119 Replies to “Balloon Goes Pop”

  1. That was another good shot by Valeriy Fedorovych who used his rifle to shoot down the Russian Su-34 jet flying over Ukraine last September.

        1. It is bullshit.
          If Forbes article is correct we should stop wasting 100’s of billions on stealth fighters and bombers and just buy a couple million balloons.

          BTW: An F-22 used an AIM-9 Sidewinder to down a balloon? WTF. That missile costs $300,000 -$400,000 a piece. You couldn’t use your 20 mm gun.

          1. Agreed?? Would it not have made more sense to punch a few 20mm holes in it and let it fall to the ground slowly rather than have frogmen swimming in the ocean to retrieve what?? Broken parts of 35 MM cameras??

            In 1982, I was working up a field of summerfallow about 20 miles Northwest of Assiniboia, Sask. where I observed a few brightly colored balloons tethered to the guy wire of a power pole. At first, I thought it was a prank from my hired man. Upon close examination, I found a card attached to the helium balloons that said something about a High School grad party in a small town near Denver, Colorado. Upon finding the place on a map, I realized that the balloons had followed a jet stream and made it there in less than 36 hours. I personally think the balloon shot above the North Carolina border is a commercial balloon, could be from anywhere. And we’ll never know where. Joe Biden however did get his claim to fame for the weekend.

    2. ‘The Ghost of Kyiv” was on standby in case Val missed. The parts probably landed on ‘Snake Island’. Zelensky will hand them over for a couple of hundred billion.

    1. I haven’t seen any acknowledgement from China that it’s theres. Right now we just have the word of those who pounded Russian Collusion and the safety and efficacy of the Covid “vaccine” that it is Chinese. I think that this option, and looking for a more clandestine surveilance method for flyover country, is much more likely.

      Mind you, I haven’t looked into it in any depth. And find the whole thing almost as funny as Tucker Carlson’s call for the US to free us (Sask, AB, BC) from the tyrrany of the regions where the maple trees grow wild. Oh, that’s not what he said? Pity.

      1. @C-Miner
        The Chinese readily admitted it was their balloon but no doubt lying when they claimed it was just a weather balloon.

  3. Of course Joe’s handlers delayed this until it was over the ocean and made recovery of the spy parts very problematical.

    Joe said he wanted to shoot it down earlier, but his woke military delayed it.

    I can only imagine if that combo had been in charge during the Cuban missile crisis.

    Lloyd Austin thanked the Canadian government for tracking this. How long have they know?

    1. Shooting it down over the ocean insures that the spy parts don’t end up on somebody’s private property. The recovery team would be prepositioned.

    2. If Xi had sent FJB a set of instructions on how the CCP wanted the US to handle it, would those instructions be any different from what FJB actually did? Let it fly all across the country, then destroy it over the ocean so it breaks into parts that are spread all over the ocean floor and hard to recover, and let the salt destroy anything you can revover

  5. Yeah I have all kinds of reservations about the “Chinese” part of the balloon. It allegedly floated from China across the Pacific along the Aleutians across Alaska and followed the mountains through BC and AB where it was spotted over Montana. Two days later it is over the Atlantic? That has to be record speed for a balloon doncha think? I have heard of the US using high altitude balloons to spy on Americans so …..

    1. If it got caught in any part of the jet stream (it *was* a high-altitude balloon, supposedly), then two days to cross the CONUS is actually kinda slow.

      1. Could’ve been sent up off one of their fish ‘ trawlers ‘ off the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.
        You know, the trawlers that scrape every living thing out of the ocean that can be eaten and sent back to the Motherland, damn whomever’s waters they are stealing it from.

      2. I have been checking the jet stream weather maps and nope. There are high winds aloft over the east coast but not over the area traversed by the balloon. Not to mention the winds at altitude would have caused it to S curve and end up over Atlantic Canada or Maine not the Carolinas.

    2. The Japanese delivered fire-bombs to mainland US during WWII using this method. They started a few fires and killed a couple of people, but it was intended as a weapon of terror. And failed.

      It doesn’t take today’s technology to achieve.

