alaska and the Yukon) are more technically sophisticated to fly that high. I would guess the odds are rather even as to whether these were produced by domestic government agencies or foreign militaries, or by the rare private or corporate concerns with a lot of technical know-how.

Low-Doppler stuff flying at very high altitudes has to be very technically sophisticated. That would include the Chinese spy balloon flying at 60,000+ feet shot down off South Carolina. It would also include the USAF Project Excelsior balloon flight tests of bailout developments in the late 1950's to 70-something thousand feet that Joe Kittinger made. The final flight of 3 that he made was to almost 103,000 feet. All 3 were free fall parachute jumps. Here just a few years ago, Kittinger's records were broken twice by private concerns doing balloon-borne jumps from near 130,000 feet.

It would only take a bit more design effort to fly balloon-borne objects to around 150,000 feet. USAF and USN have had fighter aircraft capable of level flight at altitudes around 58,000 to 65,000 feet for some years now. The F-22 is capable of 65,000 feet, and currently in service as a front-line item, which is why it was used for most of the recent shootdowns (Huron was an F-16).

It would be unlikely for a radar-guided missile to get a good lock on anything but a very large suspended payload, although such missiles do have a longer range. The infrared-guided Sidewinder was used on at least the Chinese spy balloon. These have a much shorter useful range, only a single-digit number of miles. What that means for a shoot-down with missiles is that the aircraft must get within a couple of miles of the balloon's altitude, in order to have any hope of a hit. Co-altitude is much more sure, as long as your missile's IR seeker can get a target lock at all.

These same weapon guidance limitations apply to any sort of laser weapon, whether surface-based or airborne. What are you going to guide the beam with when there is virtually no radar return, and IR won't lock on beyond a single-digit number of miles, provided there is a payload generating heat at all? If "electro-optic", that means you are using visible light. How do you see such a target at night? Or on a cloudy day? And how do you get effective damage coupling between the beam and the balloon envelope, when the envelope is whitish clear (nearly transparent)? You might get some damage coupling hitting a suspended payload, but that doesn't pop the balloon and bring it down.

All the spy balloon maker has to do to avoid an F-22 shoot-down risk is raise his balloon gas bag size-to-payload mass ratio. That is how you fly higher. Anything above about 70-75,000 feet is going to prove pretty much invulnerable to shootdowns. We no longer have planes in service that fly that high. The U-2 and the SR-71 did, but they are long-retired, and were unarmed. The TR-2 version of the U-2 is still flying, but is still an unarmed craft.

The SR-71 had an armed interceptor version called the YF-12A. Like the -71, it typically flew Mach 3 to 3.2 at just about 85,000 feet. But, it would be really hard to get a target lock with an IR-guided missile flying at such speeds. The glow from the hot skin of the aircraft would swamp the faint emission from a rather cold balloon-borne payload. And there's not much RF signature to support using a radar-guided missile.

So if the spy balloon people choose to fly higher, then just what might we actually do about it? That's a really serious question, is it not?

Just some more food for thought.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-02-14 10:20:49)

kbd512 · 2023-02-15 00:28:55

Fact: The balloons were detected by ground-based radar, which is how they were tracked across the entire country and subsequently shot down by F-22s.

Fact: AIM-9X locked onto the target, guided to the target, and obliterated the target. People keep underestimating the lethality of these all-aspect IR-guided weapons and they keep killing targets like they're going out of style. We could easily create a long range variant with a lower-thrust rocket motor and much longer duration burn. Flight speed will be significantly lower, but maximum speed is not required to kill balloons. High-subsonic speed is more than sufficient to kill small drones and balloons, and the lower speeds under power will greatly. It can also be fitted with larger control surfaces, if required. Alternatively, we mate AIM-9X's guidance package to an AIM-120D's rocket motor and use the F-35's powerful sensors to guide it to the target. I believe that Lockheed's Cuda and Raytheon's Peregrine missiles already embody this concept of data link usage plus multi-spectral sensors including IR, UV, and radar. These missiles have more than enough range to take out a high-altitude balloon, they're lighter than the AIM-9 or AIM-120 and they're even designed to zoom to over 100,000 feet as part of their ballistic flight profile to reach long range targets.

