Is there something new and strange and scary going on in our atmosphere, or are we just hyperalert to stuff that’s been there all along?
Maybe we're now seeing it largely because we're now looking for it. And because we've only recently developed the technology to track it electronically. CNN reported that we've only been able to do do so for the past year.
After two objects were shot down over Alaska Friday and the
Yukon Saturday, the airspace over Montana was closed late Saturday due to a radar
signal of something that could not be confirmed by jet, and then today, Sunday,
the airspace over Lake Michigan was temporarily closed “for national security reasons.”
Then, minutes before this writing, the military shot down an object over Lake Huron. It is not clear whether that is the same object that caused the airspace closure over Lake Michigan or something else. Lake Huron is just east of Lake Michigan.
We have so little information that it’s difficult to know
what to make of all this. But it’s certainly not all a bunch of weather balloons,
as some have suggested. That said, it might be a whole lot of different lighter-than-air craft sent aloft by governments, corporations and even individuals.
It has been reported that the “objects” over Alaska and Canada were smaller and different from the Chinese spy balloon shot down off South Carolina a week earlier. That balloon was big and roughly spherical. The Alaskan object was much smaller, did not look like the Chinese balloon and maybe didn’t have intelligence-gathering equipment. The Canadian defense minister said the Canadian object was cylindrical, and one pilot said it had the capacity to interfere with his navigational equipment. Another pilot noticed nothing like that.
We have no information about the object shot down over Lake Huron.
Jets scrambled over Montana late Saturday could find nothing
at the site of a “radar anomaly” that prompted a short closure of Montana airspace to
civilian aircraft. As this is written, we know nothing about what prompted the
Lake Michigan airspace closure today (February 12, 2023.) That airspace closure was ended after a
few hours. Shortly afterward, the Lake Huron object came down.
There seem to be fleets of Chinese intelligence-gathering
balloons drifting in our skies, and over the skies of dozens of nations. Four months ago, the Pentagon said, a Chinese
spy balloon crashed somewhere near Hawai’i, but we don’t know whether anything
was recovered from it. At the same time the Chinese balloon was drifting across
America two weeks ago, another was floating over Central America.
China says they’re just weather balloons, but if so, they
are big, expensive weather balloons. The one shot down two weeks ago had a
massive solar panel array hanging under it. That would power a whole lot of
electronics.
(I have personally recovered weather balloon electronics, which are tiny--little styrofoam boxes the size of a pocket transistor radio. That's not what was hanging from the Chinese spy balloon.)
Every major country uses weather balloons, and some—like China, the United Kingdom and the United States—use spy balloons.
And then there are also private company balloons, like the ones that raised concerns off Hawai’i a year ago, which were aeronautical balloons developed by a South Dakota firm called Raven Aerostar. They had been launched from South Dakota and had been aloft for several months. Raven Aerostar said those balloons were designed to carry electronics that could provide internet service to remote areas, could collect imagery and perform other functions.
The Raven Aerostar website provides some insight into ALL
the different lighter-than-air vehicles that are available. They include
Thunderhead Balloon Systems for long-duration flights. And Super Pressure
Balloons for stratospheric missions. And Zero Pressure Balloons that take
payloads to “the edge of space.” And
Sounding Balloons for short duration meteorological missions.
And there are Raven’s Stratospheric Airships, which look
more like giant blimps than balloons. They are capable of operating at 60,000
to 70,000 feet and can stay up for months.
Those are different from dirigibles, which are maneuverable
lighter-than-air craft. There are also hot air balloons, which have been a “thing”
since the 1700s.
Google/Alphabet in 2021 shut down its Loon program, which proposed using balloons to provide internet service to remote areas.
Lots of stuff drifting across the skies. As mentioned above, there is indication
that the United States within the past year or so has increased its capacity to
identify these low-speed, high-flying devices. That could be why we’re suddenly
seeing more detections.
© Jan TenBruggencate 2023
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