Politics And Current Events

[willeyeam]

I saw a couple of comments that the balloon was probably broad spectrum jammed the entire time it was over US airspace. Maybe even the Canucks gave us permission to fly electronic warfare aircraft up there as well. So they probably didn't get much of anything, and we probably learned a great deal about how it collected info...and of course even more once it's been fully recovered.

Nah man. Biden let them fly it over the entire country without doing anything

[tifosi77]

It is however very funny that the F-22's first ever air-ro-air kill is a balloon.

[count2infinity]

Bedford county FB is all over it. Sleepy Joe letting the balloon get all the way across the country without doing a damn thing. Trump would have taken it out immediately!

[Morkle]

Bedford county FB is all over it. Sleepy Joe letting the balloon get all the way across the country without doing a damn thing. Trump would have taken it out immediately!

So do they outright ignore when it apparently happened 3 times during Trump's term?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844 ... officials/

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

air-ro-air

ruh roh raggy

[faftorial]

Bedford county FB is all over it. Sleepy Joe letting the balloon get all the way across the country without doing a damn thing. Trump would have taken it out immediately!

So do they outright ignore when it apparently happened 3 times during Trump's term?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844 ... officials/

Prior administration. We're talking about Joe Biden's failures now.

Or so said Mike Turner on one of the Sunday shows.

[Beveridge]

I did not have balloon gate on my 2023 bingo card.

[count2infinity]

Bedford county FB is all over it. Sleepy Joe letting the balloon get all the way across the country without doing a damn thing. Trump would have taken it out immediately!

So do they outright ignore when it apparently happened 3 times during Trump's term?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844 ... officials/

Uhhh…. Yeah. It’s Bedford county…

[Shyster]

I am peeved that they used a missile. A Sidewider costs nearly half a million dollars. I bet that's just a little more expensive than the number of cartridges an F-22's M61 Vulcan cannon would expend in a burst or two. I mean, were they worried that the balloon would dodge out of the way?

[faftorial]

"Man arrested shooting his gun in the sky."

[tifosi77]

I am peeved that they used a missile. A Sidewider costs nearly half a million dollars. I bet that's just a little more expensive than the number of cartridges an F-22's M61 Vulcan cannon would expend in a burst or two. I mean, were they worried that the balloon would dodge out of the way?

The Raptor was already pretty much at its service ceiling and the balloon was several thousand feet higher. They wanted to shoot it down while it was still within the 12-mille air defense zone, and do so by destroying the balloon but not the surveillance platform it was carrying.

There is a track record for this. In the 90s the Canadians tried to shoot down a wayward weather balloon. Thing took an estimated 1,000 hits of 20mm - from CF-18 Hornets using the same M61 - and it just......... stayed up. They shot the balloon itself full of holes, but it just leaked helium *pffffffffffffffffffffff* and stayed up for days. That rig was apparently a good bit larger than the one just shot down.

[NTP66]

[Gaucho]

includes concerned citizen

[robbiestoupe]

That **** went right over me. I was fixing to shoot it down myself

This is ChatGPT's response to "What do Carolinians say about the Chinese balloon?"

[NAN]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/05/sport/co ... index.html

Stay classy Rams student section!

[NAN]

https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-new ... index.html

Death toll is at least 1,800 for a large earthquake in the Turkey/Syria region.

[CBear3]

It's got to be double that seeing the pictures of whole blocks leveled. Three quakes in 12 hours there, and now the reports of smaller ones (like Buffalo!) from global tectonic instability.

[eddy]

Bedford county FB is all over it. Sleepy Joe letting the balloon get all the way across the country without doing a damn thing. Trump would have taken it out immediately!

So do they outright ignore when it apparently happened 3 times during Trump's term?

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844 ... officials/

Hahaha

[MR25]

So does that mean Donald Trump was weak in letting those fly over or... ?

[Morkle]

Well, I'm sure they'd defend him - but apparently he alluded to not even remembering that this happened during his tenure.

[count2infinity]

[MR25]

Well, I'm sure they'd defend him - but apparently he alluded to not even remembering that this happened during his tenure.

Well the reporting is that he never paid attention in national security meetings, so that tracks.

[Gaucho]

[Morkle]

It's lose lose, because they shot it down over water. GOP would have blamed him if they shot it down over land citing the people it could have hurt.

[NAN]

Regarding the earthquake, just saw a clip on twitter where a Turkish reporter was interviewing someone, and an aftershock hit, every ran, and when they turned around, every building on the left side of the street they were just on was just gone. Absolutely crazy.