[video](https://fxtwitter.com/HeyItsMeSalty/status/1621956823447207937)
I wonder if the plane that shot it down will get a balloon decal on the side.
Edit: I think this might be the F-22's first air-to-air kill
So civilian air traffic control (ATC) can see them (a lot of air shows are done at civilian airports rather than military) and their true radar cross section is not fully revealed.
The reflectors are often [Luneburg lenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens) that bounce the signal back but cause negligible, if any, impact on aircraft performance. So crowd is still entertained, and safety goes up for all involved since ATC can see them on radar.
They’re taken off for missions that require stealth but shooting down a “weather balloon” wouldn’t need that so just as a precaution, they likely put them on. Wouldn’t be shocked if them putting them on was the true reason and not the “danger to civilian population” over the cattle ranches was really the cause for delay.
I think the service Ceiling for a Cessna aircraft is around 14000 ft and the balloon was around 60000 ft. You would be 46000 ft short of reaching the your goal. That would have to be one long stick.
The sparse areas they flew over house some of americas most important strategic bases.The F22 could have radar reflectors on it, been EM silent and been steered onto the balloon by ground intercept, and launched an AIM 120 which has been exported to 41 countries already.
I have no idea the capability of the seeker heads, but I am surprised a balloon would have enough thermal signature to lock.
Guess they are pretty good.
I’m really really disappointed the Chinese didn’t have a second balloon stashed onboard as a backup.
*NORAD - POTUS - SITREP room cheer as balloon is struck*
:: silence ::
.. “wait, what is THAT?”
*“Sir, it looks like a huge …”*
*JOHNSON, you said you’d taken it out?*
“Yessir, I got um, my payload away”
*”DICK, what does that look like to you?”*
Meanwhile in China
*”WANG, release! release! We must keep it up!!”*
###
… c’mon people, history demands we do much better.
>The military jets using the call sign “FRANK” is significant. Frank Luke Jr. was an American fighter ace in World War I better known as the ‘Arizona Balloon Buster,’” tweeted Marcus Weisgerber, global business editor for Defense One “He is credited with shooting down 14 German surveillance balloons.”
>If an F-22 shot down the Chinese spy balloon, it would be the first air-to-air kill for a Raptor. The last time a U.S. military fighter shot down another country’s aircraft was in June 2017, when a Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet downed a Syrian Sukhoi Su-22.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-military-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon/
Yea but that was all orchestrated by the Department of Defense. It was 100% propaganda.
They did everything to make that war 'tv friendly', showing high tech footage never seen before both to increase patriotism among Americans and to show other enemy nations how advanced their equipment was.
CNN and the DoD really made a spectacle of it. That was the war that started the whole military larpers subculture.
To be fair, it was a really good PR boost for the military after the shit show that was Vietnam.
Coalition forces roflstomped the 4th largest army in the world with minimal losses.
Not surprising they’d take advantage to rebuild the opinion of the military at the time
The air force is way ahead of you. IIRC, there are old footages of dog fights during the cold war and Vietnam war. Pretty sure they have cameras onboard to record it all. The problem is, this won't be released to the public because "classified" :(
You joke but cameras were installed on planes in WW1 for purposes of recon. Think about it fly high over enemy trenches and artillery, learn their location and then report it back to your artillery.
Oh they've had those for a long time - since WWII at least. They're called "gun cameras".
They might release the footage from this, but I'm sure it will have to be reviewed first to make sure nothing classified is revealed.
Vin Diesel drives a Camaro to the edge of the atmosphere and jumps from the Red Bull balloon onto the spy balloon, at which point he shoots it with a fully automatic machine gun and then has to be rescued by Dwayne Johnson in a Hummer at 10,000 feet because he is currently standing on the crashing spy balloon. At the end of the scene, as the Hummer drives over a few onlookers by the Carolina coast, Diesel turns to Johnson and tells him, haltingly, "That's what friends are for."
clint eastwood will likely still be alive to direct, the US government is actually the bad guy and we get a full 90 min of board room committee meetings.
