Update: NORAD and U.S. Northern Command confirmed the TFR put in place and later rescinded over Havre, Montana was in response to a "radar anomaly" that it sent fighter aircraft to investigate. Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, and NORAD is still monitoring the situation.
Could this be a distraction from train on fire that rains hydrochloric acid on entire town? For how large disaster it is, it's completely absent from the news.
> An air quality disaster resulted on Friday night after about 50 cars on a Norfolk Southern Railroad train traveling from Illinois to Pennsylvania derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. Ten of those cars contained hazardous materials, five of which contained vinyl chloride, a highly volatile colorless gas produced for commercial uses.
From the tweet: "I am in direct contact with NORCOM and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border. Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic — the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning."
Seems like they are waiting to shoot it down in the morning.
It's worth noting that in the US government hierarchy, the United States Congress is superior to the Department of Defense. Why? Because they (both House and Senate) write the laws stating who and what the DoD is, the House funds the DoD, and the Senate confirms appointments of officers.
Specifically with regards to Matt Rosendale, he is a Representative from Montana. He is in a position where he can demand (and will get, within reason) information from the US military and represent Montana in demanding and publicizing said information.
Ultimately their paramount allegiance is to the Constitution and the people of the United States. This can supercede the chain of command when Commander-in-chief places orders contravened by the People.
Congress performs oversight of the military and sets budgets, so they're briefed on operations like this which have some outsized political impact. It doesn't seem to me like these things should be a big deal but the rest of the people in the US seem to act like it is, so Congress is naturally very interested.
"Reported" objects. On a complex radar system which has filters in the process of being re-tuned, because of concern things have been missed but now, there are more false positives: radar is complicated and weather, dust, floating metallised party balloons, insects, migrating birds can generate signals.
Yeah, it's a big distraction from other, non-balloon important world events that we should be focusing on, of which there are many. These balloons taking over the news cycle for days on end eats into peoples precious attention spans. Suddenly balloons are the hottest thing to focus on right now though.
I feel like we have a couple of weird but completely plausible events involving balloons. And now everyone is thinking about it, so people start noticing it more.
Isn’t this a well-studied behaviour? X happens and suddenly lots of people are calling in about X.
I don’t understand what’s so interesting about a spy balloon anyway. Doesn’t China already have satellites in orbit able to take high resolution pictures anywhere in the country anyway?
about the balloons themselves? Nothing. But how the US responds, how much they tolerate, that's all important signals. A lot of geopolitical competition is about poking and seeing what you can get away with.
A balloon 60k+ feet above my house? Yes no big deal. Not like they will see anything better than they could from the public road, or what's on google maps.
What evidence do we have that these balloons are of terrestrial origin, other than Occam’s razor? It could be Venusians, who have experience building lighter than aircraft for their floating cities. Other than how wildly improbable it is, the alien theory still makes more sense than the CCP thinking balloon espionage is a pretty neat idea.
There's no released info on the second or third but China acknowledged ownership of the first balloon (as an errant weather balloon) and complained when it was destroyed. Remains of the balloon were recovered and the Chinese companies that built the balloon were identified. None of that behavior is consistent with a Venusian origin.