U-2 Pilot’s Selfie Flying Alongside Chinese Spy Balloon Leaks | Hacker News Reader

U-2 Pilot’s Selfie Flying Alongside Chinese Spy Balloon Leaks

thedrive.com

31 pointsmikece16 comments

If a U-2 can fly higher than these balloons, why did an expensive F-22 have to fire an expensive missile to blow it out of the sky? Wouldn't it make more sense to outfit a U-2 with something that can shoot a small hole in the balloon to make it descend a bit more gently? Easier to track where it lands, less damage to the equipment, presumably a lot cheaper, and a lot less international attention to the fact that the US shot a balloon out of the sky.

Unless the spectacle was the entire point, of course.

Based on the assorted videos I've watched on this apparently this has been tried in the past. The end result is an incredibly slow decent and less than predictable trajectory. And this was after firing vast amounts of .50 cal BMG rounds. It just takes too long and there is no way to predict where it will land. And all those bullets have to come down as well.

If I had to guess the U2 was probably more focused on intercepting communications and scanning for dangerous payload.

I guess my idea of a gentler descent works a bit too well, then.

I also wondered why they waited until it had crossed entirely over the US rather than shooting it down when it was still over Alaska. The explanation I heard the most is that they didn't want it to fall on a populated area, but again, a slower descent, having it parachute down, basically, might help. But if it takes forever to come down, that might be too much.

rather than shooting it down when it was still over Alaska

I am entirely guessing but outside of Alaska the ocean is incredibly deep and on-land most of Alaska would be quite difficult to bring recovery equipment to. Even bush planes have limited places to land and those planes can't carry more than a couple hundred pounds.

Another reason given was they wanted to monitor communications from the satellite gear. This implies to me that it was either not encrypted or they were able to decrypt it.

> Another reason given was they wanted to monitor communications from the satellite gear. This implies to me that it was either not encrypted or they were able to decrypt it.

Doesn't this suggest it really was civilian?

Doesn't this suggest it really was civilian?

I have no idea what decryption capabilities the military have these days. It would not surprise me to find out that China and the US have each others secrets. We used to play these games with the former Soviet Union and would share/brag back and forth each others results.

This seems highly doubtful, do you have a link to concrete cases where the US or Soviet Union could decrypt each other's top secret communications?

I would be surprised if this were publicly documented anywhere. It's not a secret AFAIK just not common knowledge. I knew several people involved in these exercises. They are no longer with us and it was not specifically about decrypting data. This was about intercepting communications via scrambled radio, RF signals and sub-carriers, spread spectrum radio, electronic typewriters in hardened shielded vaults, lights. So your only link I suppose is me. There are probably a few other old timers out here with a similar circle of friends and associates. I'm sure nowadays it is about intercepting keys, custom ciphers, etc... I'm just not in those circles any more. And those things are usually stolen and/or blackmailed out of people, almost nothing technical about it. In my time blackmailing people was about gay bars. We had cameras monitoring all the local gay bars. Nowadays it's probably more along the line of Epstein/Maxwell and related events. I do not know what else would be considered highly taboo these days. Is anything even taboo any more?

Prior to being in the military I always assumed the US and the Soviet Union were enemies, as in everyone hated everyone. It turned out that was incredibly far far from the truth. We played a lot of friendly games and also exchanged a lot of equipment. We acquired numerous 15KW transmitter tubes from them for example and that conversation started with "Why is the ceramic pink?" and my follow-on question was "We bought them from ... who??"

This just sounds like hearsay?

Is there any part that could be verified with 2023 insights?

The U-2 doesn’t have any weapon mounts. It would not be worth it to attempt to hack something together.

AFAIK the U-2 does not carry weapons. It is an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform.

U-2s are also expensive, and it would be a stretch to mount a cannon under any reasonable budget.

I remember reading that the film had to be managed carefully so that it didn't alter the balance of the plane too much. It takes extremely careful management because it's flying at the margins of aerodynamics already. Adding a weapon seems pretty tricky.

What is it with this weird cost obsession? The US shot down the airborne object down with it's Air Superiority fighter using it's most run of the mill A2A missile. You think it would be more cost effective to retrofit a decades old spy plane with weapons?

It's not just about cost, it's about a gentler descent.

In general, using a preexisting weapon once is going to be orders of magnitude cheaper than designing a new weapons system from scratch. There's no way that it would cost less than $400k to safely arm a U-2. A single hole also wouldn't have brought the balloon down

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