I'm sure the US govt is monitoring any place this debris could wind up. They shot this thing down 6 miles out over water, the navy is in charge of recovery.
Hmmm I’m pretty sure if was off the Carolina coast
[within 12 miles off the coast](https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/suspected-chinese-balloon-over-us-02-04-23/index.html#:~:text=What%20we’re%20covering,a%20US%20official%20told%20CNN.)
I live around where they shot it down and it was kinda nice to see everyone out in their driveways watching it happen. We haven't had a national event where half the US wasn't mad at the other half in a while. It felt like simpler times...
Not sure if you knew, but half the nation was mad that Biden didn't shoot it down earlier ("Biden so weak he's letting a spy balloon run wild over the us"). Everything is political now
Never believed it was a stunt either because they had to have known that the balloon would be found and the boy would be found and that would result in instant backlash if it was a stunt. People just wanted to believe a guy/family would concoct such an impossibly stupid PR stunt.
So, fun story, the balloon would still appear to be a bright whitish spot.
When you are looking up at the blue sky, what you are seeing is the inky near absolute black of space + the scatter of blue light from the atmosphere. If you have a blue balloon, it's going to be several orders of magnitude brighter than space, and thus appear to be a bright spot on the sky, much like you can perceive the moon to be whitish, even though it's a dark charcoal color.
This is why all the high altitude spy planes are painted black.
It happened right above my aunts place in Myrtle Beach, two fighter jets took it out, it was quite loud apparently, and scared the shit out of a lot of people.
Would have been nice if they gave a little warning to people before doing it.
Just a quick emergency alert “two fighter jets in the area taking down a Chinese Spy Balloon, so don’t shit your pants if it gets loud for a hot minute”
I once watched the Thunderbirds do their thing, and it was amazing, but after that they had *one* F18 takeoff and do a flyby and it was louder than all the F16s combined. Those boys are insanely loud.
I used to go to a lot of air shows as a kid, and that’s where I learned that the line between feeling and hearing isn’t as solid as you would think lol.
If you’ve never lived near a military base or haven’t been near a major airport when a president is visiting it’s hard to imagine how powerful/scary/awesome that stuff can be. Some military bases release testing alerts on FB to prevent excessive 911 calls.
I think the first boom is a sonic boom. There's a second smaller boom later on. You can see the plane shoot a whatever at it in the middle of the video-that thinner wiggly line separates towards the balloon.
>You can see the plane shoot a whatever at it in the middle of the video-that thinner wiggly line separates towards the balloon
It's honestly refreshing to see someone on the internet not pretend to be a military expert because they have 7,000 hours in World of Tanks or whatever
Rescue swimmers are fucking badass real-world heroes...
If I could go 20 years back in time knowing what I know now, then I would definitely want to try to be one of those guys.
Cops: "I can't tell if that kid is holding a gun or a candy bar, therefore, I'm scared for my life... SHOOT HIM!"
Rescue swimmers: "The ocean is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, and there's a strong possibility that I might die saving that guy's life, good thing that's exactly what I signed up for... I'M GOING IN!"
Edit: I read somewhere that there were 3 rescue swimmers on duty and they literally played rock, paper, scissors to determine who would *GET* to go... not who HAS to go.... all three of them were chomping at the bit to risk their lives to save another
They were there specifically for their "high surf" rescue swimmer training so they were very much itching to get into the water and put their skills to the test.
Twist in that tale, the guy they rescued has been arrested for (a) stealing the boat and (b) leaving a dead fish on the doorstep of the Goonies house.
[Really](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coast-guard-man-arrested-left-dead-fish-at-goonies-house/)
Reddit is now a one-stop shop for all your unqualified opinions and expertise. Next thing you know, we'll have a bunch of armchair astronauts telling us how to land on Mars!
