56 comments

    1. @enedi fanovaha it’s the year of rabbit, dragon is next year. you should be able to find rabbit meats in your local chiense butcher shop.

  1. Too bad they couldn’t poke the balloon envelope with some 20mm for a much slower decent to gather up the sensor package as intact as possible.

    1. They preferred to blow it into a million pieces so no one will ever know what it was, which will save embarrassment on both sides.

    2. I doubt if you are smarter than the entire US Air Force command that made the decision to shoot it down the way they did. Talk is always cheap!

  2. Air Force veteran here, the telemetry from the balloon would have been monitored from the time it entered Alaska. We already knew what it was looking at without shooting it down. Telemetry stream could have been jammed at any time.
    China meant for it to be seen to send some kind of message. Blinken will need to find out what the message is.

    1. Weather balloon 🎈 riiiiight!!πŸ˜‰ I’m not worried about it. It can’t be working very well…It was made in China! Idiots!

    2. You definitely not an Air Force veteran coming up with BS like that. These are clearly what they said they are They have spy satellites right? If you really were in the Air Force you know that they have geocentric satellites that can look at us at any time and see any part of the country with cameras that could literally read the date on a dime

  3. Bout time I would have liked it better if we captured it to be honest but remotely hacking the balloon and pulling it out of the ocean after is fair enough.

    1. @Dana Johnson even if its a weather balloon, who gave them the permission to trespass an US? What if it was hit by airplane?

    1. Which is extra funny because he’s 1/4 Chinese. And 1/4 Cherokee, 1/4 Black, 1/4 Jewish, 1/4 Evangelical, 1/4 gay, 1/4 hetero, 1/4 volleyball – so prob 1/4 balloon too

  4. Shoot it β€œas soon as possible”?? It only took like 3 days to do anything about it πŸ˜‚ Try again with your title CNN 🀑

  5. It’s so nice of China to be concerned about the weather conditions over the US, so sweet of them 😊

    1. Well first we’re friends with Russia and Kim jeong-hoon and now we’re going to be friends and you criticize the the country for shooting down a Chinese quote weather balloon”. And if you believe that I’ve got some fine land to sell you out in the middle of the artic. Since when did it become p politic to to argue about the motives of these people

    2. It was likely just a ballon with Chinese made parts, assembled in Mexico, painted and launched in the US. The reality is this information is coming to us by a group of people that lied to the planet about the waxine.

  6. I mean did we really need to waste an expensive missile? In my experience balloons don’t fare well against bullets. I’d imagine an explosive device would probably destroy the payload on the balloon where bullets hopefully wouldnt

  7. “We had no idea that shooting down that weather balloon would start world war 3” ~Some old dude with one eye in 2034

  8. Let us not forget that the only reason we heard about this is someone saw it, recorded it, and it was broadcasted on TV.

    1. @felisa sepulveda Lol!!!! You’re already in the dark! You don’t know even 0.0001% of what the military is doing. None of us do!

    2. @JAHSHIFT not fully in dark we do have lightsπŸ’‘πŸ’‘πŸ’‘πŸ’‘πŸ’‘πŸ”¦πŸ”¦πŸ”¦πŸ”¦πŸ”¦πŸ”¦πŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸŒπŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜

  9. I am surprised that a balloon is even useful when the Chinese have satellites with cameras. They could even use public satellite images like Google Maps.

  10. The balloon’s payload was reported to have the combined size roughly equivalent to three buses. The break-up of such an object high in the stratosphere would mean that debris would be spread over a wide area, certainly dozens of miles.

    At that high altitude, there are powerful jet streams that we do not experience at the Earth’s surface. There are also people living and moving about even in remote areas of the USA and while there may have been a good probability that nobody or no property would be struck, damaged or destroyed, our leaders responsible for defending the nation determined it would be better to wait and take the device down over the waters just off the American coast.

    A coastal re-entry offers additional advantages, A.) less damage to component parts. B.) Ability to secure the debris field. C.) Unfettered, restricted access of all components by military equipment and personnel assigned to retrieve and study what remains of China’s junk.

  11. What I noticed is – they shot it down with an AIM-9 which is a heat seeking missile, I don’t see the Balloon with heat, but they did say it was steerable, so maybe it used a motor to steer it where they wanted it. If not, then maybe they gave away too much information. I am happy to hear they supposedly blinded it or prevented it from relaying it’s information back to it’s owners. At least I hope they really did what they said they did.

    1. F22 has sophisticated tracking and guidance systems.
      I’m sure they used the correct weapon for the job.

      If it was a heat seeking missile, this should tell you something about how sensitive they are. A ballon, and it’s equipment is going to be hotter than surrounding air, as it’s heated by the sun.

  12. if the reason for not taking down the balloon was to prevent it from damaging something or injuring why wasnt it shot down over alaska. i am sure it could have been taken down in a very remote area with very little or next to no know risk..

  13. Amazing that it takes so much planning, resources and bureaucratic navigation to shoot down a single balloon over your own country

  14. The fact that we didn’t shoot it down the moment it hit US waters is scary to me. What if it was being used to deliver the next pandemic?!?!

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