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UAPs Over North America (February 2023)

The 'North American Military' have in fact acted with admirable professionalism throughout. They were faced with a large balloon, evidently launched in China, crossing North American airspace, followed it and shot it down at the first attempt in a safe location which has allowed recovery.

They have since increased the sensitivity of their radar system, removed some data filters and found two more (much smaller) balloons which they have also shot down, but since these were much smaller balloons the debris has not been recovered (and it may never be). Were these two smaller balloons also Chinese? Perhaps. Since they were encountered in Alaska and the Yukon it seems entirely possible that they did come from China, although such small balloons would have been of limited value in espionage.

Other possible origins for these smaller balloons are Japan, Korea (south or north) or even the US or Canada. It would be fairly trivial for a hoaxer in Alaska to send up a number of solar balloons for a laugh. I am also reminded that South Korea has sent thousands of solar balloons into North Korea over the years, carrying propaganda and religious tracts.

None of this means the US and Canadian military are morons. On the other hand the Chinese have launched literally dozens of the larger 200-foot-high balloons in the last four years; this one is the first most of us have heard of it. Up until now these larger balloons have floated over Japan, the Philippines, Costa Rica and even Hawaii, with almost no mention in the world's press. People only became concerned when they overflew Montana; perhaps they should have been noticed earlier (indeed, they were seen, but most people just ignored them).
 
Canadian Minister of Defense, Anita Anand, seemed to be a “ straight shooter “ with no political “ fluff “.

She said this was a cylinder at 40,00 feet.

This situation is more than the usual political talk and the usual Project Blue Book “ swamp gas”.

There is lot of junk and garbage in our atmosphere, but this is different.

Are the extraterrestrials testing our response ?
 
CNN reports that NORAD reports that the shoot down debris fell on Dead Horse, Alaska, but weather conditions are not good.

CNN claims that the pilots scrambled to intercept Alaska’s UFO have given conflicting reports.

Some pilots claimed their jets were electronically interfered with, some pilots claimed they saw no propulsion system.
 
charliebrown said:
CNN reports that NORAD reports that the shoot down debris fell on Dead Horse, Alaska, but weather conditions are not good.

CNN claims that the pilots scrambled to intercept Alaska’s UFO have given conflicting reports.

Some pilots claimed their jets were electronically interfered with, some pilots claimed they saw no propulsion system.
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It's between -31C & -36C in Dead Horse. So maybe it's as they say, not ideal conditions.

https://www.yourweather.co.uk/weath...a-United+States-North+Slope-KSCC-1-11590.html
 
With the fourth object now confirmed shot down over Lake Huron, we have a real pattern developing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64620064

If I had to guess at what's behind this, I suspect the chain of events is:

- The incursion of the Chinese spy balloon was genuine and novel. This raised awareness and concern about the possible threat from (likely) hostile objects in North American airspace.

- This has triggered more concern and more monitoring. As several posters have mentioned, there has been a "removal of filters" from radar installations which has led to more objects being seen. These would have been ignored previously. Weather balloons have been around for a long time, but not regarded as important.

- So we have a rash of observations of objects that would not have been noticed previously. Concern about their origins has led to the decision to shoot them down.

Overall, yes, this is a 'flap', but a flap of observations of objects which have been around for a while, not a flap of new objects.

It will be very interesting to hear about any conclusions that are drawn from the downed remains.
 
Feel free to shoot me down here (pun intended) - but is shooting these things down (whatever they are) the best way to deal with them? Especially if they genuinely don't know what they are. Can't they maintain observation of the things to see what they look like, how they're behaving etc, then down them if they think they are something hostile or potentially undesirable (such as spyware)? Shoot first and scrape the bits up later seems to be the way they are dealing with the problem.
 
And doing nothing is no way to deal with the problem.
And sending objects into another country's air space is not aggressive?
 
Well, if they want to know what these things are, shooting them down is as good a way as any.

Back in the Age of Exploration, many species of bird were discovered by shooting them down, then stuffing them. This might be considered an extension of that strategy.
 