      1. C miner those balloons went over Canada as well .Pretty sure the people they killed thought they were weapons of terror

        1. Did Canadians die? The only report I can find of deaths is that of a woman and her five children in Longview, Washington, who made the mistake of examining a landed bomb. Knew of the balloons trying to ignite the forests; didn’t think had succeeded. Though was surprised to read that one balloon made it through to Moose Jaw and another to Milton, Saskatchewan.

  6. Suppose the Chinese send an ICBM loaded with a couple of megatons over here, by ‘mistake’.?

    Will Joe and his woke Pentagon not attempt to stop it with an ABM because of possible collateral damage?

    1. My thoughts exactly – they could have put Hiroshima technology on that thing and it would have worked. We’re supposed to be worried about sleek radar avoiding hypersonic missiles. We let a slow motion balloon creep across the ocean

    2. They were taking abundant caution. If they had knocked it down right away, the rabid repugdogs would be out howling if any civilians were hurt from the falling debris.

      1. Hey A$$whole CannotgoofNB, if Trump was still in that thing would not have made across the 49th.
        Would have landed near Pincher Creek. Maybe.

  7. The balloon caused no damage to the US and was leaving US airspace when it was destroyed. The government of China will sue the US for destruction of property and win and international civil aviation authorities will sanction the US.

  8. I think the Indian government should be paid to release ten thousand Winnie the Pooh balloons over China.

  9. I call BS & hysteria.

    This is (was) a balloon, you can’t steer it.* If an evil Chinaman/Chinaperson wanted to Spy on the Good ‘ol US of A, this would not be the way that he/zhe/it would do it. Because you would have FA ability to target it to anything within 100’s of miles.

    But a useful chance opportunity to stir up a bit of war fever…

    *except in a very minor way

    1. DoD admitted it was manoeuverable and its purpose was surveillance.
      Knock it down and ask questions later. Speaking of questions, I have some for the Canadian government.

      1. @RedPop:
        Yeah, apparently this thing floated across part of western Canada without being noticed by our military. It was said the balloon was the size of 3 buses. They should be a little embarrassed if they never noticed. I suppose it can be argued plausibly that they were keeping it under wraps and alerted the USA military. Or maybe not.

          1. @Chris: Yes, I heard about that later on the news, that the military were aware of the balloon well before it was officially acknowledged. It took a civilian reporting it on social media to start the ball moving (or the balloon floating).

    2. Well, if you can predict the jet stream (and you can reasonably well for a decent period of time) all you need is a “very minor” course adjustment. But that’s not the issue. If this was a Chinese reconnaissance jet it wouldn’t have lasted 10 seconds in the air.

      1. And the course adjustment is “go higher” or “go lower”. Find the level where the wind is blowing the right direction. Too many will think rockets or propellers will be needed to “steer”, but that’s not so at this scale.

  11. Tough call, not knowing what was it’s purpose was, or what it contained.. Shoot it down early or shoot it down late, either options to minimize damage, what if it was discharging something, it could have salted the jet stream with an agent.. was it a trial run? An EMP or other device would be big enough to spot.
    With all the various technology we now ‘enjoy’, it really has made the world seem like a smaller place!

  13. If this was a test of the decisiveness of the US leadership, they scored poorly.

    Though for this one incident that was reported, you have to think there are hundreds more. China didn’t say, “Gosh, we can only afford one balloon, sure hope it makes it over to North America!” And we have to be detecting most of them. I wonder why news of this one was allowed out into the media world?

  14. A successful psyop, with great and favorable data, no matter who launched it.
    Yes, the people can now be panicked by a freakin’ balloon, and it even had political ramifications.
    Now everybody knows that launching a few of these is enough to throw the USA into conniptions.
    A million bucks worth of them launched from a ship in the pacific would be funny.
    We are ripe for the next plandemic or whatever.

    1. It’s not people panicked by a balloon….it is the willingness of the U.S. to even allow the bloody thing into U.S. air space.

      1. Do you picture a giant fence at 100 000 feet? Do you actually want the gov’t to have a “no-sparrow-shall-fall-unnoticed” surveillance web over the entire country? Do you have any idea how much that would cost, especially to detect freakin’ balloons? Are you that afraid?
        Before you start your fear-mongering over possible EMP or bio-attacks, do you think those would be without consequence, like the use of a whole lot of ICBMs?
        What is wrong with you people?

