They used a Sparrow? Makes more sense than the claims of "multiple sidewinders" I heard. Sparrows are a radar-guided missile that use a passive receiver and no active transmitter, thus requiring the firing plane (could use some other source, now, I don't know) to continue to illuminate the target with its radar. The AMRAAM's, on the other hand, have a transmitter and receiver(s?) in them, so, once they target-select, they can follow it themselves while the pilot turns around and high-tails it for the post-action briefing. The sexy F-14 did a test-run once of six Phoenix AMRAAM's (Advanced Air-to-Air Medium-Range Missiles) it detected six drone targets at 120 miles, selected the targets, fired the six missiles and broke off. All six targets were destroyed and the F14 was the greatest Navy plane of all time. I like my cars like I like my planes. Big, overpowered, and overly fast. They could do Mach 2.5, which no American plane of this generation can do. (to our knowledge) I suspect it could do Mach 3, but OPSEC, etc. considerations... I have only done Mach 0.236 in my Hellcat, or less than one tenth of that Mach number. You know what's interesting? At really high speed, the exhaust seems to be quieter, like it just ain't making the trip forward from back behind car as well due to fighting the wind, just like yelling at a friend who was upwind as a child, I found they couldn't hear me as well as I could hear them, downwind.
Somehow relevant to my mind: \ And this isn't some bleating left-wing chomo alarmist crap. There are worse things in the world than war, such as peace at all costs.
The published top speed of an F-14 is Mach 2.34 (1.544 mph) at 40.000 feet. It's ceiling is 53,000 feet. A state-of-the-art F-22 Raptor was chosen for the shootdown, even though it is slightly slower at Mach 2.25 (1.500 mph) because it has a higher ceiling of 60,000 feet (the balloon's altitude).
Wikipedia is not entirely accurate, unbiased, nor dependable. However, back in the real world, we have known for decades that Mach 2.5 is far closer to the real top speed, in spite of what is reported by Wikipedia. The top speed is at LEAST Mach 2.5. At LEAST. Google and Wikipedia are two reasons I do not use Google Chrome. I quote as an example from ANTFT.net: "Note that the specifications given on speed, altitude and weight resemble only the design specifications. These are less than the maximum possible to keep airframe fatigue low. Also this is the case with the maximum allowed g-force load which is limited in peace-time operations." As an example, the Hellcat can do over 200mph, but most people drive it at less than 100. 99 mph, however is not its top speed. I was doing 180 in it when the external conditions prevented further acceleration. (I ran out of road.) It was still accelerating. Just the thrust of the F14D, being over 56,000 pounds, compared to the F14A, which was around 38,000 pounds yet still listed as having "a top speed of 1544mph" would give it a potential top speed over Mach 3, as drag increases as the square of speed, thus four times the thrust gives you twice the speed, and 56,400 lbs versus 34,154 pounds would yield, instead of 1544mph at 50-60,000 feet of altitude, at which the speed of sound is 659.8mph, instead1.28 times as much as 1544mph, or 1984 mph, which is over Mach 3.0. While I'm at it, the F22 may have a stated top speed of Mach 2.2, but given it's absolutely massive thrust of 70,000 pounds on that skinny, low-frontal-area shape that has far less drag than an F15, which has less than half the thrust, and drastically less drag than the bomb-truck F14, I estimate its top speed to be more on the order of Mach 3.2. This is not even taking into account the far-superior aerodynamics on a per-foot-of-frontal-area basis of the F22, just considering the raw frontal area alone. I am calling it now. The F22 will eventually be revealed to have a top speed of Mach 3.2, when it comes to sheer power-to-overall-drag, but due to heating and stress, it is kept lower. Nobody wants to repaint all that pricey EMF-absorbing paint and re-fit the cockpit glass after every flight. On another note, the air pressure at 60,000 feet is dismally low compared to pressure at sea level, being only about 1.049 PSI I would like to see Maui hold hillclimb events from sea level up to the top of Mount Haleakala, a 10,000 foot difference. It would be interesting to see how much slower cars were at 10PSI of external air pressure than at 14.7Psi. The (properly designed to prevent turbo overrevving) turbo cars would be king. Now I want a turbo car.
With the advent of the first spy satellites, balloons appeared to become obsolete. Now they are making a comeback, because while spy satellites can see almost everything, balloons equipped with high-tech sensors hover over a site far longer and can pick up radio, cellular and other transmissions that cannot be detected from space. That is why the Montana sighting of the balloon was critical; in recent years, the National Security Agency and United States Strategic Command, which oversees the American nuclear arsenal, have been remaking communications with nuclear weapons sites. That would be one, but only one, of the natural targets for China’s Ministry of State Security, which oversees many of its national security hacks.
Agreed. It would be great to suss out what data that thing was collecting and what it was sending back. Apparently, this is not the first time this has happened. In the past 5 years there have been 3 other times when Chinese balloons have ventured across US territory. This means 3 things: 1) It was not an error. 2) It was not checking the weather. 3) It will probably happen again. waiting to see what BS excuse China comes up with next!