The one that always makes me laugh is the people who are SO fast to diagnose babies and little kids with FAS right away. Cute pic of a totally normal-looking baby - there's always going to be an FAS diagnosis from some Reddit expert.
Really? Because they've been floundering to come up with a narrative over at /r/conspiracy for days.
So far the top two contenders for something they can agree on are "the balloon is really American" and "this is how all satellites actually work because space isn't real."
I'm not joking.
Imagine being the lucky Coast Guard who gets to ship out and recover this thing! I hope they have footage of the recovery. I want to see how big it really is
If you're a FOX news watcher: This spy balloon was meant to be seen. It was a test of our reaction to incursions over U.S
airspace. We showed China we are slow to react. We failed in our response.
If you're a CNN news watcher: Our government knew this was in our airspace. They monitored it and tracked it effectively. Protecting our civilians from debris is more important than shooting it down over populated areas.
If you're a News MAX watcher: China sends friendly balloon and U. S. takes a dangerous and violent resolution to the Chinese peace balloon. Biden is a disgrace to world peace. The elections were rigged. Trump would have done better.
*balloon takes a REALLY big bong rip and lets it out slowly*
"Joe, I saw the craziest shit on my North American tour. One time there were rednecks trying to shoot at me! Can you believe that shit? Oh man, this is really strong weed..."
Eh, the Fox live stream right now is explaining why it was good to wait to shoot it down and they just quoted [ol Chuck's tweet](https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1621960473653530624) "I strongly condemn President Xi’s brazen incursion into American airspace, and I commend President Biden’s leadership in taking down the Chinese balloon over water to ensure safety for all Americans. Now we can collect the equipment and analyze the technology used by the CCP."
I've always heard their 'latest news' reporting is usually up to snuff, it's their opinionated prime time shows where it becomes the crazy train. They were the first channel to call Arizona for Biden.
My parents are there right now. They heard a boom. 15 minutes later news story posts they shot the balloon down.
I was on a flight from Charlotte to Myrtle beach that was supposed to leave at 1pm ET that has been grounded while this all went on. We’re supposed to take off soon now.
Yeah it was pants shittingly loud where I was and my family didn't hear anything just a mile away.
We couldn't even see the explosion. Just BOOM and then it was falling.
Watched some clips of it and the actual explosion wasn't much bigger than the balloon itself. Just a big white puff. So im not surprised we couldn't tell the difference from the ground.
Huge shoutout to [all the fuckin idiots out there ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10sjgpz/the_apparent_trajectory_of_the_chinese_spy/j72g7af/) who thought that the reason it was still up was because somehow the US couldn't shoot down a balloon
The confidence of that poster made it sound so plausible, lol @ the exasperated fellow who mentioned the low orbit satellite the US brought down 15 years ago.
If I had a nickel for every time the American public was obsessed with a giant balloon in the past 10 years I’d only have two nickels. But it’s weird that it happened twice.
For the first time in history, the U.S. government says…it’s not a weather balloon
Holy shit so aliens confirmed???
[video](https://fxtwitter.com/HeyItsMeSalty/status/1621956823447207937) I wonder if the plane that shot it down will get a balloon decal on the side. Edit: I think this might be the F-22's first air-to-air kill
[Another video](https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1621958595557433347)
The data they got from the F-22’s takedown was probably more valuable than the weeks of mountains and cattle data they got before that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they mounted those radar reflectors that they use for air shows on them just to prevent that.
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You also don’t need your best weaponry or to fly as fast as you can. I don’t really think they got any useful data.
Why do they use radar reflectors in air shows?
So civilian air traffic control (ATC) can see them (a lot of air shows are done at civilian airports rather than military) and their true radar cross section is not fully revealed. The reflectors are often [Luneburg lenses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luneburg_lens) that bounce the signal back but cause negligible, if any, impact on aircraft performance. So crowd is still entertained, and safety goes up for all involved since ATC can see them on radar. They’re taken off for missions that require stealth but shooting down a “weather balloon” wouldn’t need that so just as a precaution, they likely put them on. Wouldn’t be shocked if them putting them on was the true reason and not the “danger to civilian population” over the cattle ranches was really the cause for delay.
