I heard a little while ago that three airports in the Carolinas were closed down, right in the area where the balloon was heading. Also that the US has 12 miles of open water off the coast before the international waters begin.

Guess they decided to go for it.

quote:

US shoots down Chinese spy balloon off East Coast

https://www.cnn.com/politics/l...-02-04-23/index.html

Background and thoughts:

https://apnews.com/article/pol...eb7bbeca169bbc7c2c53

I would imagine the DOD wants to examine the wreckage to determine what was on it.

Apparently it's going to the FBI facilities at Quantico for a visit...

I guess I'm kind of surprised that they didn't shoot it down sooner.

It was a case of art copying real life and now it’s a case of real life copying art. A real event inspired a hit pop song in the 1980s. The song’s title was “99 Red Balloons” (“99 Luftballoons” in German) was released by a band named Nena.

According to Wikipedia:

While at a June 1982 concert by the Rolling Stones in West Berlin, Nena's guitarist Carlo Karges noticed that balloons were being released. As he watched them move toward the horizon, he noticed them shifting and changing shapes, where they looked like strange spacecraft (referred to in the German lyrics as a "UFO"). He thought about what might happen if they floated over the Berlin Wall to the Soviet sector.[3][4][5]

Also cited by the band was a newspaper article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about five local high school students in 1973 who played a prank to simulate a UFO by launching 99 (one was lost from the original 100) aluminized Mylar balloons attached with ribbons to a traffic flare. The red flame from the flare reflected by the balloons gave the appearance of a large pulsating red object floating over Red Rock Canyon outside the Las Vegas Valley in Nevada.[6]

Here’s the song’s lyrics:

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base, sparks in the software
Flash the message "Something's out there"
Floating in the summer sky
99 red balloons go by
99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
The 99 red balloons go by
99 Decision Street
99 ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The President is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by
99 knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scrambling the summer sky
99 red balloons go by
As 99 red balloons go by
99 dreams I have had
In every one, a red balloon
It's all over, and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go

quote:

I guess I'm kind of surprised that they didn't shoot it down sooner.

Were they waiting until it was no longer over land?

It was pretty huge - I imagine they wanted it over water for safety.

The debris field was 7 miles. Hard to ensure that no one over land got hit by that.

It was apparently so high up it was higher than the design parameter of the missile that shot it down.

I also wonder if the equipment was more likely to remain intact and more retrievable if it hit water. If they had shot it down over some snow-covered, heavily forested mountain in the hinterlands of Montana, how the hell would they have retrieved it?

1945
The military tried to shoot down what they
thought was a spy balloonn. It was Venus.

quote:

Originally posted by CHAS:
1945
The military tried to shoot down what they
thought was a spy balloonn. It was Venus.

Best bits:

quote:

One person wrote: "Safety tip for the day. Don't attack Venus."

"And thus began the Great American-Venusian War, all over a misunderstanding," another added.

A third wrote: "To be fair, Venus didn't manage to score any hits either, so let's call it a draw."

If the balloon was a test of our intelligence, I'm afraid we failed miserably. - Ron Hinkle

I know Ron Hinkle. He is career army and professional banjo player. He plays the 4 string banjo and the hits of the 1920s.