  15. Stupid is as stupid does.

    This was much as a probing exercise as an intelligence exercise.

    The Chinese found out what the response to something like this would be.

  16. Well… Joe … “took care of it” … just like he “took care of” the Nordstream pipeline. What a toothless tough guy … let the balloon traverse the USA … then shoot it down, with the permission of the ChiComs in the middle of the Atlantic where no valuable bits will ever be recovered.

    Seriously … it’s almost as if the US President is a PARTNER of Communist China

  17. Those who are stupid shouldn’t call others stupid. Yeah….allow it to take whatever information it wants….so you know what information it has taken. You wouldn’t work for Tik Tok, would you? Moron.

  18. All of which could have been done before it ever made the continent, or over Alaska. Speaking of stupid, GFY moron

  19. I keep thinking of the periboob in Eric Frank Russell’s WASP… Same idea for the sea; a harmless-in itself thing that’ll surface and look like the periscope of a sub whenever a ship is close, just as plans for an identical-looking deadly submarine are ‘disovered’ somehow…

    The balloon could have been just that; or filled with bombs, bugs, bacteria or anything else. It could have been released by anyone within the country (how do we know it’s Chinese, not that I’d be surprised if it is). But what it has done is heightened fear and shown up the witless U.S. regime for its incompetence and stupidity.

    And future balloons might not be so seemingly passive…

    Regardless of whoever sent it (them?), mission accomplished, I’d say…

    1. Definitely mission accomplished. And, based on the response, it will happen again. I’m still curious about who is the actual source of the balloon, though.

  21. Good, but they should have shoot it down before it entered US Airspace not after.
    BTW it is amusing to see how many dedicated team players will side with anyone including Xi as long as they get to stick it Brandon.

        1. Yeah, HiHo, Kenji’s right. Lots of empty space, especially in western Canada. Anyway, they eventually did bring it down in the Atlantic, let’s see if they can now find it at the bottom of the ocean.

        2. Not to mention that it would have been shot down over western Canada, enemy of Dear Leader. Win/win for the federal government if it did some damage.

      3. Alaska preceded Canada, talking about idiot. Both of you give so love love to Zelenskyyyyyyyy.

  22. It seems the payload was Hunter’s laptop – which was successfully removed from the news.

  23. The west is sunk.
    Balloon 50 miles hight drifts over our airspace! Panic!
    CO2 is gonna fry the Earth! Panic!
    Covid is gonna kill us all! Panic!

    I’m old enough to remember when the Soviets used to buzz American and Canadian airspace on a regular basis, and guess what, nobody panicked or said it was a potential strike.
    I’m calling psy-op here, a US psy-op.
    In Europe, there is an entire hobby of hacking into the telemetry of weather balloons, done by some Joes on the street with a few hundred dollars worth of equipment. Dozens are launched into the stratosphere and higher every year, and they drift to the east, over India, Russia, probably a few make it to China etc. The balloons also fail on their own, dropping the cargo onto the ground, and guess what, it still transmits, and people find them. A lot of HAM people are into this.
    Of course, either this thing wasn’t transmitting, and China was relying on the US to find it for them, or it was transmitting, but for some reason nobody heard it, even after it was spotted.
    Again, the west is sunk, with a population so freakin’ afraid and ignorant that they will turn a balloon into a local- and geo-political football, with the help of the same leadership and MSM that gave us “Safe and Effective.”

    1. That’s nice Hobot, every excuse to insert your bullshit narrative… except that nobody panicked over this, but, hey minor detail.

      1. You panicked enough to think it warrants scrambling high-altitude fighters over a freakin’ balloon.

        1. That’s not panic that is SOP when an unauthorized aircraft enters your airspace, you drooling imbecile. Plus a useful training exercise. The only thing they done wrong was not shooting it down immediately upon entry.

          P.S. You really need to work on your compulsion to find faults with everything anyone in the west does.

          1. You are an idiot without a clue as to how many balloons there are all over the place, how they cannot be steered, and how often one from one country enters the airspace of another, how easy it is to receive their telemetry, and so on. You bought into “Safe and Effective”, and jabbed yourself with mRNA, so it comes as no surprise you bought right into the MSM reaction to this.
            You are sofa king we taught it.