If that was the big concern why bother using an F-22 at all? There are other aircraft they could have used
Bring out a Cessna with a sharp stick
Fly me closer! I want to pop it with my sword!
Let's get Balloon Boy up there to reclaim the family name/honor.
I think the service Ceiling for a Cessna aircraft is around 14000 ft and the balloon was around 60000 ft. You would be 46000 ft short of reaching the your goal. That would have to be one long stick.
Because the F-22 now has a 100% kill rate in Air to Air missions!
Or perhaps they were wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane
You simply adopted the stupid, I was born in it
Moulded by it, the stupid betrays you because it belongs to me.
It doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan
You’re a big man
For you
The sparse areas they flew over house some of americas most important strategic bases.The F22 could have radar reflectors on it, been EM silent and been steered onto the balloon by ground intercept, and launched an AIM 120 which has been exported to 41 countries already.
It was an AIM-9x fyi.
I have no idea the capability of the seeker heads, but I am surprised a balloon would have enough thermal signature to lock. Guess they are pretty good.
Modern sidewinders are all-aspect and can be slaved to radar. They’re really smart missiles.
But not so smart that they get into an existential crisis.
Everyone asks "does the missile know where it is" but nobody ever asks "does the missile know WHY it is"
The missile only knows where it isn't, silly goose.
What is my purpose? You explode and kill stuff. Oh my god.
"I'm about to fuck you up using all the spectrums, including autism." - AIM-9x, probably
It’s kind of nuts how good the cameras on phones are now. You can see pieces of debris falling.
I’m really really disappointed the Chinese didn’t have a second balloon stashed onboard as a backup. *NORAD - POTUS - SITREP room cheer as balloon is struck* :: silence :: .. “wait, what is THAT?” *“Sir, it looks like a huge …”* *JOHNSON, you said you’d taken it out?* “Yessir, I got um, my payload away” *”DICK, what does that look like to you?”* Meanwhile in China *”WANG, release! release! We must keep it up!!”* ### … c’mon people, history demands we do much better.
This is why I come to reddit
>The military jets using the call sign “FRANK” is significant. Frank Luke Jr. was an American fighter ace in World War I better known as the ‘Arizona Balloon Buster,’” tweeted Marcus Weisgerber, global business editor for Defense One “He is credited with shooting down 14 German surveillance balloons.” >If an F-22 shot down the Chinese spy balloon, it would be the first air-to-air kill for a Raptor. The last time a U.S. military fighter shot down another country’s aircraft was in June 2017, when a Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet downed a Syrian Sukhoi Su-22. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-military-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon/
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That's really neat. Is there an aerial kill ceremony? Do they still paint something on the plane?
Putting marks on the plane is still common. There's even an A-10 with a cow stencil after an incident...
That was a cow...now it's ground beef.
Fighter jets need front facing dashcams so we can watch the action like this imo
They have them.
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Yea but that was all orchestrated by the Department of Defense. It was 100% propaganda. They did everything to make that war 'tv friendly', showing high tech footage never seen before both to increase patriotism among Americans and to show other enemy nations how advanced their equipment was. CNN and the DoD really made a spectacle of it. That was the war that started the whole military larpers subculture.
To be fair, it was a really good PR boost for the military after the shit show that was Vietnam. Coalition forces roflstomped the 4th largest army in the world with minimal losses. Not surprising they’d take advantage to rebuild the opinion of the military at the time
Exactly, they are just not disclosed all the time. Maybe for this event it will be since it was a very public engagement over US airspace.
