By Out Reporter
The American fighter jets shot down four flying objects in eight days. US President Joe Biden had ordered fighter jets to shoot down three objects detected in the US airspace.
The US administration suspected them as the Chinese spy balloon and made a hue and cry, which was finally identified as “not harmful objects”.
One interesting report by Aamer Madhani has appeared in the Associated Press. Madhani reports:
Decisions to shoot down multiple unidentified objects over the U.S. and Canada this month have put a spotlight on amateur balloonists who insist their creations pose no threat.
Biden said Thursday that they were probably balloons linked to private companies, whether researchers or hobbyists.
Tom Medlin, the owner of the Tennessee-based Amateur Radio Roundtable podcast and a balloon hobbyist himself, said he’s been in contact with an Illinois club that believes the object shot down over the Yukon was one of their balloons.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the Biden administration wasn’t able to confirm reports that the object belonged to the Illinois club. He said the debris has yet to be recovered and “we all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”
U.S. officials said Friday that they’ve stopped searching for debris from the objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron after finding nothing. Search efforts for debris from the Yukon object are ongoing.
Kirby pushed back at the notion that Biden’s decision to use missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot down what were most likely balloons that cost less than $20 was an overreaction.
Medlin said the balloons he’s flying right now cost about $12 and are about 32 inches in diameter.
The balloons carry solar-powered transmitters that weigh less than 2 grams and that broadcast a signal every 10 minutes or so that ham radio operators around the world can use to track the balloons’ locations, he said. He has a balloon up right now that’s been in the air for 250 days and has circled the globe 10 times, he said.
The fun is watching the balloon circle the globe and building the tiny transmitters, said Medlin, adding that the devices are so small he needs a microscope to construct them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been collecting data from ham radio operators to track wind patterns, he said.
The balloons are so light that the Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t regulate them and doesn’t require balloonists to file flight plans, Medlin said. He inflates his balloons with enough hydrogen to ensure they’ll fly at about 50,000 feet. That is well above most commercial aircraft, he said.
Current regulations posted on the FAA’s website state that no one can operate an unmanned balloon in a way that creates a hazard, and agency regulations apply only to balloons that carry a payload of more than four pounds.
Medlin speculated that after U.S. officials detected the suspected Chinese balloon, they adjusted their radar to pick up very small objects. But the hobbyists’ balloons don’t pose a threat to aircraft, he said.
“We’re following FAA rules and regulations,” Medlin said. “They’re the experts on whether this should or should not be done. Take a cork and drop it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Is a ship going to hit it? Probably not. And if it did it wouldn’t do any damage to the ship.”
Ron Meadows co-founded San Jose-based Scientific Balloon Solutions with his son, Lee. He said the company produces balloons as large as 8 1/2 feet in diameter for university and middle school science students. He said those balloons carry a payload weight of around 10 to 20 grams, with transmitters the size of a popsicle stick. Some balloons feature a 20-foot (6-meter) antenna, he said.
He understands that government officials are trying to keep people safe, he said, but they don’t understand that the balloons are totally benign and there’s no question they’re overreacting. Jet engines likely ingest far larger objects, such as birds, and most pilots probably wouldn’t even know it if they hit a balloon, Meadows said.
He said he has tried to contact the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to educate officials about the balloons, but that his calls went to voicemail.
“It would have been nice to get our government the information they needed,” he said.
“We are in this (balloon) business more for the students, not for making money,” he said. “This is for education. When we build these things, the time it takes to build them, we can make more at our day job.”
Medlin said balloons can reach speeds of up to 130 mph (210 kmh) if they get caught up in the jet stream. But Bob Boutin, a Chicago flight instructor, said it’s unlikely that such balloons pose much of a threat to aircraft.
In a report on the Washington Post on 16 February, President Biden said the three high-altitude objects shot down following a Chinese surveillance balloon were probably not related to China’s spy program but most likely tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting scientific research. Speaking from the White House, Biden outlined several new steps, including improving the government’s ability to detect unmanned objects in U.S. airspace. “But make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety, security, [of] the American people, I will take it down,” Biden said.
In Georgia, a report by a grand jury was released that concluded there was no widespread fraud in the state during the 2020 presidential election despite repeated claims to the contrary by former president Donald Trump. The report said that a majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by at least one of the witnesses it heard as part of an investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s election loss to Joe Biden. Most of the report was kept under seal as Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis weighs criminal charges in the matter.
The balloon saga has exhibited how incapable the Joe Biden administration was that it was unable to identify small flying objects, whether they are for military use or not, and whether they are harmful to US national interests!
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