An F-22 firing an AIM-9x Sidewinder. Public Domain.
A F-22 fighter shot down an object flying in Alaska airspace. Fox News. The object was flying around 40,000 feet and was deemed a threat to civilian air travel. Joe Biden ordered the object shot down and an F-22 Raptor engaged the object and destroyed it with an AIM-9x Sidewinder. The object was much smaller than the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down last week, being the size of a small car. Debris from the object was recovered from the ocean. At this time it is unclear who launched the object and what its purpose is. The object was called a balloon, though very little other information is known at this time.
My Comment:
The Pentagon is being pretty vague about this balloon and it's causing a bit of drama on Twitter. Given the description of the object, a smaller silvery cylinder, a lot of people are comparing it to the so-called "tic-tac" UFO's described in the 2004 USS Nimitz incident.
As hilarious as it would be if Joe Biden accidently started an interstellar war with some unknown alien power, that's pretty obviously not what has happened here. The object was confirmed to be another balloon, not an alien UFO. Indeed, I would hope that if it had been an UFO that the military and government would be smart enough to not shoot it down.
More seriously, this was a pretty severe violation of our air space. Unlike the previous spy balloon this one was flying fairly low at 40,000 feet, which means it could have collided with a commercial air flight. That could have caused a major disaster and on that basis alone this should have been shot down.
The F-22 was used again and I just think it's hilarious that our super fighter jet has only ever been used to shoot down balloons. It would be a hell of a legacy if that's the only air-to-air kills the plane ever gets.
My guess is that this was another surveillance drones and the fact that it was over Alaska narrows down the suspects quite a bit. Obviously China is the main suspect given their actions with the previous balloon. They aren't the only suspect because Russia could have this technology as well. It could also be something from Japan or either Korea but I find that pretty unlikely. Indeed, I'm going on the assumption that this was another Chinese balloon.
As for the purpose, I would assume it is another surveillance balloon. The only other real purpose for such a balloon is weather and I doubt that is the case here. You don't need a large balloon for weather purposes.
I do wonder if China is doing viability tests for these balloons. My assumption is that during a potential China/US war, satellite surveillance is going to quickly become a thing of the past due to anti-satellite weapons and the large field of debris such an engagement would cause. Balloons would be a possible solution to this problem, but China needs to see if they can get past our defenses or not. So far it seems the answer to that is no as we were able to track and destroy both of these balloons.
Regardless, I do think that the "balloon war" will continue. China can learn a lot from continuing to launch balloons and they also know that Biden's response to this has caused a fair bit of criticism to go his way. They know that the United States lost a quite a bit of face when they failed to react to the first balloon and now China knows how to press our buttons. I expect more of this in the future.
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