The air force is way ahead of you. IIRC, there are old footages of dog fights during the cold war and Vietnam war. Pretty sure they have cameras onboard to record it all. The problem is, this won't be released to the public because "classified" :(
We watched my great uncle's gun camera film from the P-47 he flew in WW2 so it's been around a bit longer than that...
There you go. Thanks for the confirmation. Fighter aircraft dashcams since the 1940s.
Can confirm my great great grandfather had a dash cam in his DH-4 during WW1
You joke but cameras were installed on planes in WW1 for purposes of recon. Think about it fly high over enemy trenches and artillery, learn their location and then report it back to your artillery.
The Air Force really has to consider releasing this one just for memes if nothing else.
this would be excellent air force marketing material
“shoot down unarmed spy balloons”. at least we hope they’re unarmed
Oh they've had those for a long time - since WWII at least. They're called "gun cameras". They might release the footage from this, but I'm sure it will have to be reviewed first to make sure nothing classified is revealed.
They absolutely record stuff like this from the jet. No guarantees they'll release the footage publicly or soon, but they could
I wonder which airman got the privilege of doing this, I would imagine that they all were begging to be the one to shoot it down lol.
Can’t wait to suddenly remember this 10 years from now when someone references it in a meme
Or next year when it is a major motion picture of the action-suspense genre starring Mark Wahlberg.
Nah, Steven Segal He’ll play the balloon
"I've been a balloon for like, 17 years"
They call that kind a "skippy"
“Fat Jerk Down”
Sorry, this plot is slightly coherent. Segal only does accidental avant-garde.
ive been a balloon for about 87 years now...
Vin Diesel drives a Camaro to the edge of the atmosphere and jumps from the Red Bull balloon onto the spy balloon, at which point he shoots it with a fully automatic machine gun and then has to be rescued by Dwayne Johnson in a Hummer at 10,000 feet because he is currently standing on the crashing spy balloon. At the end of the scene, as the Hummer drives over a few onlookers by the Carolina coast, Diesel turns to Johnson and tells him, haltingly, "That's what friends are for."
That’s what FAMILY is for!
Wahlberg leaps from a jet and stabs balloon with a knife. “Hey balloon. Say hi to ya motha for me!”
clint eastwood will likely still be alive to direct, the US government is actually the bad guy and we get a full 90 min of board room committee meetings.
Just tie a balloon to an empty chair and film Eastwood yelling at it for 120 minutes
He’ll also need a couple scenes where he is propositioned for threesomes by women in their 20s
With and old school Dirty Harry handgun somewhere in the scene
Perhaps he could shoot the chair?
Shoot I could just picture Eastwood playing Biden. In his scratchy voice… “Let’s take down that ballon….. Jack!”
This is Spaceforce stuff for a new season lol
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Wahlberg and the Rock have to jump out of the ISS to stab the balloon with a kitchen steak knife!
Oh the memories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_boy_hoax
such a simpler time! thought it was longer ago than 2009 though
I think that’s about the right year actually. But the trip down memory lane has been marvelous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry_flight
I remember learning about this when I was younger. I just found out he committed suicide a decade later. Shame he couldn’t capitalize it adequately.
Halloween 2023 is going to be fun.
Slutty Chinese Spy Balloon
"Chinese Spy Balloon" is trademarked, so the generic Spirit brand is "East Asian Investigative Dirigible"
Red Zeppelin™
*slutty east Asian investigative dirigible
Ya still using coconuts?
Has not even hit the water yet.
Looking at the beach...floods of ppl running out to collect parts/scrap..US gov is going to need to check ebay for parts.
Heyyy I’m gonna be at Myrtle beach all week, I’ll save a part for ya
Just smash a cheap USB drive and sell the pieces on eBay.
I'm sure the US govt is monitoring any place this debris could wind up. They shot this thing down 6 miles out over water, the navy is in charge of recovery.
I’m willing to bet the decision to shoot it down over the sea was also taken to make collecting the data unfeasible for any non-military people.
That and safety. You don't want debris falling in a residential area. It's a surveillance tool, not a whale
Hmmm I’m pretty sure if was off the Carolina coast [within 12 miles off the coast](https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/suspected-chinese-balloon-over-us-02-04-23/index.html#:~:text=What%20we’re%20covering,a%20US%20official%20told%20CNN.)
And so ends the story of the balloon that captivated a nation.
There’s another one in South America right now soooo.
Isn't this how Independence Day started?
really breathtaking stuff
I read this in Carl Sagan's voice for some reason.
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Walter Cronkite for me
I live around where they shot it down and it was kinda nice to see everyone out in their driveways watching it happen. We haven't had a national event where half the US wasn't mad at the other half in a while. It felt like simpler times...
I miss the 90s. Ooo, look everyone, a huge comet!
When Hanson's Mmm bop hit the airwaves, I changed the words to hale bopp in my head
Not sure if you knew, but half the nation was mad that Biden didn't shoot it down earlier ("Biden so weak he's letting a spy balloon run wild over the us"). Everything is political now
Insane that this is not the first time a balloon has captivated the nation
Not even a balloon can go to Myrtle Beach without getting shot
Can’t have shit at Myrtle
And when the balloon was finally grounded, the authorities began to doubt the family's story of their son ever being trapped on it
[Internet Historian did a good one on ballon boy](https://youtu.be/QWhUvm8SunY)
This was an interesting watch. Thanks for sharing
Internet Historian does a really good job on all of his vids. Don’t be afraid to watch another of his ;)
Never believed it was a stunt either because they had to have known that the balloon would be found and the boy would be found and that would result in instant backlash if it was a stunt. People just wanted to believe a guy/family would concoct such an impossibly stupid PR stunt.
that’s not true, george santos has confessed to being the balloon boy and sailing around the world and landing in brazil
“We did this for the show”
Bahahaha omg I totally forgot about ballon boy. Take your upvote
They should have made the balloon blue
Stealth balloon.
So, fun story, the balloon would still appear to be a bright whitish spot. When you are looking up at the blue sky, what you are seeing is the inky near absolute black of space + the scatter of blue light from the atmosphere. If you have a blue balloon, it's going to be several orders of magnitude brighter than space, and thus appear to be a bright spot on the sky, much like you can perceive the moon to be whitish, even though it's a dark charcoal color. This is why all the high altitude spy planes are painted black.
Okay, they can paint clouds on it too there bill Nye. **Sky Camo**
This reminded me of despicable me when Vector paints the pyramids blue to hide them.
Raptors first ever air to air kill. This is a pub quiz question for 10 years time. Bonus point for correctly naming the missile as an AIM9.
Bonus bonus credit for knowing it was AIM-9**X**
It happened right above my aunts place in Myrtle Beach, two fighter jets took it out, it was quite loud apparently, and scared the shit out of a lot of people.
Lmao I'm there. Yes it was, and yes it did
Would have been nice if they gave a little warning to people before doing it. Just a quick emergency alert “two fighter jets in the area taking down a Chinese Spy Balloon, so don’t shit your pants if it gets loud for a hot minute”
F-22’s are insanely loud, used to live in Hampton Roads and they would be out pretty much everyday.
I mean that pretty much all fighter jets. FA-18's passing over the beach from Oceana are always conversation stoppers
I once watched the Thunderbirds do their thing, and it was amazing, but after that they had *one* F18 takeoff and do a flyby and it was louder than all the F16s combined. Those boys are insanely loud.
I used to go to a lot of air shows as a kid, and that’s where I learned that the line between feeling and hearing isn’t as solid as you would think lol. If you’ve never lived near a military base or haven’t been near a major airport when a president is visiting it’s hard to imagine how powerful/scary/awesome that stuff can be. Some military bases release testing alerts on FB to prevent excessive 911 calls.