Sidewinder now has an operating mode that allows the firing aircraft to guide it most of the way to the target using the firing aircraft's much more powerful onboard sensor suite, which is also used for high off-axis shots, including firing the missile "over-your-shoulder" at a pursuing enemy fighter. You don't have to get too creative to allow that external guidance suite to steer the missile into the basket of airspace occupied by the enemy aircraft / drone / balloon, and then start using internal guidance only when the weapon is much closer to the target. Alternatively, you could guide the weapon all the way to the target using radio or laser guidance, which is how the laser-guided British Starstreak MANPAD works.

Fact: The advanced 360 degree electro-optical suite carried by the F-35 was used to find, identify, and then read off writing on the side of one of the smaller balloons. It was written in Chinese (sent back to the ground by the F-35's sophisticated high-speed data links and interpreted by a Chinese speaker in real-time), so the pilot of the F-22 was told to terminate the target, which he or she did. Whether it was a wayward Chinese weather balloon, a spy drone, or space aliens, said target was very dead after the F-35s and F-22s were done with it.

Fact: Laser radar / "LIDAR" doesn't require IR, UV, radars, or external light sources to operate. It generates its own light source and some of it will reflect off the target and back to the source emitter. This is how the lasers used in the airborne laser program were able to track, lock on to, and fry Sidewinder missiles. The "target painting laser" functioned exactly like a continuous wave radar signal that guided AIM-7 Sparrow missiles to their targets. That 747 had an onboard radar and full EO suite to aid in long-range target acquisition (kinda like the F-35), but the low power laser was used to lock onto and track the target to its destruction (burning a hole in the Sidewinder's rocket motor casing, which turned it into confetti shortly thereafter). A low-power laser painted the target and then the high power laser burned a hole in the target.

At 65,000ft, you're above pretty much all clouds that would significantly scatter light or help conceal the target. The target in question has a gas envelope that's probably about the same thickness as a condom, which means it's not a particularly challenging target for a laser to burn a hole through. The Sidewinders were arguably much more difficult to destroy in-flight, but they were destroyed nonetheless. The Raytheon laser was used to burning holes through the hood and intake manifolds of Toyota trucks, setting them on fire (because the fuel being injected through the manifold is gasoline) and outright killing people. This took place well above sea level in Afghanistan, but it clearly worked.

If a balloon manages to get to very high altitude, then the laser is firing through a near-vacuum, which means its power is not attenuated to nearly the same degree as a shot taken closer to sea level.

I'm thinking that we could use that giant hole in a F-35B's fuselage or remove the M-61 Vulcan from the F-22 to make room for a laser turret capable of putting a hole in a balloon without spending a half million to a million dollars on a missile.

Fiber lasers are capable of incredible bursts of power for very brief periods of time. In the case of the laser I posted about with a 50W average power output, it was capable of brief 250,000W bursts of power, or 5,000X its nominally rated output.

For a 50,000W laser, 5,000X would mean 250,000,000W for about 1/100th of a second. That's more than enough to fry any balloon ever made, no matter how large or small, even from 20+ miles away.

This is the size of the 50,000W ground-based laser turret Raytheon is working on:

4501657_mck-3269--28003-29-lead.jpg?rev=fe71fb49e478408586a7bb1bb6b47e52

As you can see, it's considerably smaller than the F-35B's lift fan or the 20mm ammo drum for the F-22's Vulcan, as well as being no heavier after you add in the bank of super capacitors to fire it.

GW Johnson · 2023-02-16 14:22:10

I know the air-to-air laser weaponry is starting to show up. I'd like to see it tested operationally a bit before we depend upon it. Beam guidance is an issue, especially for low-signature targets. Beam damage coupling is an issue with both guidance accuracy, and with the reflectivity and transparency of the target. It'll probably work about as you expect, but it is wise to verify that, under real field conditions.

I understand the AIM-7 Sparrow, the AIM-9 Sidewinder, and the AIM-120 AMRAAM very well, having worked many years in the plant where those rocket motors were made. I also understand how the missile guidance works, having modeled all sorts of engagements in that rocket plant, and also having worked in a countermeasures plant, where we had to have a good working knowledge of seekers, guidance, and signature effects.

An unmetallized gas bag left more-or-less whitish-clear in color has next-to-nothing radar and infrared signature. It would be the far smaller payload suspended beneath that would have some radar and IR signature. Depending upon what exactly is being done by that payload, it might still not have very much IR signature. The vehicle as a whole would have a visible light signature, but only in broad daylight against a clear sky. On a cloudy day or at night, there is nothing to see by visible light. Doesn't matter whether it's eyes or some EO device, both work by visible light.

There might be a negative contrast "signal" (shadow, actually) to read in the UV, for at least the payload. As to the gas bag, that depends upon the transparency of the gas bag material to UV. But either way, that's only in daylight, and it's rather weak at best on a cloudy day.

If you are flying above the clouds (above 35-45,000 feet), the cloudy day troubles go away for "seeing" the thing by visible light, but then again, you will not see anything at night. Same applies to negative contrast UV.

What has changed recently is NORAD, which watches over all of North America with radar, has for the first time stopped ignoring "radar anomalies" that show a low Doppler velocity. Before, they were only looking for airplanes and missiles, which all show Doppler higher than wind speeds, and by a large margin. Now they are looking at all those low-velocity "anomalies", and seeing a bunch of objects (that were always there, just here-to-fore ignored).

GW

SpaceNut · 2023-02-16 20:24:56

The real question should be is how many did we not detect and what did they fly over in the past.

GW Johnson · 2023-02-17 10:25:30

Spacenut:

True enough!

All that has been revealed publicly so far is 5 large ones with the characteristics of high-altitude spy balloon. 4 were unrecognized until after-the-fact, covering a 6 year interval. 1 was recognized real-time. I'm unsure why or how this got started, but they "saw" this 5th one coming, right from its launch from Hainan Island.

That would be the culmination of all sorts of intelligence gathering, not just NORAD radar. Just remember, you only see what you are looking for.

Whether there were any others from before 6 years ago, who knows? No one is saying. I doubt we will ever hear about that.

Now that they are actually looking for such objects, the first problem that cropped up is all the nonmilitary "trash" floating around up there. How do you tell that from a spy balloon? They all have the same Doppler, floating on the wind.

I think there is now agreement that the other 3 objects shot down in rapid succession were not spy balloons. For one thing, the altitude was too low, it made them much more vulnerable to shootdown. Not knowing threat from trash, plus being surprised by the existence of the threat, is what created the chaotic reaction we have seen, from folks trying to be safe instead of sorry.

The size of the radar signature may not be a useful screening tool. It'll be low for a non-metallized spy balloon, but a small metallized object might have the same size radar signature. Altitude might be a better screening tool. Spy balloons need to cruise very high in order to be more invulnerable to shoot-down; I think the Chinese just found out "for sure" that 60-70,000 feet is not high enough. There is a very good reason that the design altitudes for the U-2 and the SR-71 were in the 80-90,000 foot range.

We'll see what they come up with. But flying up there and seeing the thing up close and personal is likely the surest means of identification. Such doesn't work good at high relative velocity, so a reprise of the SR-71 would not be the best means to do such identification.

Some sort of small sounding rocket might serve, especially if you can find some way to match its apogee-out altitude with the target altitude. But you have to be close under the path of the balloon when you launch. A mixed-propulsion airplane doing near-vertical ascents is another way to do it, one that transports human eyes to the close vicinity at low relative speeds for identification.

Just some food for thought, from someone old enough and experienced enough with this stuff not to believe all the marketing hype about the new airplanes, new sensors, and new weapons. Such hype only gives you exaggerations of the upsides. There are always unspoken downsides. And sometimes they are quite serious (compare the service ceilings of the F-35 variants to those of the F-22, the FA-18, the F-16, and the F15, for example).