          2. Do tell how often unidentified balloons from other countries enter US airspace. As usual you’re out of your depth, making shit up as you go, and need to resort to irrelevant comments about vaccines in a vain attempt to distract from the fact that you offer no insight and are a failure in life.

  24. “Chinese Spy Balloon”
    Doesn’t have quite the same ring as orbital space station, or geo positioning satellite. Not as high tech as hyper/anything
    Gotta feed that China bad mantra, build up the fear in the low IQ crowd. Get them set up for “China’s war of aggression!”
    Coming soon to a neighbourhood nowhere near you, but definitely “an area of American interest” and a “grave security concern for the Free World!”
    Break out the sanctions package and ramp up the green printing presses, next stop, utter madness!
    May you live in interesting times, a Chinese proverb come to life!

    1. Yes Chicoms too need to be put in their place. Orcs first, then Chicoms. Also fifth column at home needs to be dealt with as well. You can hyperventilate now.

      1. Yeah, scrambling high-altitude fighters every time a balloon crosses into our airspace will sure show them Chicoms!

      2. So tell me: What is the place the Chinese need to be put in? Also what is this “fifth column” and how should they be “dealt with”?

        1. What you think this is gotcha moment?
          Every entity that throws a gauntlet in front of Western Civilization (aka Civilization) should be reduced to where it no longer poses a threat or outright eliminated. Any questions?
          Yes, enemy agents operating at home, those who knowingly commit treason against Western Civilization ought to be eliminated. One of the biggest failure of the west is scum like Jane Fonda, Angela Davis, Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers or the current crop of Pootin fellators are allowed to steal oxygen. All enemies, foreign and domestic.

  25. All is not what it seems. If it was in fact a CCP spy craft, why would they let it cross over the entire U.S?
    And I don’t buy their narrative that they wanted to protect a deer or elk from taking a direct hit had they shot it down over Montana the least populated State in the Country. Smells to me like a 3 letter agency operation.
    Considering every MSM outlet is breathless spewing the same narrative is suspicious to say the least. I’m not buying it.

    1. Why would they let it cross over the entire US?

      So they could photograph it, video it, record every electronic communication from it, observe how its propulsion system works, test US signal intelligence sensors on it, bounce radar waves off of it, record its radar signature from all angles, test AWACS aircraft crews on it, point different spy satellites at it, test classified laser weapon systems on it….

      I would have let the thing go.
      Called it a UFO when the press came for answers.
      Let the Chinese believe that they got away with it.
      Then shoot it down somewhere over the ocean away from amateur sleuths and the media.

      1. Nope, that is like letting somebody eff you in the ass so you can find out how big their dick is.

        Serious nations with competent leaders don’t allow foreign nations to fly their stuff over sovereign territory.
        Period.

  27. The entire episode very effectively answers the old electioneering question of who we want answering the phone in the White House at 3am.

  28. I think Walter has it about right.
    Politicians live in a bubble. They live in the news cycle. And they suffer with paranoia.
    Biden needed to turn the page…and China with Justin’s help accomplished that.

  29. BREAKING: DOD confirms Chinese skyship was spying on strategic areas and that it was being tracked while in Canada, says its intelligence collection activities were ‘monitored’

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1621967346616209415?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1621967346616209415%7Ctwgr%5Ea275bcfc749695bd208de4ecdac173eecdba4833%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dblazingcatfurt_i%3D60417420https3A2F2Fblazingcatfur.ca2F3Fp3D604174t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fblazingcatfur.ca2F20232F022F042Fbiden-administration-tried-to-hide-chinese-spy-balloon-from-american-public-for-nearly-a-week2Ft_e%3DBiden20administration20tried20to20hide20Chinese20spy20balloon20from20American20public20for20nearly20a20weekt_d%3DBiden20administration20tried20to20hide20Chinese20spy20balloon20from20American20public20for20nearly20a20weekt_t%3DBiden20administration20tried20to20hide20Chinese20spy20balloon20from20American20public20for20nearly20a20weeks_o%3Ddefaultversion%3D535e02cb37c76499f9768559d5c40585

    1. If there’s one thing that’s easy to hide from the American (and Canadian) public, its a radio transmitter floating 50 miles high in the sky.
      …unless you’re a HAM operator, in which case it stands out like a sore thumb.

