Oh yeah? thanks for the reminder. And also the reminder that mockery is about the best Americans can expect from the rest of the world. I guess envy works like that. But how about some of that for China? THey sent it for a reason, they expected results, and then they got caught. Oh my, did the hysteria from THEM make bells ring. Hell, you could so a whole episode on the CCP's OFFICIAL comments on all of this. Talk about trolling disguised as intelligent speech... Ah, but I don't have to tell you about any of that, do I? :p
Oh, and one other thing (besides wondering why General Flintstone has been covering this up); Serious in this post, I promise, last one I was trying to get in the spirit of the vid. But it turns out that China has been bragging about using this very balloon type to transport nuclear weapon delivery systems. As it turns out, you were spot-on about how hard these things are to track. I don't know if you see this guy as competition (doubtful) so anyway; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UZuyC-XFFdw.html
Well the LRDR (SPY-7 Long Range Discrimination Radar) went online in Alaska at Clear AFB in early 2022. Could well be that the reason this balloon was spotted in Alaska while earlier ones were missed is that the LRDR is in operation. Now we just have to build I don't know 40 more of them? No word on a voice pack mod but If I had to guess I'd say the Halo announcer has development priority.
I, a french man, a citizen of an allied nation to the U.S.A., couldn't go to one of our own beaches in the Atlantic and throw a rock in the sea in the general direction of New York without a CIA agent knowing it. And people think *no one* noticed a gigantic balloon with a one tonne payload from an *enemy* ?
Honestly, even if the CIA knew you were throwing rocks toward NYC, they would do nothing. Hell, you could come to NYC & stone most of the city and they’d call you a “mostly peaceful” protestor. 🤷🏻♂️
"This is our territory. Little air show for our fans out there. Flying high. Easy slice." - F22 Raptor from C&C Generals. Such qoutes aged like fine wine.
@@JohnE9999 Poor Trumper. Funny how THREE balloons weren't a big deal when Trump was in office but when Biden gets in office the right loses their s**t over one. Try getting your news from somewhere other than memes. That might require you to use your brain though.
“Who’s that?” “That’s Gary Powers, he’s a…uhhh…civilian high altitude weather enthusiast?” “Then why does he have a gun?” “He’s…a very NAUGHTY civilian high altitude weather enthusiast!” This is just the 1960 U-2 incident all over again
After hearing my dad rant about how we should have shot it down, typically yelling at the news deal, it's nice to see more light hearted takes on this. Additionally, I'm very glad I got into NCD this week, so that lightens the mood.
The fact that they probably jammed it and that a soft splashdown makes analysis much easier are pretty good arguments. Seems like the right call in hindsight. Although I have to admit, when it was over Montana I hadn't heard these arguments and also thought they should just shoot it down. Welcome to NCD, I've been subbed for a few weeks and it's glorious.
It was embarrassing and funny how a lot of Americans reacted to this. The balloon incident made me realize why the government and military has kept seemingly trivial information secret over the years. It might not be very sensitive or dangerous but we're just too stupid to know about it
It really makes you understand the perspective put forth with regards to keeping secrets from Politicians by Sir Humphrey Appleby in the Yes Minister series.
Also was a black pill moment with regards how easy Americans can be duped by psychological warfare. If I was China I'd send another balloon with fake crap attached to it just knowing it will cause division.
@@STG44musikmeister I wouldn't be surprised if that was the point (or to probe how the US military responded, in general). China is shady but they're not stupid. We spy on them and they spy on us I thought it was strange that they were so obvious about it when they're pretty damn good at espionage and covert activity. It definitely worked if it was meant to get the public riled up
@@lordulberthellblaze6509 "why did you decide that I didnt need to know?" "I didnt" "well who did?" "nobody. It was just that no one decided to tell you"
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mix-HXKVux0.html shameless plug of something dumb I made over lunch today because I’m an Ace Combat nerd
I can't believe you didn't mention the british Operation Outward during WW2. It was a highly successful use of chap, free-flying attack balloons aimed against germany and occupied territory. These ballons came in several variants, with the arguably most successfull being simple steel wires dangeling from the balloon. They caused considerable damage to germanies power grid.