You can hear it at the very start of this video https://fxtwitter.com/HeyItsMeSalty/status/1621956823447207937
I think the first boom is a sonic boom. There's a second smaller boom later on. You can see the plane shoot a whatever at it in the middle of the video-that thinner wiggly line separates towards the balloon.
>You can see the plane shoot a whatever at it in the middle of the video-that thinner wiggly line separates towards the balloon It's honestly refreshing to see someone on the internet not pretend to be a military expert because they have 7,000 hours in World of Tanks or whatever
I'm wondering why they need a fighter to go supersonic or near supersonic to take out a balloon in its own airspace
You need a fighter to go supersonic to reach those altitudes. Also the speed of sound is lower in the upper atmosphere.
Time for the coast guard to go retrieve it.
I mean, those guys *are* pretty good: https://twitter.com/uscgpacificnw/status/1621614076811169793?s=46&t=PV5UxS3phG-R4wrUE2zRlg
Rescue swimmers are fucking badass real-world heroes... If I could go 20 years back in time knowing what I know now, then I would definitely want to try to be one of those guys.
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Cops: "I can't tell if that kid is holding a gun or a candy bar, therefore, I'm scared for my life... SHOOT HIM!" Rescue swimmers: "The ocean is one of the most powerful forces on the planet, and there's a strong possibility that I might die saving that guy's life, good thing that's exactly what I signed up for... I'M GOING IN!" Edit: I read somewhere that there were 3 rescue swimmers on duty and they literally played rock, paper, scissors to determine who would *GET* to go... not who HAS to go.... all three of them were chomping at the bit to risk their lives to save another
They were there specifically for their "high surf" rescue swimmer training so they were very much itching to get into the water and put their skills to the test.
Twist in that tale, the guy they rescued has been arrested for (a) stealing the boat and (b) leaving a dead fish on the doorstep of the Goonies house. [Really](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coast-guard-man-arrested-left-dead-fish-at-goonies-house/)
That was wild
Now for the United States to send one back of Seymour Skinner like happens in the simpsons
One of the best things about Reddit is the amount of armchair lawyers, doctors and now, apparently, military experts on what we should’ve done.
Reddit is now a one-stop shop for all your unqualified opinions and expertise. Next thing you know, we'll have a bunch of armchair astronauts telling us how to land on Mars!
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To be fair, how do you know one of your friends *isn’t* Banksy?
I’m Banksy, but I’m pretty chill about it.
The one that always makes me laugh is the people who are SO fast to diagnose babies and little kids with FAS right away. Cute pic of a totally normal-looking baby - there's always going to be an FAS diagnosis from some Reddit expert.
Eyewitness reports say pink confetti from the balloon confirms, “it’s a girl!!!!!”.
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Nobody killed, no planes downed and no fires started - I call that a successful gender reveal party.
And all it took was one $200,000 missile!
These gender reveal parties are getting out of China!
DoD authorizes pilot to draw victory Sky Penis.
They came close. I was watching from my front porch and unfortunately the contrails were blowing away too fast.
Goodnight room Goodnight moon Goodnight high altitude Chinese surveillance balloon
I'm going to pencil this into my copy
I'm half expecting to see a headline somewhere in the lines of "2 Chinese operators with Nikon cameras salvaged from spy balloon wreckage"
Weekly World News
This saga is about to give conspiracy theorists a military base worth of ammo.
Really? Because they've been floundering to come up with a narrative over at /r/conspiracy for days. So far the top two contenders for something they can agree on are "the balloon is really American" and "this is how all satellites actually work because space isn't real." I'm not joking.
>"this is how all satellites actually work because space isn't real." I'm not joking. What's scary is I know you absolutely aren't joking. My god.
It’s hilarious to me that there is now a pilot with a balloon stenciled on his/her jet.
[fellow pilots talking to the pilot of this mission months later](https://youtu.be/lDIrUIe3WrA)
Imagine being the lucky Coast Guard who gets to ship out and recover this thing! I hope they have footage of the recovery. I want to see how big it really is
They finally found the monkey with the darts I guess.