  30. Perhaps our leadership will follow Colon’s advice, and scramble extreme high altitude fighter jets over balloon sightings, like Biden did here, except with more panic.
    Then anyone with the wherewithal to do so could launch, say, 1000 weather balloons with cheap transponders from international waters in the pacific, and watch the US tear their own guts out as they try to intercept each one of them. And then do the same thing every freakin’ week. It would cost anyone who felt like doing it less than Canada spends on diversity, heck pipsqueaks like Venezuela or Peru could do it, and to be honest, now that the world knows how stupid North Americans are, they’d be stupid not to do this, heck, maybe CNN should do it to fix their ratings, they could even put the Diagolon flag on them!

    1. That’s nice except that nobody panicked, the only one who is panicking is you when your childish, cumbersome, awkward, cringy narrative is questioned.

  31. Seems most people here learned nothing from the truckers convoy in canaduh and 6 January at the capitol, USA. The real problem is YOUR guvmint spying on you and declaring your charter rights void or ignoring the US bill of rights.
    If China wants to spy on the USA they are more than capable of doing so with existing geo-statinary or orbitting spy satellites. Balloons subject to jet streams are an awfully stupid way to attempt to surveil military installations.
    This guy has a good handle on spy balloons and aircraft, take a look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHqBXwLDwZ0
    F*ck joe Biden is dumb as a bag of hammers but even he knows this balloon is no threat, but of course he will respond to the hysteria.

    1. The North American public has been reduced to a bunch of hysterical morons, screaming their incoherent fears at the sky.

      1. The only one who is showing signs of hysteria is you. But that is normal, you can’t attract attention otherwise, as you got nothing of substance to offer.

      2. @ HiHo – “…..reduced to a bunch of hysterical morons, screaming their incoherent fears”.

        True, but everyone should be vigilant with the military rise of China. I don’t put allot of stake in the WMD part of the balloon shtick, only because the Chinese have full access to the US and Canada through open borders to plant whatever horror they want anywhere they want. The stable surveillance platform that is not achieved by orbiting satellites makes sense. By all reports these high tech balloons are remarkably steerable.

        That said, the Japanese had a “secret project” during ww2 to float balloons over North America with incendiary capabilities to cause forest fires along the western coast. So not a new idea.

        https://www.history.com/news/attack-of-japans-killer-wwii-balloons-70-years-ago

        Of course none of us plebs will know the true story about this blatant theatre because we can’t trust the Media, our Governments, and certainly not China.

  33. Remember that nobody was aware of this balloon until someone took a video of it.
    Then we find out that NORAD was already aware it was there and that the Canadian government knew for a week prior.
    And not one of them was ready to do anything until it got leaked.
    Remember the scientists that got kicked out of the lab?
    The 11 ridings that got chicom cash?
    The Chicom police stations?
    And has there been any progress on the murder of Barry and Honey Sherman?

    1. Nah, he got another 2 million for waiting until the balloon had already crossed the continent.

  35. The Chinese now know that Lethbridge is full of tattoo parlors and have the pictures to prove it.

      1. Yep, I read later that it re-entered U.S. air space in Idaho, and I live fairly close to Nelson (and Creston, another point it might have traversed) so I’ll watch out for any odd stories about cattle dropping dead or anything to indicate biological agents. I sort of doubt that it had that intent but you never know. Could have been a test of our responses more than having any actual military purpose.

  36. They waited until the wreckage would 100% be out of reach of falling into the hands of the public. They are protecting the Chinese.

  38. Perhaps they were just surveying the best farmland for the People’s Liberation Army’s next purchases in Canada and the USA? 🙁

  39. Maybe it was a tool to answer one question: at what point will the US notice if something flies in at 90,000 feet? If so, then the govt “ignoring” it denied them that knowledge.

  43. Yup.. they will mandate a vaccine that harms and kills thousands but they wont shoot down a condom because it might hurt somebody..
    Im not impressed..

  44. Thus ended the business venture of North American Balloon Scenic Tours of Nanking.

  46. They didn’t want to shoot it down over land because someone might find it before authorities do and discover it is American made and just another ” Look at This ” moment to distract from what is really happening.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation