Love this. Have a friend that regularly sends $30 balloons a few times around the world. They routinely end up over interesting areas like hot spots in the Middle East or North Korea. Would be great to issue commands to a light weight camera but the bandwidth is so limited - payload is a factor too - can only be under 100 grams or so. Bandwidth is in the order of 30 bytes per minute. Would be fun to take picture remotely and then drop the payload/memory card when the balloon circled back to friendlier territory.
When it flies over these unsafe areas, isn't it detected by the region's air defense systems and shot down? Or are these too small and high to be seen by such systems?
Even if it made sense to try to take out a balloon, the missiles that can reach 80,000ft+ are tens of million dollars a piece, and not that many countries have access to that type of missile tech.
I mean look at the US response to the Chinese balloons - took a bit of time and ended up being handled by fighters not missiles
That one was flying around 60,000ft and weighed probably about 1 ton. Very different kind of balloon.
It was shot down by an F22 with an AIM-9 Air-to-air missile. This is the highest altitude air-to-air kill known, and the first combat kill of the F22 platform.
What a meek first kill. The F-22 is meant to attack swarms of Chinese fighters over the South China Sea. One day it will.
Maybe it'll be over my house. Oh goody I'll get to watch!!