Thank you for sharing that info! People like you are why I scroll the comment section. Oh and btw this is not me being facetious, I’m totally serious. I love when the information is balanced out and that light is turned on!! The video then takes on an entirely different relevance, or irrelevance, in this case.
As it turns out due to the altitude the balloon was on, the Rap can't shoot it down with guns as it will take a very long time for the balloon to deflate due to pressure differences between the balloon's gases and that layer of the atmosphere iirc. Thus they had to go smart, they had to go Raytheon smart.
I was in the area where they shot it down. I was able to see the F-22 shoot it down from my backyard as soon it was over the ocean. It was an incredible sight.
The F-35 is his nerdy little brother, bigger brain, larger glasses, good at radar chess just short of being his own AWACS and battlefield controller because he plays lots of strategy games…. but has a single engine, less range, no supercruise and isn’t meant to dogfight if needed. He also carries less payload in non-stealth “beast mode”, if you’ve already knocked out their anti-air and the older beefy cousin, F-15EX isn’t around to being the pain to the dumb school bully mouthing off.
Maybe it's a very sophisticated weather balloon with like, a massive gradiometer built in to detect underground weather, and a big telescope for taking infrared pictures of weather.
A fun video with good information and a history lesson. Assuming China didn't learn anything of value from this mission seems like underestimating an opponent. The U.S. Navy used blimps for reconaissance until 1959. Between WWI & WWII the U.S. Navy used rigid airships.
China when the US shot down the balloon: I swear it’s a weather balloon USA when the U-2 spy plane got shot down in the USSR: I swear it is a high altitude weather tracker
Fun Fact: Espionage is legal. The US and USSR decriminalized it during the Cold War since they were going to spy on each other regardless of law and breaking the law every time they did so would be awkward. That’s why the US complaint is that a military aircraft violated their airspace.
@@jansatamme6521 I too wish WW3 would have come sooner. Although I doubt the people, who make sure that Ukraine gets precisely just enough military support to reduce the rate of Russian advance to a minimum and to backstop the Ukrainian lines against a catastrophic collapse, while also ensuring that the Russian military doesn't get degraded too much and that the Ukrainian army can't seriously threaten to retake Crimea, (also that they aren't allowed the capability to conduct significant strikes into Russia proper) would ever allow it to happen.
When you notice the A-10 has more air to air kills then the F-22 and the A-10 is like a slingshot compared to the F-22 thats a anti tank gun technologically wise
Man, this was an event.. Sidenote hearing my city mentioned by you just makes me feel even weirder about this whole thing. My friend saw the balloon get shot down.
What an EPIC video, informative and f**ing funny, in the beginning i though that was a video of Lazerpig and then it come the information, and the twist but still f**ing funny. Amazing video. Greetings from Santiago of Chile.
The balloon deployed CHAFF? Why would a weather balloon need chaff Xi??? You just dumbed yourself by making it blatantly obvious as to what you were doing.
What everybody who's making jokes about it online seems to forget this was a large airborne object with no active navigation or radio transponders on board., Moving through both American and Canadian airspace while it was being tracked And where exactly would you consider a safe place to shoot down something that weighed about 2000 lb, when you're not one hundred percent sure that area has no one living in the area
the missile fields it should be noted that china can just visit them in person. the US is part of a treaty for that exact purpose. they can just ask to see the missiles to ensure the US is within treaty...
Another thing to keep in mind is that the orbits of spy sats is OSInt, and that can lead to your enemy doctoring the objective. A balloon can just... Pop up.
