even official pentagon sources are admitting "we don't really understand why they would use a balloon to spy on us" but everyone -- even outlets that aren't breathlessly repeating the government line -- is still treating the idea that it's a surveillance balloon as indisputable fact. and after allowing the balloon to complete a leisurely three-day overflight of the central US, with the government asserting that they didn't want to bring the balloon down in a heavily populated area for safety reasons1, we dropped it into the Atlantic Ocean effortlessly. (the government, to avoid appearing weak, is also now reporting that they were also able to keep the balloon from reporting intelligence back to China, which must have been a sophisticated hacking feat.)
every article about the balloon contains the following facts, without displaying any cognitive dissonance:
- you could theoretically use balloons to conduct surveillance without being visible on radar;
- you could theoretically use balloons to move more unpredictably than a satellite in a fixed orbit;
- you could use active control of a balloon to station it over a city for days or weeks at a time;
- none of these things are relevant to what we've just seen, a balloon slowly drifting on the wind for several days in full view of everyone in the country;
- China has spy satellites which would be more than capable of gathering all of the intelligence this balloon would have been able to gather on their own;
- China would have known that sending a surveillance balloon over the US in plain view would be interpreted as a threat to American sovereignty;
- they still definitely did it on purpose because we've never seen a weather balloon that big before
like, come on, man, I know that the mass media is just a propaganda outlet but you gotta at least try
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I need to repeat here that this story occurred IN THE CENTRAL US; the state the balloon was discovered over has a population density of 7 people per square mile
The previous one is easily googleable via it's trademark phrase, "Would you like to strafe a boat?" (PDF)
After two weeks of uneventful combat air patrols, Capt Steve ‘Hillbilly’ Hill and Major Dave ‘DW’ Kendall did not hesitate to accept their ship borne controller’s unexpected request: “would you like to strafe a boat?”
The boat in question had escaped an A-6 attack when the American ‘Intruder’ ran out of ordnance. After receiving final clearance to engage from their controller, the two Canadian pilots emptied their 20mm cannons over multiple strafing runs. With only air-to-air missiles remaining they attempted to acquire an infrared lock to fire an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. The boat’s heat signature was too low and after some trouble ‘Hillbilly’ acquired a radar lock and fired an AIM-7 semi-active radar missile at the boat. The missile impacted the water short of the target at which time both pilots returned to base. The boat was eventually finished off by US bombers; but, the Canadians were officially awarded an ‘assist’ to its seaworthiness kill.
Hill and Kendall were extolled by senior military officials at home for their “…example of Canadian can-do.” However, the CATGME Commander Colonel Roméo Lalonde conveyed to the press in theatre a different opinion, asserting they should have made less passes to minimize their exposure – he was not entirely happy about the attack. They had, after all wasted a $250,000 (1991) air-to-air missile on a boat in the first offensive action by the Canadian military since the Korean War. The engagement was admittedly unorthodox but Lalonde’s criticisms were viewed to be a little harsh by most officers in the fighter community.
