BALLOO IT ! - 16 FEBRUARY, 2023
MY Navy days are 50+ years behind me, being on an Aircraft Carrier, I know a little about things that fly through and over (even under) in the night, and at “did I just see something?” speeds.
Something as big as a fighter jet is impossible to see at 30,000 feet elevation, and there are paints and surface coatings that help chameleonize pickup truck-sized things from view even at 20,000 feet, both… speed and ultra-slow are easiest to hide from seeing. (a bullet or a floating balloon).
Way back then, a 50-mile (horizon-to-horizon) radar had you covered for incoming (“if” you were watching it ! they had audible alerts (for coffee breaks, pee runs, snoozing), and anything larger than a goose was detected (especially if it was metallic/magnetic/microwave emitting).
A 500 MPH incoming bomber was only 3 minutes (180 seconds) away from any horizon, meaning at 1,000 mph you were dead 90 seconds after detection !! back then, you had other surface ships in your battle group that were over the horizon helping protect you, and navy communications/radar installations hiding all around the globe in a matrix of ships, islands, bases, and satellites all watching as well.
50 + years of radar/sonar technology, hypersonic+ speed warfare missiles (Mach 5, or 3,836.35 mph), and satellites galore… make this a much different world than in “my” Navy time.
In my marine world, we have AIS, instant and ongoing knowledge of instantly updated movements for 130,000+ ships and vessels every 60 seconds, including all activity at 16,000+ ports and terminals worldwide, it shows up on a jumbotron screen at many businesses, the sea condition, weather matrix is laid atop that, and the port departure=arrival time and cargo information laid on top of that… so, you maybe can imagine what the military capabilities are today.
Scarily, even in our under water is fully on screen somewhere, shipwrecks, marine hazards, fish schools, whale movements, submarine activity, undersea volcano-earthquake activity, it is a ll mirrored on a view screen somewhere, 24 hours a day second-by-second, minute-by minute.
In the above-ground world, private and commercial Aircraft, satellites, near-space thngs, and even these tiny kids drones flying around at playgrounds are all “known”-”seen” and on screen both locally, regionally, and globally… you cannot lose a red helium party balloon on your way to the wedding without it being seen and tracked.
If you missed last weeks graphic that was in the British Daily Mail Newspaper on January 28th showing the possibility of a Chinese missile launch on 23 January from Hainan Island China, passing over Japan, and being picked up by Adak Alaska radar on the 27th and actually entering US airspace on the 28th over Dutch Harbor Alaska…. This event was known, and reported on long before we here as American citizens were ever notified, even the Canadian Calgary news reported it over Canada on the 30th ! We learn about it over Idaho/Montana on 1 February. (a full week later ??).
Now, we shoot down “anything” in our airspace, even without identifying it… a $500,00.00 missile evaporates whatever dares enter (even my neighbor in his chainsaw-powered aluminum framed hang glider who likes to venture out over the water looking down at whales and fish…(who incidentally I have not "seen" for a few days!) or the Amazon Drone delivering my order… and even my scale model of the space shuttle radio control I spent six years building … poof ! a Yugo sized airborne something hit with a USAF 250-pound bomb-equivalent shrapnel phosphorus incendiary missile fired from a ½ billion-dollar aircraft.
No wonder we cannot recover any remains… 50 Army guys with tongs and bags stomping through 200 square miles of the forest looking for what's left of my Amazon order, or my neighbors' remains, apologies to the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade radio Club... their $80 ham radio transmitter mounted on a $12.00 balloon, the victim of Joe Biden friendly fire by a $143,000,000 dollar USAF F-22 firing a $485,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile ...