Chinese Spy Balloon Measured 200 Feet Tall, Which is About the Size of a ’20-Story Building’
A retired pilot thinks it could take up to two years before we get any information about the balloon.
The military revealed the Chinese spy balloon measured 200 feet tall.
That’s YUGE. It’s about as tall as a 20-story building and four times more than the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Snoopy balloon.
The balloon also left a debris field almost one mile by one mile.
NBC News has a great image.
The military recovered the balloon debris from the Atlantic Ocean.
Retired Airforce pilot Colonel Joe Barton told ABC15 it could take years before we get any information about the balloon:
He hopes sensors gathering information on the balloon will be salvaged.
“Collecting the debris I have no idea how big the pieces are- but I’m sure by the time they get it and take it back to laboratories all over the US- trying to put it back together it could be 6 months, a year, 2 years before we really have all the information we can get from it,” Barton said.
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“He hopes sensors gathering information on the balloon will be salvaged.”
Most of the shuttle orbiter that disintegrated over Texas was recovered, including the bodies.
Democrats let the balloon go over water before interception because Democrats did not WANT debris to be recovered.
Most of the orbiter is still strewn over Texas. A more dedicated attempt to bring down the balloon with a slow leak would have been better but this is Afghanistan Joe we are talking about. But the Navy did a bang up job cleaning up after TWA 800
When I read that a fighter had shot down a balloon, I thought of Eddie Rickenbacker, who while credited with 26 kills, 5 of them were balloons, but still received the Medal of Honor.
So NORAD took a week to do what Rickenbacker did over a century ago, flying French planes. How thoroughly pathetic of us.
Rickenbacker still did it at the command of his superiors.
Oh, I have also heard the callsign for the flight of F22s was “Frank”, in honor of Frank Luke Jr, the WW1 pilot known as The Balloon Buster. He was a triple ace (in 18 days, mind you, before he was shot down), with 14 of those being balloons.
Was it bigger than Chris Christie?
What better story than this to describe this administration? Unable to see a huge balloon floating for a week above America from a primary enemy with unknown intentions. Allegedly ordered to shoot it down and the military waits almost a week to carry out the order (assuming it was really ever given). Justification for not shooting it down due to the potential damage to live and property in sparsely populated Montana, Alaska, etc. Then they lied about previous balloons on Trump’s watch. lol. They couldn’t even competently handle a balloon! No wonder they fail at so much of everything else.
It could have been worse.
President Buttigieg would have ordered the pilots to spray-paint it in rainbow colors.
All theater. In all likelihood this balloon was spotted well out in the Pacific. Somewhere as it approached the western coastline, the Pentagon hacked into the operating system. A good possibility no data was sent to China or at least junk data was sent. The rest of the visible journey including shoot down is useful for media and politicians pointing fingers. Other things may well be underway while most everyone was looking up..
The one thing that’s not clear is whether we’d be worse off with you calling the shots in the White House instead of the demented nasty SOB.
Nobody in his right mind permits an enemy aircraft to penetrate the ADIZ, then penetrate the conterminous USA, period.
You intercept in the ADIZ and, their failing to comply with interception procedures, destroy it.
It was destroyed over water so only the USN or USCG could grab the debris.
I am amazed that Joe Biden is still perceived as a “nice guy”, and he is still talked about that way in the Leftist media. It just goes to show you how much media narratives dominate the public’s view of things. If the swing voters saw him as he actually is – a demented nasty SOB – he would never have won in 2020.
Media narratives about a person are rarely accurate. That is why I am so skeptical of the common narrative that Kamala Harris is “stupid”. She certainly lacks some skills in relating to the public, and takes a low-risk, say nothing substantive approach in her speeches, but she should not be underestimated if Joe Biden goes away before his term ends. Underestimate her at your peril.
Some people, particularly half of our species, maintain a “can do no wrong” list and a “can do no right” list. My dear brother, who is a wonderful guy, was on my mother’s former list, and I was on my mother’s latter list, and once on one or the other list, there was no escape.
Our effeminate media most certainly has its two lists, and Demented Joe is on the “can do no wrong” list, no further explanation necessary.
I know an LA prosecutor who has had to sit in on meetings with Camel Uh when she was AG
Yes…she’s as vapid and clueless as she appears (his exact words)
In all likelihood this balloon was spotted well out in the Pacific. Somewhere as it approached the western coastline
So, you haven’t been paying much attention to this? Because it came over the Aleutians. There’s very little “well out in the Pacific” up there. As to “western coastline” it never saw the western coast of the conterminous US.
As to the Pentagon hacking it? LOL. Maybe. But not likely, IMO.
The balloon approached Alaska and that is of course the US. ‘IMO’ is all we have and won’t know much other than what DC decides to tell.
Not only was the balloon 200 feet in diameter BUUUUUT the payload it was carrying was the size of a small commercial airliner! Imagine what was packed in to something that size!!
I really cannot understand what it was the Biden junta was hoping to achieve by playing dumb….and then compound that by trying to shift blame to the last administration…these morons are utter imbeciles!
Whats worse is the media is doing Democrats no favours by downplaying shit like this and attempting to carry water for Biden and his henchmen.
Democrats promised us WWIII starting under Trump but somehow are managing to deliver that promise under Bidens administration. Fucking amateurs. Absolute amateurs.
That’s the expanded size, about 3 times what it would be deflated.
As these balloons rise to heights with less atmospheric pressure the usually-helium inside expands equalizing that pressure.
Also gottta love the hyped size of the payload – BIG AS A 747!! – but weighing 800lbs less than a Honda Civic.
Had they somehow just poked a few holes in the thing, making descend slowly, the payload could have been grapple-hooked by a Huey when it dropped to 14,000′ or so, and brought down intact. 17,000′ +/- with a Blackhawk.
They didn’t hype the payload as the size of a 747. The payload was as big as three buses. The balloon was as large as the wingspan of a 747, according to the graphic accompanying this article.
The payload weight reportedly was over 2000 pounds. That is a huge payload for a balloon.
In early 2002 NASA commissioned the design and build of the “Big 60”, a 60 million cubic feet ballon with a payload capacity of 1651 lbs. The first launch was in August of that year. It lifted 1521 lbs up 30 miles, or 162,000 feet.
My bad. I conflated the description “regional jetliner” with 747. Still, they could have merely noted a length of 87’ rather than compare it to, say, a 48,000lb Bombardier CRJ-900.
The Pentagon said there were explosives on board for self destruction to prevent capture. If that was true, it is definitely not a weather balloon.
Have pity on them. It’s tough to keep all the lies from colliding with each other.
With a brazem traitor like Mark Miley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, do you believe anything coming from the Pentagon anymore?
There’s an awful lot of “OMG! That balloon is as big as…” going on. But no one is comparing it to other balloons of a similar nature?
How big is it compared to a real weather balloon? How big is the payload compared to other balloon payloads that do some sort of surveillance? (And weather balloons are doing “surveillance”.) Comparing it to other non-like things isn’t really helpful for analyzing it.
Chris Christie was routinely compared to a weather balloon and we know how much payload he could carry. But wasn’t good at collecting information, he was an attack balloon.
The Hindenburg was 804′ long, thus four times the size of the ChiCom balloon.
Even odds that this balloon was funded by an NOAA climate change grant through Fauci, built in Hubei by the company that bribed Hunter, and was meant to do domestic surveillance of US citizens with plausible deniability.
In this timeline, six months from now this could sound prophetic.