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Comment by NikkiA | Hacker News Reader

Making a high altitude balloon highly visible (eg, put lights inside it) and sitting back and waiting is actually a terrific tactic for finding out maximum operational ceiling of interceptors when the number is non-public.

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Mission accomplished. The previously published ceiling of the F-22 was 50K feet. The Pentagon said it (edit: by "it" I mean the F-22) was flying at 58K feet when it shot down the first balloon. Guess it can do (at least) 58K.

This was probably not entirely groundbreaking news to anybody including China. Everybody knows that the published specs of military hardware are intentionally distorted in one direction or another.

The F-15's known ceiling is 65K feet for example. So it's not surprising that newer fighters can match that.

Most US missiles can shoot above the operational height of their planes.

Sorry. I should have been clearer with that "it." The Pentagon said the F-22 was flying at 58K feet and the balloon was at 60-65,000 feet.

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32...

Of course, that could be a lie too!

There's not really any reason the Pentagon needed to state the F-22 was at 58k if that was actually new information (I haven't investigated the previously admitted service ceiling). They could have just as easily have claimed it was at 50k when it fired.

EDIT: Wikipedia claims the service ceiling of the F-22 is 65k feet anyways.

Check the Wikipedia edit history. Bunch of arguing over it. It was 50,000 feet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lockheed_Martin_F...

Yeah it’s not new, people have known.

I don’t think it was 50K in practice, published maybe but it was widely known it reach higher.

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