False equivalence. Aircraft and balloons are fair game. Satellites are not. Don't argue with me about it, argue with established international law.
"The balloon" shot down
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I would venture a guess that data gathering went both ways during its visit...
Well, I'm sure they too would have shot down what they percieved as a spy balloon in their air space, regardless of what country they thought it was from. Jumping to the thought that they or we or anyone else with ASAT capability would start smoking satellites in space is a whole different subject.
Not when you apply sanctions until the AMRAAM or AIM-9X is paid....
But I see the comment went over your heads, much like the balloon
4WD
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If over Beijing - the MOFT of the air would divert it to open land … (ever land in that hole?) …
Nothing went over my head ... you think China or Russia or N. Korea, etc would allow a perceived spy balloon to float and linger over their country and not do anything about it?
Nothing went over my head ... you think China or Russia or N. Korea, etc would allow a perceived spy balloon to float and linger over their country and not do anything about it?
No, I'm NOT talking about the shoot down....
This is off in the weeds it seems, lol.
What do you think they (China, Russia, N. Korea, etc) would do in the same situation. Send the US a bill for the shoot down too?
The Chinese were just trying to get a good look at all the US farm land they’ve bought. 
4WD
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Like my great grandfather‘s old brown and tan photosLike an anti-spy balloon dome of protection.
Dwell time and better ground communications
I would think it would need reaction control thrusters/rockets to have control over the 3 axes of flight up that high. @Astro14 would have to inform us here.
I am not sure it would still have sufficient airflow over the flight controls once it got up that high, in order to be controllable.
I know Yeager’s NF-104 had pressurized gas thrusters in the nose, tail, and wingtips (hydrogen peroxide?) in order to be able to have some semblance of attitude control up that high.
Did the warhead explode? Was the “boom” a sonic boom? I would think a hole punched at Mach 2 alone would bring down the ballon without destroying the payload. Can you fire a AIM9X with the warhead in “safety”?
I saw dust etc on impact…not sure I saw an explosion
I saw dust etc on impact…not sure I saw an explosion
I have seen a lot of speculation leading up to the shoot down of what could be used to bring it down. It was weird seeing all the claims that a Sidewinder wouldn’t work because apparently many thought there wouldn’t be enough “heat” generated from a balloon. But in reality it seems to work more like the movie Predator where the missile is tracking a specific target using infrared imaging and not just looking for anything hot. They use technical terms to describe it (focal-plane array just means an image sensor), but it’s really just an IR camera hooked up to a program to guide it visually to the target. My understanding is that it’s a lot harder to trick an advanced IR missile into following flares these days because they can discriminate the flares from the target and are supposed to ignore anything but the original target.
But it does make for some interesting fictional accounts, like how the scene in Blue Thunder where a Sidewinder fired from an F-16 was fooled into tracking a barbecue joint’s chimney. But of course fictional weapons are weird, like how this one takes about 50 seconds to travel 2 miles. At least it gave the workers time to get out.
The Air Intercept Missile (AIM)-9X Sidewinder is the latest of the Sidewinder family of short-range air-to-air missiles. It features a high off-boresight focal-plane array seeker mounted on a highly maneuverable airframe with a greatly improved infrared counter-countermeasures feature. The AIM-9X incorporates many AIM-9M legacy components (rocket motor, warhead and active optical target detector), but its performance far exceeds the legacy Sidewinder. Unlike previous AIM-9 models, the AIM-9X can even be used against targets on the ground.
The AIM-9X Block II is the most advanced short-range air-air missile in the U.S. inventory, capable of using its datalink, thrust vectoring maneuverability, and advanced imaging infrared seeker to hit targets behind the launching fighter. The missile provides fighter aircrew with the first shot, first kill opportunities that are essential for survival during air combat maneuvering in the visual arena. The AIM-9X delivers these opportunities with unmatched offensive and defensive capabilities against threats as well as supports air superiority in the Beyond Visual Range air-to-air battle. The AIM-9X Block II missile provides the Joint Force with fighter aircraft lethality and survivability necessary to counter threats identified in the Chief of Naval Operations Guidance and the National Defense Strategy.
But it does make for some interesting fictional accounts, like how the scene in Blue Thunder where a Sidewinder fired from an F-16 was fooled into tracking a barbecue joint’s chimney. But of course fictional weapons are weird, like how this one takes about 50 seconds to travel 2 miles. At least it gave the workers time to get out.
I remember seeing that scene in the movie version of The Right Stuff. The plane they used in the movie was just an F-104 without the supplemental rocket engine that burned a jet fuel/peroxide mixture. I’ve heard that they just used the same mixture in the thrusters for simplicity, but this says that they just used H2O2.
Flashback: Lockheed NF-104A Aerospace Trainer
In October 1961, the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base received the new designation of Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS) which reflected the increasing role relative to
www.wpafb.af.mil
Numerous internal and external modifications were required to transform the F-104A into the NF-104A. Reaction control thrusters to control pitch and yaw added to a modified nose cone, 24-inch wing tip extensions housed the roll thrusters, an extended dorsal spine for rocket engine plumbing, inlet cone extensions added to better control airflow and an LR121-NA-1 rocket motor was added to an F-104G-model tail. Designers added H2O2 tanks added internally to the forward and mid-fuselage, while modifying the cockpit to include a control stick for the Reaction Control System (RCS) as well as an Attitude and Azimuth Reference System which provided inertial attitude and aircraft aerodynamic attitude information. Due to the extreme altitudes being flown on zoom missions, pilots required the use of a David Clark AP22S-2 full pressure suit.
OVERKILL
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I highly doubt it took the path it did from just pure random floating around aimlessly. There could have been some kind of air pump that shored pressurized air to use for flight control. Hopefully most of the debris is recovered so they can see exactly what was going on with the payload.
Any number of the obvious - mapping, ground penetrating radar, intel gathering, signal gathering, etc. It floated across the US for days with impunity, from Montana down and across pass S. Carolina. That's a lot of territory to map. A dozen states, hundred military bases, key infrastructure, capitols, major airports, etc. Maybe more detailed or current than satellites. But the added advantage is simply probing and reaction response.
It's a very common technique to probe enemies for weakness, and record responses. This probably happens a billion times daily in physical borders, cyber security, military bases, etc. Probing for weakness, gathering intel, etc.
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