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2023-02-17 10:34:10)

tahanson43206 · 2023-02-17 13:53:55

For GW Johnson .... the solution would appear to be design/construction/testing/deployment of a high altitude dirigible able to fly continuously at 100,000 feet or so.

While I can sympathize with ideas for using aircraft or rockets, I see those as less than ideal for the purpose of inspecting high flying, slow moving objects.

I recommend using hydrogen for this vehicle. It does not need the expensive helium that would be better used for manned balloon flight.

This would be just one more drone to be managed (in this case) by the Air Force acting on behalf of Homeland Security.

(th)

Steve Stewart · 2023-02-17 19:42:35

This is an interesting article that was in Scientific America. I think it validates what Dr. GW Johnson said in post #31.

Why We’re Suddenly Spotting Spy Balloons
Just how many balloons are usually floating over the U.S., and who is keeping track of them?
At any given time, there could be hundreds or thousands of floating objects overhead—but the vast majority are innocuous. For instance, nearly 100 National Weather Service (NWS) sites release balloons twice a day to measure things like temperature and humidity.
...
“There’s probably at least 100 [large balloons] in the air, on any given day,” says Mick West, a writer and investigator of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs.
Radar can detect all of these objects, in addition to the occasional bird, some clouds and the many mylar party balloons that go whizzing into the sky each year. But monitoring every little airborne speck would create too much instrument noise, making it difficult to pick out actual threats. Because of this, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a combined U.S.-Canada defense organization, uses algorithms to filter smaller objects out of radar readings.

If China has been sending balloons our way for so long, why are we only detecting them now?
It’s pretty simple: “Now that the U.S. military and the U.S. government are looking for them, we’re probably more likely to see them,” Machain points out.
...
Remember how NORAD’s radar detection system filters out smaller objects? Since the detection of the large surveillance balloon, the organization has been widening that filter to pick up signals such as those from the three balloons shot down this weekend. “Previously, they had things set up to filter out what they would describe as clutter on the radar,” West explains. “These newer ones are the result of a heightened sense of caution. (They) modified the algorithm that they use to determine whether something is of interest or not, and so things that have been there all along are now popping up for the first time.”

Here's another interesting article

Why the U.S. used missiles, not cheap bullets, to shoot down Chinese balloon, 3 unidentified objects
The unidentified floating octagon shot down over Lake Huron in upper Michigan required two Sidewinders, because the first one failed to detect the object, "did not fuse," and crashed "harmlessly" into Lake Huron, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
...
But "the military's ability to respond to balloons and similar craft is constrained by physics and the capabilities of current weapons," The Washington Post reports, and you can't really pop a giant balloon with gunfire at 40,000 feet.
"You can fill a balloon full of bullet holes, and it's going to stay at altitude," David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and fighter pilot, tells the Post. The air pressure that high up doesn't allow helium to freely escape through small holes, even if fighter jets flying by at hundreds of miles per hour can riddle the near-stationary balloon with bullets. Canada figured that out the hard way in 1998, when it tried to bring down a giant runaway weather balloon launched from Saskatchewan to measure ozone levels, CBC News recalled right after the Chinese spy balloon incident. "Canadian CF-18 fighter jet pilots caught up with the balloon off the coast of Newfoundland and took aim, firing more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition at it. But the balloon survived the assault, soldiering on over the North Atlantic," floating above British, Norwegian, and Russian airspace before finally crashing in Finland.
The British press roasted Canada's Air Force pilots for failing to pop the rogue balloon, but then British and U.S. pilots also tried to shoot it down and failed.

kbd512 · 2023-02-18 11:00:26

tahanson43206,

Aerostats or blimps have a role to play within airborne sensor networks to identify objects of interest, and were used to great effect over Afghanistan to supply persistent signals and sensor intelligence to our air and ground forces without re-tasking satellites, but they are not suitable for interception of balloons because they are largely at the mercy of the wind, just like these Chinese spy balloons. Lockheed-Martin did extensive work on synthetic aperture radar blimps. To your point, these blimps proved to be much more cost-effective than satellites and could operate for weeks at a time at high altitude. Unlike satellites, they could be easily retrieved for maintenance or upgrades, and not limited to a semi-fixed orbit. The flexible solar panels and regenerable fuel cells onboard supplied just enough power to keep them stationary in the jet stream at all times, day or night. Since they effectively "hover" over the battlefield and anyone with the correct equipment can receive the signal, there is no delay associated with bouncing signals off a half dozen satellites to funnel the data into the correct network. I think those were inflated by Helium, not Hydrogen. as Hydrogen degrades the gas bags and escapes faster than Helium. Most of the Helium supply comes from Russia or Ukraine or China, so Hydrogen may be required in the near future.

