It’s a balloon, or it’s not a balloon. It was the size of a car. But we’re not sure what size of car. If the Pentagon knows what it shot down over the Arctic Ocean, it’s not saying. At this point, it’s still in the category of an unidentified flying “object” that was north of Prudhoe Bay until taken down by an F-22 out of Elmendorf.
The Department of Defense did give at least a few more details about the nature of the mission, which took place this morning over the Arctic, while it was still dark in northern Alaska. As revealed by Must Read Alaska earlier on Friday, the military had detected the object on Feb. 9, and determined it was unmanned. A jet from Anchorage to Red Dog Mine was rerouted toward Nome to avoid the item on Thursday.
“The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. President Joe Biden ordered Northern Command to shoot down the object. Civilian airliners typically fly between 40,000 and 45,000 feet.
The object, whatever it was, fell onto sea ice off the coast of Alaska and U.S. Northern Command has begun recovery operations, Ryder said.
“U.S. Northern Command’s Alaska Command coordinated the operation with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard, Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said.
The object was about the size of a small car, the general said, and does not resemble in any way the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this week. “We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin,” he said.
Two F-22s flying out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, took down the object. The one missile shot was an AIM-9X Sidewinder. “We have HC-130, HH-60 and CH-47 aircraft participating in that recovery,” the press secretary said.
The shoot-down of a China spy balloon six days earlier has drawn criticism from many observers, who note that the White House didn’t acknowledge the spy balloon until it was photographed and reported by a newspaper in Billings, Montana. Only then did the Biden Administration admit it knew about the balloon, and it has changed stories about the timing and nature of its decisions ever since.
Does CNN have someone at the site or is their programing already filmed and talking points recorded for release over the weekend in their efforts to gettng Ole Joe and Hunter Biden crime families moved behind the curtain.??
Yep. – sd
Oh, you two! Stop with the conspiracy theories! Next thing you know, you will be claiming that Twitter and the FBI suppress conservative voices and that masks do almost nothing to stop the spread of Covid! (Gotta run – I have an appointment for my sixth Covid booster!)
JMARK, Best Comment of the week on Must Read!
At least you don’t to be unbiased so that everyone can see that MRAK is a political mouthpiece for the GOP.
Charlie!! Good to hear from you again,it’s been a long time. I’ve always appreciated your perspective and wisdom on a number of issue!! Regards From one old electrician to another,
So,.. now it begins. Hope to be wrong. Anyone know what caliber would be needed to reach that high? Guess we need to rely on the professionals. Have the utmost confidence in their abilities. Seems everyone is now onboard, even Joe. More crap coming.
Please tell me this is a joke! What caliber is needed to reach this high? No small arms or military weapon other than a missile reaches that high.
There is a reason that the military sent a fighter jet to shoot it down.
Your standard .30-06 round travels 3500 meters (~10000 feet) laterally. Much less when fired straight up
Your standard 9mm round travels 2-3 miles when fired laterally. Much less when fired straight up.
A .50 caliber BMG round will travel 4-5 miles when fired laterally, but runs into a problem with wind resistance and gravity that prevents it from travelling that far straight up
And don’t forget what goes up must come down, and that bullet fired straight up comes back down with close to the same velocity.
Responsible gun owners know this stuff and would never even joke about firing their weapons at something 40-60 thousand feet into the air. 40000 feet is about 7.58 miles. 60000 feet is 11.36 miles
Exactly my point. Thanks for clarification.
Trig just triggered the hell out of you! Not sure your to responsible!
Pablo, come in off the ledge, brother. We’ll have some cocoa and talk through some issues.
Of course it’s a joke.
Pablo,
Lets look at your argument above for a minute, First off there are at least three forces at play when one fires a bullet. Gravity, Atmospheric resistance, and a thing called wind drift.
Gravity will pull an object down at the same rate whether the bullet is fired in a horizontal or vertical trajectory. Obviously a faster bullet will go further before gravity catches up to it, compared to a slower fired projectile. However, there isn’t a free Lunch in nature, meaning that the faster a bullet is fired, the more resistance it encounters causing it to shed velocity at a quicker pace. There is another thing called Ballistic Coefficient of the projectile ( a mumbo Jumbo of length, diameter and shape) that comes into play as well, meaning a BC of 500 will fly better than a BC of 155. Wind drift is a factor in accuracy but not so much in trajectory.
So given the above I dispute your argument that a bullet fired straight up will not travel further than a bullet fired in a horizontal configuration, maybe I’m wrong, if that is true I hope someone can correct me in a reply.
BTW, Turns out that there is another factor important to how well a bullet works upon impact, lets say into a Bear. It’s called Sectional Density, or SD. An SD of .270 or more is best, not sure how that would affect a balloon.
Looks like someone told Slow Lying Joe that there was little risk of hitting anyone shooting down this on over AK.
So it wasn’t an old wives tale! Pigs do fly!
Yep, the balloon was recon, now come the drones with other missions. The Chinese are no longer talking to us. Except for their trolls on Facebook. Nothing to worry about.
“If you opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him.
Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.” -Sun Tzu
Who is fooling who in this PSYWAR?
Once again the story doesn’t make a lot of sense. The UFO was tracked over Western Alaska on at least Thursday but they waited until Friday to shoot it down? Why wait?
Biden figured out “shoot baby shoot” is in America’s favor. Now if we could only get him to understand “drill baby drill” is also in America’s best interest …….
Willy, good one, I hasten to point out that” Shoot Baby Shoot” has been a Biden Favorite, as long as the shooting was performed with a syringe injecting a Pfizer poison into a mandated American populace’s arm. Biden’s stance on abortion has also been consistently, “Kill Babies Kill”.
Give it a break Robert!
No, Bill, why don’t you get the pro-globalist “Great Reset” death cult to give it a break!
Rest assured that we commoners will never be told the truth about what this object is/was.
It was ours. Save face object. The Chinese are laughing the asses off right about now. Good job Joe.
Everyone just please relax. It was only a Russian delivery of porn tapes and disks made by Hunter Biden when he was in Russia and taking kickbacks from the Moscow mayor on behalf of his dad. We’ll never see them though, as Joe made sure they got destroyed by the Sidewinder.
Really funny ?? regards from Greece
I’ll bet the Navy is having fun watching the “declassified” porn tapes.
It was probably either a high tech Oil Company research vessel or a Green Peace or Polar Bear Studying mission counting Polar bears on the ice! It’s kinda funny how they announce it and then suddenly its dead silent s on the issue, their trying to figure out how to either break the news or cover up what it really was, there’s absolutely no reason the public shouldn’t know in real time what they shot down, if it was a airliner the News would be non stop 24/7 until it was identified , but the news media just sucks in all the BS this administration deals them, I’m suspecting they took something out in the American Research area, and they will do whatever they need to in order to sweep it under the rug. There’s no reason at all we shouldn’t know by now, Something doesn’t make sense at all on this one , 40,000 feet ,
Aliens is real close to asians. Maybe the same. That’s a lot of altitude for research craft. Yet it didn’t change course and disappear into space. It will interesting what is disclosed.
DM, I note that Weather Balloon Launchers are common place throughout Alaska, both Nome and Kotzebue have them at their airports and balloons are launched several times during a 24 hour period.
Just saying, that the description of a small car could be a Match Box or a Tonka Toy… ever since Bill Clinton one has to really parse the adjectives given to us during Governmental Briefings. They are not lying to you, well maybe kind of, but hey, it’s for your benefit, right?
“You’re pulling my leg”
No. If we’re talking about joe biden, it’s more like ‘pull my finger’.
F-22’s ….. 200 Million well spent.
An F22 from Elmendorf? So Wainwright and/or Galena aren’t closer? It’s not a stretch to assume that the Chinese are feeling embolden by their business partners (the Bidens) being in the governmental drivers seat, right? I’d say it’s a bit frightening thinking that these apologists are in charge of protecting us from the CCP. Maybe Mitch McConnell’s wife can bail us out.
tsai-chien, mf’ers.?
The Liberal press said “The object fell onto frozen waters.”
They won’t say “Frozen Arctic Sea ice” because. that would change their climate change narrative..
Amazon wants their delivery drone back…..
My favorite part was the Pentagon spokesman assuring us that portions of the “object” shot down over the Arctic Ocean/Beaufort Sea had been recovered and that they were on a “vessel that was being moved to shore.” Apparently he assumed it was water (not ice) because on his map it was BLUE!
Where do they find these imbeciles?
It was likely a kite of some sort. China is obviously looking at inexpensive ways to penetrate our air space and diminish our air defenses. I would expect these provocations to continue.
How do you know it was China? Answer….you don’t. Why are you afraid of China?
How in the world did these higher officials in our military get in their positions, this should really alarm all of us, how is this not creating total havoc within our military is my question , the guys I’ve seen who serve thru the years all seem to be great Americans and smart. These guys in Biden’s administration seem so out of their league, I don’t trust a thing they say, These guys are a joke! Pretty sad !
Now, repeat after me, “Do not take your eyes off the balloon, do not take your eyes off the balloon, forget Hunter’s laptop.”
And again, the liberal media and Biden has distracted everyone off the corrupt Bidens! They do it every time! No wonder they don’t give the details.
Don’t we still send up weather balloons? I found their payloads with a message to turn in to any weather service and report where you found it. I turned one in to the Nome bureau in the past. The baloons are about the described size.
Here is a wind map. https://www.windy.com/?39.459,-121.397,5 You can slide up or down on the bar at lower right to get the wind direction at different altitudes.
Don’t we still have a monitoring station at Tin City, Alaska? It’s on Google maps and it still shows the radar dome on the mountain.
No folks, you are still being fooled and distracted by Joe Biden, his corrupt administration and the “Fake” news. (In my opinion)
So, a $300,000 missile trumps 3 or 4 hundred 30-caliber rounds that would cost about 8 bucks a shot? Gotta get ready to sell the US some more hammers and toilet seat lids. Spending is booming under Uncle Joe.
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