Aerial Event Megathread

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: carewemust

That’s the claim. I haven’t seen any verification yet. They also claim ten US operated balloons have overflown China in the last year.

So do you think this escalates or just sort of fizzle out under all the other news media

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

It’ll fizzle after a little while. We’ll start getting reports that turn out to be ghost contacts because of the filters being removed, but I suspect there isn’t much longer before it stops.

Thank for consolidating these threads Zaph.

As I mentioned in another thread, the SOURCE of reports is quite interesting. We're learning about these events via tweets from CongrASSfolk, not military.

Hell, go to a basic news-propagation site like news.google.com and you'll see what the top "story" is. This is being played up like a balloon-based cold war. We blame them but oh...they're now a victim too! Wait....now They have had incidents too and a history of them nonetheless??

We're being groomed folks (my opinion)

a reply to: Zaphod58

Thanks Zaph. Are they possibly dirrigibles made of some light metallic alloy that can maintain these shapes?

a reply to: TonyS

I’m thinking semi rigid airships, so something along those lines, yes.

a reply to: TonyS

I’m thinking semi rigid airships, so something along those lines, yes.

Anything happening in Wisconsin? Just saw a Blackhawk and 2, what looked like apaches fly over my house. Less than 5k ft in the air. Nothing on flightradar24 or ADS-B. Heading Southeast towards Sherwood, Wisconsin area (Lake Winnebago). In my experience, when Blackhawks do training flights in this area, transponders are on. Just thought I'd mention it. Mods delete if irrelevant.

a reply to: TheGoondockSaint

They might be assisting the search for the one in Lake Huron, and are heading back from an RCAF base.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Based on what we're being told by officials, they haven't tied these more recent (and smaller) objects to the Chinese surveillance balloon.

China's suspected spy balloon had Western-made components with English writing on them, report says

I'm very curious to see what they share about the debris they recover from these smaller objects, and if they also have Western-made parts and see how authorities decide to deal with such a discovery.

Thank you Zaphod

a reply to: Zaphod58

First and foremost, thank you Zaph! I've been busy with other things and this thread is just what I needed to read to catch up.

A question I have I guess, and hopefully, it's not already asked, is it possible that these balloons have been there for some time, unnoticed because of the filtering you mentioned? Perhaps they are not new, but they were just ignored until they slipped into the news.

I would not be in the least surprised to find out we have lots of surveillance craft all over the place ourselves. Even spying on our allies. Any country with the tech would be foolish not to do that.

a reply to: Blaine91555

There have been reports of at least five other events over recent years that went undetected. Most likely precisely because they were filtered out.

Thanks, Zaphod, for making this thread. I was getting dizzy keeping up with all the other topics.

If it helps, here's an article from The Guardian that sums up the events so far.

www.theguardian.com...

In it there's this image and legend. It may help visualise the shenanigans of the last few days.



1. Saturday 4 February. Balloon shot down off Surfside Beach, South Carolina

2. Friday 10 February. Second object shot down off Deadhorse, Alaska

3. Saturday 11 February. Third object shot down over the Yukon

4. Sunday 12 February. Fourth object shot down by F-16 over Lake Huron, Michigan

As a bonus, here's something "exclusive" I grabbed from the Italian la Repubblica newspaper, and not seen anywhere else.

Apparently, its a satellite photo of the Chinese base from whence the balloons are launched, maybe even constructed or assembled there.



The weird thing is the image has disappeared from the newspaper headline. It showed the 1st balloon after it had been torpedoed and this image next to it, but very scant information. The article was behind a paywall, so I don't know if they mentioned this base's whereabouts. 👀

I tried a reverse image search, but have had no joy.

ETA: Hold up, I found it. Here's an article from The Wall Street Journal:
www.wsj.com...

And here's where it is... presumably.

Seems as Russians has balloon unit base 1,240 miles from Alaska ,Klyuchi Air Base in Kamchatka .


Russia Also Has A Fleet Of Spy Balloons


Base

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

If I’m right, and these are semi rigid airships, they may have a new propulsion system for limited steering, to keep their signature down.

Cold gas thrusters to maneuver and orient. Allow craft to position, but would still rely on air currents for "primary propulsion".

Internal tanks made of same material as craft to defeat radar. Kind of like how fish use internal air bladders for buoyancy, and cephalopods use jets of water to propel themselves.


I am fascinated by the observation, made by some officials, that the objects "are not balloon", and t by at they "shattered" on impact. Not even a semi-rigid airship could be said to "shatter" upon hitting the ground: remember that footage of the Hindenberg as it came down in flames. Collapse, yes. "Shatter", no so much.

If the "not balloon" objects were, in fact, rigid enough to actually shatter; might they have actually been rigid, even "metallic" shells?


Now what if someone has finally developed a material light enough, strong enough, and cheap enough to produce true vacuum cells?

Filters. From all that I had read it seems that the filters were changed, or turned off, to locate anything and these smaller craft appeared. If China know what we look for, and how we look for it, then I am starting the think these 'smaller' craft have been here for awhile and were not seen.

There are videos of odd lights. Small craft. Unexplained things.

Is it safe to say that NORAD turned it all off and realized we were being monitored to such a degree they have to slowly drip out the information because of the impact it would have?

What happens later this week when suddenly 5 more are found? Do we as a nation just continue to sit idle?

These are all Chinese in my opinion.

I've only came back to AtS because I knew

this would be a hot topic.

Life has been far too busy for me to venture here in about 2 years (maybe, I don't even know for sure). But this stuff with the "unknown objects" somehow helped me mentally drudge up my password, which seems impossible, given the sheer number of passwords I have to reset every time I log into any given account.

a reply to: Zaphod58

What if the aliens are just trying to figure out which shapes wig us out the most?

I'm kidding of course - we'll shoot at anything

_________________________________

I’m leaning towards technology tests. Trying different shapes against different sensors, at different altitudes.

I am very honestly only back here at ATS because of these incidents and the conversations that are happening right now. So, serious question: The Chinese (or whoever) think that sending random shapes at different altitudes slowly over our country to see what gets shot down is the best use of their time and money? Seems like the extra attention is a drawback

a reply to: Spiramirabilis

Not to mention the fact that nothing started "getting our attention" until we picked up on a big old hulking 200' tall balloon hauling a payload the length of three buses under it.

What if the aliens are just trying to figure out which shapes wig us out the most?

I am petrified of anything with more than 4 sides... so that Lake Huron one has be ready for them to pull the trigger.

a reply to: Spiramirabilis

From what I’ve put together, they’ve gotten away with it several times. The initial balloon that was shot down over the Carolinas was only known about because someone saw it and asked about it.