The backstory… China recently sent a very large surveillance balloon over the United States, which was shot down on February 4. Then, on February 10, 11, and 12, smaller balloons were shot down over Alaska, the Yukon, and Lake Huron.
Descriptions of these three latter objects have been poor. The first was “the size of a small car.” The second was initially described as a “cylindrical object” but later as a small metallic balloon with a payload suspended below. The third was an “octagonal structure with strings hanging off but had no discernible payload.” Senator Chuck Schumer did confirm that all three were balloons. All three were drifting at wind speed. It’s been reported that all three were downed by $400,000 AIM-9X heat seeking missiles from F-22 fighters costing $90,000/hour to fly. A bit of overkill.
The UFO community has been quick to claim these as alien spacecraft, but that’s goofy and deserving of a quick dismissal. I give that identification zero credibility or plausibility.
Quite frankly, I’ve been scratching my head over these. Here is what I think, in order of likelihood:
Most or all of these could well have been completely benign atmospheric science balloons. Though none of the descriptions match what North American weather balloons typically look like, the information we’ve been getting has been pretty sketchy and unreliable. Also, it’s been noted that when an F-22 passes a balloon at 500 mph the pilot is going to have barely any chance to get a decent look.
Simple mylar party balloons. The skies are filled with them. They come in novelty sizes and styles that have been found responsible for many UFO reports.
It’s somewhat less plausible (to me) that they were more Chinese balloons; balloons don’t last forever in the high-UV upper atmosphere and are likely to be more robust if they’re intended to fly halfway around the world. We know China sent the first one, and it’s hard to put anything past them.
Something I haven’t thought of yet.
There’s no reason to think all four had to be the same thing.
A discussion thread on an Aviation Week article raised what seems a good explanation for why China (or any other hostile foreign party) might send balloons against us. Balloons are obvious. They know we can see them. They know we can tell it’s theirs. It seems like a really dumb thing to send. But suppose the sender wanted to better understand our response? Suppose they were nothing but bait, to see what kind of planes we’d send, to gauge the operational readiness of our F-22 fleet, to see what weapons we’d use, to characterize the electromagnetic environment we’d illuminate it with, to capture more of our encrypted transmissions? There are a lot of useful things one could potentially learn.
China is stamping out hundreds of Chengdu J-20 5th generation fighters. The J-20 is believed to be roughly as stealthy as the F-22 from the front, but has poor stealth capabilities from other angles. The more they can learn about how we’d illuminate a target, the better for them to improve their defenses against us.
Anyway those are my thoughts for now. It will be interesting to see what more we learn, possibly very soon.