Third “Unmanned Aircraft” Shot Down By U.S. Military, This Time Over Canada
“The downing came as U.S. troops sought to recover a car-size object shot down Friday over Alaska”
The communist China spy balloon saga continues. After allowing the first one to traverse the entire nation, the Biden administration figured it should probably not repeat that optics disaster, so they shot down a second one over Alaska.
Reports now indicate a third communist China spy balloon was shot down by U.S. military over Canada. Well, they don’t say the second and third are CCP spy balloons, but what other unidentified unmanned flying objects would they be?
A U.S. F-22 fighter shot down a third unmanned aircraft in a week on Saturday, this time over northern Canada, according to a U.S. official.
The downing came as U.S. troops sought to recover a car-size object shot down Friday over Alaska. The three objects, including the Chinese spy balloon that drifted across sensitive military sites in the continental United States, has heightened tensions between the Americans and Chinese.
It’s not clear who operated the objects shot down Friday and Saturday, according to the U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced the news on Twitter Saturday. Trudeau said in a tweet he had spoken to U.S. President Joe Biden.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2023
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Comments
That’s incredible! I wonder where the fourth one will be.
Montana?
Something smells here. The first one is labelled “China, China, China!” and now these other ones are “some objects from somewhere owned by somebody”. And no pictures and nobody around to show shaky cellphone pictures of them. And no protests from China. Hm. If a balloon falls in the wilderness, did it really exist?
We’re not talking about what’s on Hunters laptop or the hearings on Twitter and the weaponization of our government are we? Mission accomplished.
So Justin Trudeau “ordered” a takedown, and a US F-22 complied.
Do we do all Ukraine’s defense, and Canada’s too?
Sending F22s to shoot down a telemetry balloon seems weird. We don’t even deploy those to allies, to keep their secrets secure. (One presumes we don’t garage them with corvettes either.)
Between the F22 and missile we probably spent more than the balloon cost. They should have just punctured it with a laser. In that way, the balloon gradually descends, and most of it could be examined.
Unless it’s loaded with explosives that are connected to an altimeter.
NORAD is a joint U.S./Canadian organization. I know that there have been periods when NORAD was commanded by a Canadian general officer.
I would say that’s why it happened the way it did.
My bad. The DEPUTY Commander, not the Commander, is usually a Canadian general officer.
Under the current rules, it has to be a black female, right?
Black Trans “it”, I am nt going to give them our gender
No, not going to play the game
Let me put a positive spin on this. We now have one Chinese widget in fair condition (slightly wet) that we can pick apart and two or three knocked down in the frozen north that may take months to find and drag back to the warmer southern lands. We can even give one of the busted widgets to Canada for them to examine in a few months.
Oh, and we have a *working* process to deal with unknown aircraft coming into US airspace instead of a week or two of “Gee, what should we do with this thing?”
Yeah, that’s about all the good I can see here.
The only good is the foreshadowing of what is soon coming. But people running our government (ESPECIALLY the GOPe) have their own agenda.
The chinks are taunting us and laughing at us. The only thing they understand is raw power.. Time for some tit for that. Boy do I miss Trump.
1,000,000^
“Oh, and we have a *working* process to deal with unknown aircraft coming into US airspace instead of a week or two of “Gee, what should we do with this thing?”
We always had that. At least until Joe misplaced it and didn’t tell us. Check the Penn Center.
“we have a *working* process to deal with unknown aircraft coming into US airspace”
That has always been the case, dating back to the period when long range bombers were the sole threat, before ICBMs.
Surrounding the U.S. is the Air Defense Identification Zone [ADIZ], several hundred miles wide, into which no aircraft can enter without having a flight plan and appropriate clearance, thus we don’t mistakenly shoot down an Aeroflot flight, like the Russians did with the Korean Air Lines flight some decades ago, killing all passengers.
Aircraft entering the ADIZ without clearance are intercepted, and if they fail to positively respond to interceptor instructions, are destroyed.
That’s a policy and practice at least a half century old.
Will these actions threaten the safety of the Northern Snail Darter?
That’s really humorous and sadly true!
Democrats will probably blame these incursions on climate change next.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-mocks-biden-for-knocking-down-balloons-with-fighter-jets-hysterical-laughably-juvenile/ar-AA17ndg7?li=BBnb7Kz
I bet $10 they don’t want to identify what we shot down because it’s our own weather balloons.
The only reason we know about ANY of these is that the guy in Montana took a picture. I’m sure these flyovers have been going on for a long time and biden has just let it happen.
It’s how China shopped for real estate
I have a feeling the government is just shooting down random crap now. Random party balloon, shoot it down. Bird flying around, shoot it down. Butterfly minding its own business, shoot it down.
Maybe Biden will shoot down the Goodyear blimp today
Does anyone actually care about these 200 dollar balloons?
Whatever information they are capable of achieving has already been sent to Beijing by satellite imagery.
Don’t let the United States Government distract you from it’s failings by waving some shiny pieces of canvas at you. We literally found the FBI is working to shut down the Latin mass, which they know is extremist thanks to Salon and the fact that it is against abortion.
You should care about these balloons.
Satellites as good as they are do not have the resolution to get real close up shots. It’s a myth that a satellite can read a license plate. Satellites are also known to governments like the US and China so if you know one is flying over your territory you can hide things from the satellite that you don’t want photographed.
A balloon at 40,000 feet provides far better pictures than satellites. Think of taking a picture from a 1000 feet away of a person versus a picture of 100 feet away. The 100 feet picture is going to be better and have more detail that you can see. And since no one seems to be paying attention to the balloons those balloons camera systems can catch things in the open that a satellite on a known orbital path wouldn’t catch.
Of course there is another thing to worry about and that is using the balloons to float a nuclear weapon over the country and explode it for EMP effects. This has been talked about in the past as an option for a country to attack America. Sure it’s an unlikely scenario but the possibility is there.
Last is the testing us part. China released the balloons in part to see how we would react militarily and politically. China is an aggressive dictatorship that wants Taiwan and complete control of Asia. It wants the United States out. The moment it thinks we are truly to weak to do anything it will go on the offensive. It was a mistake to not immediately shoot the balloon down.
There’s a lot going on like the FBI stuff you mentioned but we still need to pay attention to these balloons.
The issue with that is low flying craft with camera isn’t new. The military has known they could be watched above ground for decades and have adapted everything around that.
Don’t believe me?
Look at how Eisenhower tricked the Germans ahead of the Normandy landings. Or the fact that we sent spy planes into Russia during the cold war.
Today any civilian could purchase a drone and send it above military areas, and have footage saved to sell even if that drone gets shot down. The military does not trust that every American would refuse to sell secrets gained by loss of a cheap drone that way.
One of the few benefits of a trillion a year imperial military is they have the resources to have thought about and corrected the possibility of a low flying craft getting something useful long long ago.
The possibility of balloon based nukes also is unlikely. In any war we would shoot down anything unauthorized coming to the United States that could be shot down. Because the Japanese Imperial Army sent balloons to the United States I am sure very senior officers have already thought of the possibility of balloon nukes.
This has “not actually a threat but will vanquish attempts by the church committee to bring abuses to light” all over it.
“Unmanned aircraft”
Well, it might’ve been manned, but if was it ain’t no more.
How about aliens? It wasn’t aliens because they come across on foot.
This has also been a good test for China to see what we can spot with NORAD. If the guy in Billings doesn’t see the balloon then do we ever find out that China knows what our RADARS are set to detect? So now NORAD has to change the programming on what it should tag and will probably cause tons of false potential targets. This also works for the Chinese as now there can be a saturation of targets over the US which can lead to confusion and unnecessary scrambling of fighters.