One key feature of the Lockheed blimps was that they were slightly heavier than air, which made them more maneuverable and faster, but they are not capable of interception at any significant speed. It might take them days or even weeks to reach a point several hundred miles away.

Lockheed-Martin High Altitude Long Endurance Airship Demonstrator (HALE-D) - 08-Mar-2022 Project Update

Basic characteristics of the HALE-D airship are outlined below:
• Type: Non-rigid gas envelope (blimp) with ballonets
• Length: 240 feet (73.1 m)
• Diameter: 70 feet (21.3 m)
• Gas volume: 500,000 ft3 (14,158 m3)
• Airship mass: 3,800 lb (1,724 kg)
• Payload: About 80 lbs (36 kg)
• Mission payload: High-resolution camera system and
communications equipment, 150 watts payload power
• Mission duration: 2 to 3 weeks
• Maximum altitude: 60,000 feet (18,288 m)
• Power source: 40 kW-hr, 270 volt lithium ion batteries
supplemented by a 15 kW lightweight, thin-film, amorphous
silicon photovoltaic array on the top of the gas envelope
o First airborne use of flexible substrate cells
• Propulsion: Two flank-mounted electric motor-driven propellers,
2 kW propulsion power
• Speed: 18 knots cruise; 26 knots maximum

Crash Analysis:

“It was noticed a decrease in the rate of climb, which could take the airship to leave the restricted area defined by the American air traffic control agency (Federal Aviation Administration - FAA). It was decided to command an emergency recovery, with release of the helium gas. The aircraft descended on trees, after 2 hours and 40 minutes of flight. During the recovery operation, after removal of most of the equipment, a short circuit in solar panels caused a fire, destroying the aircraft. No person was injured due to the accident. After the accident analysis, it was verified that the rate of climb decrease was caused by freezing in the air valve.”

That kind of thing is not going to "intercept" any spy balloon not already in its flight path. Take note of the scale size reference drawing on Page 8 of the document. The tiny subscale demonstrator, carrying 80lbs of payload, is almost as long as a football field.

In case it's not covered in the document, the "ISIS" acronym means "Integrated Sensor Is Structure", which, as the name implies, the synthetic aperture radar held within the balloon envelope is actually a part of the overall structure of the airships / blimp / balloon that helps it maintain its shape.

The reason this project has cost so much, is that it's developing power and propulsion systems that use thin film solar, regenerable Hydrogen fuel cells, and ISIS technology as part of the overall platform design for persistent battlefield surveillance.

SpaceNut · 2023-12-29 08:54:01

After a period of time, we are still learning what they were doing.

AA1mbwLJ.img?w=634&h=423&m=6

US intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a US internet provider to communicate

AA1mbK7d.img?w=634&h=381&m=6

SpaceNut · 2024-01-26 19:01:08

SR-71 engine https://youtu.be/MJrXUh0eZjw?si=63yFa1s_34mnFqgd

SpaceNut · 2024-02-25 09:36:34

Here’s what the mysterious high-altitude balloon that flew over US Friday really was

Federal investigators tracked the small balloon, flying at an altitude between 43,000 and 45,000 feet, until it traversed beyond US lines sometime during the night, the North American Aerospace Defense Command told CBS News.
Fighter jets for NORAD, the nation’s airspace watchdog, intercepted the balloon shortly as it hovered over Utah Friday.

SpaceNut · 2024-03-10 12:10:15

'Large Balloon and Payload' Confirmed by Government off Alaska, But Is It for Spying?

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