CharmerKamelion said:
Feel free to shoot me down here (pun intended) - but is shooting these things down (whatever they are) the best way to deal with them? Especially if they genuinely don't know what they are. Can't they maintain observation of the things to see what they look like, how they're behaving etc, then down them if they think they are something hostile or potentially undesirable (such as spyware)? Shoot first and scrape the bits up later seems to be the way they are dealing with the problem.
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When the first one was seen over Montana, American politicians demanded it be shot down immediately. When it wasn't US Congress called military officials in to explain why they had not shot it down immediately and waited until it was over the Atlantic Ocean. The military officials provided their reasoning, including counterintelligence that could be gathered by monitoring the objects and intercepting any signals emitted by electronics onboard (spy balloons have to report back somehow, and the US has planes like the E-2 Hawkeye for things just like this). Now, they are shot down immediately. This seems to be a change due to political pressures.

Personal opinion: the cylindrical objects with no apparent propulsion systems are solar balloons, and the military has been overreacting and shooting them down due to political pressures.
 
The Lake Huron is high strangeness.

The UFO was octagonal with filament strings flowing off the eight sides.

Octagonal ? ?
 
The first one was obviously a large balloon, with a payload that gave some clues as to its function. Chinese officials admitted it was theirs, but of course lied about its function. These others seem different, with all sorts of weird bits of information being put out about them. The first one was not a threat to normal air traffic; the later ones were. We just about have enough information to be dangerous, by which I mean we are making guesses based on little to no data.

There has been much hand wringing and politically driven criticism of The Guvvimint, like howling about all the intel the Chinese got while the people in charge farted around and let the balloon drift over the US. Like the military is clueless about airborne or orbital espionage. Please. Satellites go over many times a day. Procedures are in place for dealing with that. They flew a U-2 past it, which is designed to collect information and no doubt was equipped with means to find out what it was doing and probably mitigate it. The people whose job it is to deal with these things are good at it. I would bet that by the time it was shot down, it was dead anyway. Collecting the debris gave The Guvvimint the proof they needed to sanction six Chinese companies pretty much immediately.

I watched a painful bit of TV last week in which a dumbass politician spewed nonsense for about fifteen minutes. Among the BS was criticism that they didn't snatch the balloon out of the air with planes, you know, the way they used to catch film canisters jettisoned from orbiting satellites back in the Cold War. I often wonder how some people manage to remember to breathe for decades on end.
 
Air Force General Glen VanHerck head of the North America Defense Aerospace Defense said in a briefing Sunday that until he knows what is going on that he will not rule out anything and that includes UFO aliens.

The octagonal UFO over Lake Huron at 20,000 feet was a real danger to aircraft.
 
charliebrown said:
Air Force General Glen VanHerck head of the North America Defense Aerospace Defense said in a briefing Sunday that until he knows what is going on that he will not rule out anything and that includes UFO aliens.

The octagonal UFO over Lake Huron at 20,000 feet was a real danger to aircraft.
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"I have been instructed to give no comment without using the actual words 'No Comment', because that sounds like we're covering something up."
 
If they are being used for spying, what kind of useful information would they be gathering from so far up?
 
pandacracker said:
If they are being used for spying, what kind of useful information would they be gathering from so far up?
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SIGINT: “…the balloon's solar arrays produced sufficient power to run "multiple active intelligence collection sensors" and that the antennas on the balloon could collect and geolocate communications, including radio and mobile phone signals…”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident#Signals_intelligence_capabilities

Possibly photography? The balloon was at 60,000’ over Montana; spy satellites take photos from 500 miles up.

maximus otter
 
Isn't Mexico known for odd balloons for parties? It might be one drifted too far north. An octagonal balloon with filaments on each side makes me think of piñatas.
 

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Xanatic* said:
Isn't Mexico known for odd balloons for parties? It might be one drifted too far north. An octagonal balloon with filaments on each side makes me think of piñatas.
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I don't think that even Mexicans would use a balloon big enough to be spotted on radar at 20,000'

maximus otter
 
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