Chinese Spy Balloon Flying Over the U.S.

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wanttaja said:
The thought that the sites might be shielded horizontally but not vertically is intriguing. However, it does seem a bit of a stretch that the people involved with approving nuclear sites would approve such an approach. "Why are the pigeons on the roof glowing?" :)
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I wouldn't say not shielded, but perhaps less shielding on top.

Consider a missile silo.

upload_2023-2-6_15-27-20.png​


You can't detect much radiation from the lateral directions but you might from overhead. Personnel are located to the sides of the launch silo and must be protected. A vehicle driving on a road many miles away might not be able to tell very much.

BUT - Might it be possible that taking overhead radiation measurements for several years could give you a database such that you could estimate when a site had warheads installed in its missiles, or how roughly how many nukes were ready to go? Might you be able to learn when a site is or isn't a threat?

Montana is one of the states that has these missile silos.


wanttaja said:
But fixed sites like we're talking about don't spring up overnight. Satellite imagery will note the facilities being built, and unusual features such as heavy shielding. Classic intelligence work would uncover the contractors, and gain insight into the design of the facility. The balloon would only be useful if we WERE running some sort of "shell game".
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Sure, the facility is a fixed location and well known. But is it ready to launch an attack? Not all missiles are ready to go all the time. Missiles and facilities are frequently undergoing maintenance and upgrades and warheads are often removed, serviced, replaced, etc. Would it be useful for an enemy to know which sites are ready to shoot and which are not, or at least which are at reduced capacity? You bet.

Of course, this is just speculation about why a balloon might be useful when flown over Montana. There could be other reasons.
 
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Half Fast said:
I wouldn't say not shielded, but perhaps less shielding on top.

Consider a missile silo.



You can't detect much radiation from the lateral directions but you might from overhead. Personnel are located to the sides of the launch silo and must be protected. A vehicle driving on a road many miles away might not be able to tell very much.

BUT - Might it be possible that taking overhead radiation measurements for several years could give you a database such that you could estimate when a site had warheads installed in its missiles, or how roughly how many nukes were ready to go? Might you be able to learn when a site is or isn't a threat?

Montana is one of the states that has these missile silos.




Sure, the facility is a fixed location and well known. But is it ready to launch an attack? Not all missiles are ready to go all the time. Missiles and facilities are frequently undergoing maintenance and upgrades and warheads are often removed, serviced, replaced, etc. Would it be useful for an enemy to know which sites are ready to shoot and which are not, or are at least which are at reduced capacity? You bet.

Of course, this is just speculation about why a balloon might be useful when flown over Montana. There could be other reasons.
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Is the airspace over those silos restricted, or could you accomplish this in a Super Cub with less attention and less likelihood of creating an international incident?
 
Lindberg said:
Is the airspace over those silos restricted, or could you accomplish this in a Super Cub with less attention and less likelihood of creating an international incident?
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Haven't checked but I'd be astonished if it weren't restricted. More likely prohibited. I know the airspace over the nuke sub base in Kingsland, GA is prohibited.
 
Lindberg said:
Is the airspace over those silos restricted, or could you accomplish this in a Super Cub with less attention and less likelihood of creating an international incident?
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It's also possible that you may need a long dwell time, longer than you could get even with a slow Cub that wasn't circling if you're trying to measure very small levels. Or you might need more payload capacity.

Or it could be that.......

Ooops. Gotta go. Black helicopter just landed on my lawn.
 
Half Fast said:
It's also possible that you may need a long dwell time, longer than you could get even with a slow Cub that wasn't circling if you're trying to measure very small levels. Or you might need more payload capacity.

Or it could be that.......

Ooops. Gotta go. Black helicopter just landed on my lawn.
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Tell them "Hi!" for me.
 
Half Fast said:
HI know the airspace over the nuke sub base in Kingsland, GA is prohibited.
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P-50 is centered on the loading piers. The prohibited area just barely covers the storage bunkers.

Out in the midwest there many silos, but no prohibited areas to identify where they are.
 
Half Fast said:
Haven't checked but I'd be astonished if it weren't restricted. More likely prohibited. I know the airspace over the nuke sub base in Kingsland, GA is prohibited.
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Sub base at Bangor, WA is also prohibited.

I learned to fly in North Dakota, and don't recall any prohibited areas around the launch silos. They're all over the place, it'd be tough to set up hundreds of individual prohibited areas, and making one cover them all would close off at least two states to GA.

A quick look at the Twin Cities sectional (my first glance in 45 years) shows a lot more MOAs, and a restricted area or two (R-5401 and -5402), those are apparently artillery ranges.

Roads went right by them, as well, with no restrictions. Heard of someone who ran off the road during a blizzard. Miles from anywhere...except a Minuteman site. He broke in, and let the Air Force grind through the snow to arrest him. Spent a night in a cell, but it was warm.....

Interesting notion there, Half Fast. I'd wonder about the detectability of the warheads from even 60,000 feet, and odds are, you're going to be much further away. With no restricted airspace, you could even do the survey with a typical GA aircraft. Again, not much reason for a balloon. Fly over at 10,000 feet, and you're covering a swath 100 miles wide (depending on your minimum elevation angle). Not suspicious; they're not called "flyover states" for nothing. Note that there's a very famous aviation school in Grand Forks. Wonder if there are any Chinese students there?

And it'd only really matter if there WEREN'T warheads in those silos. The locations of these sites are nailed down pretty well by the world, by now, I think. If the Air Force was quietly removing warheads from the fields, there'd be a reason for concern. But...there's no sign of that, and the Air Force was pretty calm about the balloon.

However, putting on my tinfoil hat again: *IF* there were electronic/radiation signatures that could be used to determine if particular missiles were offline, a survey might be useful. But you'd have to continually redo it to characterize how often failures occurred and predict the serviceability. Easier to do with a Cherokee, especially now, after the balloon program has become public. Suspect any future attempts will be intercepted earlier, especially now that we have the procedure down.

Ron Wanttaja
 
well, golly, how hard would it be to put something in an empty silo that would mimic the emissions of an actual nuke?
 
Half Fast said:
Haven't checked but I'd be astonished if it weren't restricted. More likely prohibited. I know the airspace over the nuke sub base in Kingsland, GA is prohibited.
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sort of like the history of the Power plant infrastructure TFR/NOTAM.

TSA (other alphabets) Pilots are to stay 3 miles and 3000ft away from any Nuclear Power plant. Pilots: Sure we can do that, Where are they? TSA: We aren't going to tell you.

This is why it is not prohibited to fly over them, only prohibited "loiter" over them.

Brian
 
Bob Noel said:
well, golly, how hard would it be to put something in an empty silo that would mimic the emissions of an actual nuke?
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Not very. In another life, we referred to such devices as "busy boxes". Good enough to keep the bad guys thinking the real one was still there. The mobile basing option for Peacekeeper spent a lot of time creating believable decoys.

Like I said, it was a tinfoil hat suggestion.

Ron Wanttaja
 
329242746_425670263083457_6898706442964825195_n.jpg
 
Half Fast said:
Haven't checked but I'd be astonished if it weren't restricted. More likely prohibited. I know the airspace over the nuke sub base in Kingsland, GA is prohibited.
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As mentioned earlier, there's supposed to be a bunch of silos out here in the Midwest. The DOD, Russians, Chinese, and the Wizard of Oz know where they are, but I don't. There's no restricted area for them.

For all I know, that's a silo in the image below with its roof opened :):):)
JAK_6893 by Jack Silver, on Flickr
 
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Listening to the ZKC tapes the other day: Center was giving airlines position reports of the “derelict balloon” and warning about passing underneath it.

That seems like good, common sense.

But…the Feds seemed pretty much like they 1) knew about that balloon, and 2) were keeping it quiet (even keeping the Secretary of State visit to China on the schedule) until someone in Montana saw it. And THAT seems less than optimal.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
As mentioned earlier, there's supposed to be a bunch of silos out here in the Midwest. The DOD, Russians, Chinese, and the Wizard of Oz know where they are, but I don't.
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You could have bought one. Zillow listing for an old Atlas missile silo in a neighborhood near you:
https://www.zillow.com/homes/1200-Silo-Ln-York,-NE-68467_rb/2062699045_zpid/

It got some news coverage last year, when it was listed. Example:
https://nypost.com/2022/06/28/you-can-live-in-this-former-cold-war-missile-silo-for-550k/
 
9798B556-9774-40D2-B7B7-2B30A443B6E8.jpeg

There’s an old silo not far from me.

Pretty cool someone added a private strip just outside the perimeter.
 
Half Fast said:
I wouldn't say not shielded, but perhaps less shielding on top.

Consider a missile silo.



You can't detect much radiation from the lateral directions but you might from overhead. Personnel are located to the sides of the launch silo and must be protected. A vehicle driving on a road many miles away might not be able to tell very much.

BUT - Might it be possible that taking overhead radiation measurements for several years could give you a database such that you could estimate when a site had warheads installed in its missiles, or how roughly how many nukes were ready to go? Might you be able to learn when a site is or isn't a threat?

Montana is one of the states that has these missile silos.




Sure, the facility is a fixed location and well known. But is it ready to launch an attack? Not all missiles are ready to go all the time. Missiles and facilities are frequently undergoing maintenance and upgrades and warheads are often removed, serviced, replaced, etc. Would it be useful for an enemy to know which sites are ready to shoot and which are not, or at least which are at reduced capacity? You bet.

Of course, this is just speculation about why a balloon might be useful when flown over Montana. There could be other reasons.
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I'm curious why you think the radiation, mainly neutrons and gamma rays, are detectable beyond a few hundred meters. At the altitude the balloon is was flying, there's a lot of that sort of radiation occurring naturally.
 
News report tonight quoting the government saying it had propellers and a rudder. Looks like they set the world record for electric-powered flight! :)


Ron Wanttaja
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I'm curious why you think the radiation, mainly neutrons and gamma rays, are detectable beyond a few hundred meters. At the altitude the balloon is was flying, there's a lot of that sort of radiation occurring naturally.
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No reason. Pure speculation on why they might want to use a balloon when they have satellites. I didn’t try to work the physics; just guessed at a possibility.

What’s your theory? What’s the advantage of a balloon flying over Montana military bases?
 
Half Fast said:
No reason. Pure speculation on why they might want to use a balloon when they have satellites. I didn’t try to work the physics; just guessed at a possibility.

What’s your theory? What’s the advantage of a balloon flying over Montana military bases?
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I don’t have a theory at all. I don’t know enough. The Chinese could have been doing anything from something nefarious down to legitimate atmospheric research. If it were research, they would have been well advised to simply tell us and we probably would have let it fly unhindered, or at worst we would have asked that they share the data.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I don’t have a theory at all. I don’t know enough. The Chinese could have been doing anything from something nefarious down to legitimate atmospheric research. If it were research, they would have been well advised to simply tell us and we probably would have let it fly unhindered, or at worst we would have asked that they share the data.
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Given the talent of our military and intelligence agencies, I have a hard time believing we haven’t known for decades how much is radiated by our critical assets literally across the spectrum and how to prevent usable intelligence on that being gathered.

I think pokes at our security - airspace, sigint, internet, electric grid - whatever - happen almost continuously and we only hear about a small amount of it. People hyperventilating over this is, well, interesting.

Actually, that’s not quite true: given China’s clear efforts to destabilize our democracy for the past good while, I wouldn’t be surprised if they see this as a no-loss situation: regardless of what, if any, usable intel was gathered, look at the divisiveness that balloon has engendered even though it was shot down. There will be little political cost on their side - but plenty of divisiveness sown, even if not actually intended.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Actually, that’s not quite true: given China’s clear efforts to destabilize our democracy for the past good while, I wouldn’t be surprised if they see this as a no-loss situation: regardless of what, if any, usable intel was gathered, look at the divisiveness that balloon has engendered even though it was shot down. There will be little political cost on their side - but plenty of divisiveness sown, even if not actually intended.
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By the same token, I don't feel that public debate / discussion about how to deal with potential threats, is as harmful to us as some seem to think. We can agree or disagree as adults about when and where a balloon should or should not be shot down as long as at the end of the day, both sides listen to each other and choose to make reasoned choices in the national interest. That very freedom of speech is something that we have valued and enshrined in our Bill of Rights, for important reasons.

As Patrick Henry stated in his famous "Give Me Liberty" speech:
in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country.
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Even if this balloon is 100% benign, it does expose a potential avenue of aerial assault that presumably less advanced countries could employ to do us harm, so it's worth having a discussion.
 
azpilot said:
-- Incoming random unverifiable information --

You're not shooting this balloon down with bullets. I did some quick "back of the envelope" calcs

Service ceiling on an A-10 warthog is 50,000 feet. If you could somehow magically get the warthog perfectly vertical firing a round from the GAU-8 straight up, you could get the projectile to reach an altitude (AGL) of about 115k to 120k feet (3324 ft/sec muzzle velocity with a 1.5 lbs round).

But I think we all know you're not going to get an A-10 vertical at its service ceiling. But maybe you could get it vertical at 25k feet? The problem is that the atmosphere is much more dense and there is more air to push out of the way. If you fire that same projectile straight up from 25,000 feet, it's going to reach an apex of ~50k feet. The balloon was at 60k+.

I did the math with the warthog GAU-8 rounds because they're very heavy and will carry momentum further as the atmosphere attempts to slow them down.

Conclusion - You're not shooting this thing down with bullets.
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You wouldn't use an A-10 for this anyway, so kind of a wasted calc. F-22 has a gun...and it's unclassified service ceiling is 65,000 feet, so...?
 
RyanShort1 said:
Even if this balloon is 100% benign, it does expose a potential avenue of aerial assault that presumably less advanced countries could employ to do us harm, so it's worth having a discussion.
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Thats true only if you assume it actually went undetected until it got to Montana.
 
Sierra_Hotel said:
Thats true only if you assume it actually went undetected until it got to Montana.
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No, it's still true, if they put some kind of poison pill on it that makes it undesirable to shoot down, or use some seaborne transportation unit to get it close to the coast before launching.
 
Sierra_Hotel said:
You wouldn't use an A-10 for this anyway, so kind of a wasted calc. F-22 has a gun...and it's unclassified service ceiling is 65,000 feet, so...?
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An F-22's turn radius at M1.3 is.... And how close does it need to be to score multiple hits on the envelope at that speed? Hint, there is about a 2 second firing window, and the available G at that speed and altitude don't allow the F-22 to miss the balloon by more than a few hundred feet if the pilot does things perfectly and doesn't get target fixated for an extra half second.

I don't think you want your F-22 flying through a debris cloud if the balloon has a self destruct mechanism or if it RUD's because of the gunfire.
 
I really don't know why we're talking about a gun kill on a balloon anyway :lol: :loco:
 
Something something closing rates....available maneuverability...other weapon choices :biggrin:
 
Too bad there wasn't some sort of targeting computer on the fighters...
 
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