11:48 i live in montana......... and ya, im so proud . montana has a LOT of guns.... but we also have VERY low gun crime (like 95% are suicides....the long winters can get to you) so we know it was out of range . however.... it also flew over EVERY silo in montana (which has more silos than any other state) . . . idk.... it will be REALLY interesting to know what this (and the, now, 2 others) were actually doing hopefully they actually tell us.... and not wrap it up in many layers of red tape and classification
Best guess for what it was carrying/doing: ground penetrating radar, IR, and HD photos looking for signs of storage, launch, and back-up C&C facilities as well as power infrastructure. Hopefully it didn't have sufficient bandwidth/power to transmit back and was dependant on physical retrieval but i doubt we'll know for a while.
I noticed little slip up in your editing. When you said “… and the sexiest aircraft ever seen” you accidentally put a picture of a SR-71 when you clearly were talking about the CAC-27 Avon Sabre 😉 Love your work mate!
For me and my dad, we didn’t think the US KNEW about it ONLY in Montana. We just wondered why it wasn’t dealt with earlier. And we of course asked “why not fire like three 20mm rounds and let it sink to the ground?” We think it was more a statement than any actual useful intelligence. And that statement was “how would the US respond to any incursion” and in that I think we failed both militarily and societally. We showed China we’d be paranoid of everything and that we won’t respond to a threat. Which to be fair it’s a lose lose. Shoot it down right away? We’re paranoid maniacs. Let it go and do what ever it wants? We just bend over. To be honest the most entertaining part of this is the debate about whether the balloon counts towards ace status.
I dunno, I think you're kinda right on the money there. It's a lose-lose in that any reaction can be spun as a win for China. I think the important part now is trying to do our own analysis back and figuring out what happens next.
@@TheGallantDrake More like the USA saying, "those balloons you think we didn't know about? We knew about them. We let them slide because we can reliably stop you from getting anything out of them. But now public opinion is involved, so we're taking them away. How many of your other "hidden" assets are in the same position?"
So in the late 90s an actual weather balloon went rogue over Canada and started drifting towards Russia. It was decided to shoot it down. The Canadians sent a sortie of 2 CF-18s to take it down with their cannons. Over 1000 rounds were expended to no apparent effect on the balloon.
@@the_real_ch3 should have used incendiary ammunition. (Yeah I know, but still. A missile worth several hundred times as much as balloon itself? Someone should have to come up with a better solution.)
We Honestly need to update our air defense system! I propose we build a comically large revolver named "Big Iron" to defend US air space. As a bonus this new air defense system will be able to protect the US from outlaws specifically those named "Texas Red".
You do realize that growl wasn't 'real', right? I mean, some of the old Aim-9s did growl like that, but it doesn't make much sense for a digital, multi-band IR, FPA sensor to growl like that (also remember that the F-22 integration was done a *long* time before its pilots would be equipped with an HMD, so I'd wager that its "tone" would have stayed the same, even when cued via the HMD).
In what sense was this thing (a) dirigible? Where is the propulsion unit? Prop, jet, rocket or ginormous magnet? Does valving lift gas or dropping ballast, heating or cooling the lift gas constitute propulsion? If so, every balloon ever launched is (a) dirigible to some extent…including the plastic bags with candles I used to launch as a kid.
After US intelligence agencies have analyzed the balloon, display it in an aircraft hanger. Let the world have a closeup look at this innocent object. PS - it would probably spike attendance numbers at the National Air and Space Museum if put on display.
With the small but noticeable difference, that this shoot-down didn't start a 99 year long war, the Ballons in the song weren't for spying and nobody thought it was UFOs. But other than that ...
@@HauntedXXXPancake the Song describes a Military Shooting down a Ballon, wich Starts hostilities... In the broad Sense the Song speaks of what happened Here...
1:30 - I learned of your channel through the podcast you did with LazerPig a couple of weeks ago and I've been watching your videos ever since. Imagine my surprise when I decided to watch a random video of yours while eating lunch and a stupid meme I posted to NCD last month popped up on screen! 😂
And artillery spotting. But Imperial Japan didn't sign any of the Geneva Conventions prior to WWII, so they saw it as a legal way to wage war. Like how they saw Unit 731 as a perfectly legitimate unit to have.
The worst part about this is the demoralization and further degradation in the trust of the military to keep us safe but then again maybe that's a good thing in a way.