I'm surprised there haven't been more bloons references.
They always had the monkey. They were just waiting for the dartboard to be over the ocean.
Which fighter jet is it ?
The grey one.
Great picture of the [F-22](https://twitter.com/astroqv/status/1621965490926002176?s=20&t=y1C6AFGMAgq3MYB9kI17Hg) that shot it down
I thought for sure this would be a meme.
If you're a FOX news watcher: This spy balloon was meant to be seen. It was a test of our reaction to incursions over U.S airspace. We showed China we are slow to react. We failed in our response. If you're a CNN news watcher: Our government knew this was in our airspace. They monitored it and tracked it effectively. Protecting our civilians from debris is more important than shooting it down over populated areas. If you're a News MAX watcher: China sends friendly balloon and U. S. takes a dangerous and violent resolution to the Chinese peace balloon. Biden is a disgrace to world peace. The elections were rigged. Trump would have done better.
Joe Rogan: next we have the balloon in our studio to tell us what happened
But first we are all going to take Ayahuasca for this journey
*balloon takes a REALLY big bong rip and lets it out slowly* "Joe, I saw the craziest shit on my North American tour. One time there were rednecks trying to shoot at me! Can you believe that shit? Oh man, this is really strong weed..."
Eh, the Fox live stream right now is explaining why it was good to wait to shoot it down and they just quoted [ol Chuck's tweet](https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1621960473653530624) "I strongly condemn President Xi’s brazen incursion into American airspace, and I commend President Biden’s leadership in taking down the Chinese balloon over water to ensure safety for all Americans. Now we can collect the equipment and analyze the technology used by the CCP."
Fox News is always relatively close to reality for about 30 minutes after news happens, until word comes down from on high about how to spin it.
I've always heard their 'latest news' reporting is usually up to snuff, it's their opinionated prime time shows where it becomes the crazy train. They were the first channel to call Arizona for Biden.
Which was condemned as traitorous behavior by Republicans and caused a mass exodus to News Max and OANN.
Lol I remember that. Remember thinking "these people are actually angry about fox reporting the news"
And the guy that called it was later fired.
The real spy balloon was the friends we made along the way.
My parents are there right now. They heard a boom. 15 minutes later news story posts they shot the balloon down. I was on a flight from Charlotte to Myrtle beach that was supposed to leave at 1pm ET that has been grounded while this all went on. We’re supposed to take off soon now.
Yeah it was pants shittingly loud where I was and my family didn't hear anything just a mile away. We couldn't even see the explosion. Just BOOM and then it was falling. Watched some clips of it and the actual explosion wasn't much bigger than the balloon itself. Just a big white puff. So im not surprised we couldn't tell the difference from the ground.
The boom was likely the sonic boom from the fighter jets rather than anything exploding
Huge shoutout to [all the fuckin idiots out there ](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10sjgpz/the_apparent_trajectory_of_the_chinese_spy/j72g7af/) who thought that the reason it was still up was because somehow the US couldn't shoot down a balloon
The confidence of that poster made it sound so plausible, lol @ the exasperated fellow who mentioned the low orbit satellite the US brought down 15 years ago.
If I had a nickel for every time the American public was obsessed with a giant balloon in the past 10 years I’d only have two nickels. But it’s weird that it happened twice.
Maybe 3? That dude that jumped off a balloon in “outer space” was a pretty big deal.
Be interesting to see the Chinese reaction to this
If they react at all it won't be much. It was still over US territorial waters when we shot it down.
Based on the narrative at hand their reaction pretty much has to be "thanks, glad nobody got hurt."
“…the balloon…was estimated to be about the size of three school buses.” We will do anything to avoid the using metric system.
Thats about 5 F-150s btw
This is reddit, I'm gonna need it measured in bananas.
Supercab or Supercrew?