The White House acknowledged there are flying devices such as weather balloons that are ‘not nefarious at all’
White House: Three Objects the US Shot Down Could Have Been ‘Totally Benign’
Mystery Over Missing Sidewinder Missile That Failed to Shoot Down UFO
But the F-16 jet tasked with shooting the object over Lake Huron on Sunday “missed on its first attempt,” according to Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson.
Citing U.S. officials, Tomlinson wrote on Twitter that a second Sidewinder air-to-air missile was required, and it is “not clear where the first missile landed.”
A Defense Department spokesperson told Newsweek they were “certainly aware of the reporting on this,” but did not have any other details they could provide at this time. [Yet Kirby ‘can’t’ confirm that it happened]
…
“The warhead is relatively small, as is the missile, limiting potential damage if it misses or something goes wrong,” [Jodi] Vittori previously told Newsweek.
National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, said on Monday that the objects downed in Alaska and Canada “are in remote and wintry terrain,” with the object over Michigan likely to be “in very deep water in Lake Huron.” This makes salvage operations more difficult, he added.
Thanks to Dave DeCamp for this find! FYI, according to Wikipedia, the Sidewinder is almost 10 feet long, 5 inches wide, and 188 pounds. The warhead, itself, is 20.8 pounds. They’re shooting down these unidentified objects, all willy nilly, but I’m not supposed to be concerned about a missing missle?! Sorry, not sorry, this one hit too close to home! Time to look for more memes, I guess! 😅
Related:
Jet that shot down unidentified object over Lake Huron took off from Madison (missing missile was noticed when the F-16s landed back in Wisconsin)
Read More »The U.S. Department of Defense has quietly launched a new program to develop the ability to unleash thousands of autonomous land, sea, and air drones capable of overwhelming and dominating an enemy’s area defenses.
Pentagon Secretly Working To Unleash Massive Swarms of Autonomous Multi-Domain Drones to Dominate Enemy Defenses
China accuses U.S. of flying spy balloons into Chinese airspace more than 10 times
John Kirby, spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a MSNBC interview on Monday that this claim was not true.
“Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false. It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents,” wrote Adrienne Watson, another NSC spokesperson, on Twitter.
Previously:
U.S. military’s newest weapon against China and Russia: Hot air
The Pentagon is working on a new plan to rise above competition from China and Russia: balloons.
The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.
Seymour Hersh is a legendary investigative reporter who has revealed dozens of crimes the U.S. government committed at home and abroad.
In his latest piece Hersh describes the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea by U.S. government forces. The destruction released an enormous amount of methane, a global warming gas. It destroyed Germany’s gas lifeline with Russia and thereby heavily damaged Germany’s industry. It was ecological and economic terrorism by the U.S. government targeted at an ‘ally’.
Some Small Corrections To Seymour Hersh’s New Nord Stream Revelations
Reminder:
Airforce Spent Millions To Shot Down A Failed U.S. Weather Balloon – Biden Is Happy It Did So
So it looks like the airforce sent up an AWACS surveillance plane, a tanker and an F-22, the most expensive fighter plane ever, to fire a $400,000 Sidewinder missile to take down a failed weather balloon.
The Twitter Files are just the latest in 100 years of the government imposing its will through covert media and intimidation.
Feeling manipulated? How Uncle Sam perfected the information state
For several decades the American public has been instilled with an intrinsic fear of and hatred for China.
No singular event in this seemingly inevitable march to war is more emblematic of the American public’s warped psyche than the “Chinese Spy Balloon” narrative—perhaps due, in part, to its facial absurdity. The happening eclipses even similarly nonsensical yarns such as widespread TikTok paranoia (see the NSA’s PRISM program), China’s American farmland purchases (Chinese firms account for <.5% of all foreign-owned land in the U.S.), and the “invasion” of Chinese fentanyl through the Southern border (fentanyl trafficking is illegal in China).
…
While some populist Republicans have bravely departed from the establishment’s support for Ukraine, many led the chorus of voices urging escalation—and not diplomacy.
…
The banner narrative favored by mainline Republicans and the populist Right alike—that Joe Biden is weak—is insidious, because it implies that Biden should be more aggressive. Furthermore, it excuses Biden’s objectively ultra-hawkish policy against China.
Just in the last few weeks, the Biden administration continued its redoubling of the Asia Pivot launched by Barack Obama and furthered by Donald Trump: the U.S. Marine Corps opened a new base in Guam as the U.S. opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands, furthered diplomatic measures meant to militarize Japan, announced the opening of new military installations in the Philippines and Palau, and furthered a deal that would secure it exclusive military access to Micronesia, an area of the Pacific Ocean as large as the continental U.S.—all with the express and stated aim of confronting China.
…
Unfortunately, the prevailing narrative won the day—while Americans’ heads were in the clouds, imagining a biowarfare attack, or falsely reporting the balloon carried explosives, Sino-American relations deteriorated even further. Distressingly, the American public exhibited its eagerness to rush to just about any conclusion concerning China.
An Overblown Balloon Headline Inflates False Narrative on China
Technology is ground zero in the conflict between the United States and China. For the American hegemon, it is about the leading edge of geostrategic power and the means for sustained prosperity. For China, it holds the key to the indigenous innovation required of a rising power. The tech war now underway between the two superpowers could well be the defining struggle of the twenty-first century.
The Sino-American Tech Trap
By Richard Fontaine, the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.
China’s Balloon Could Be America’s Awakening
Related:
Center for a New American Security (funding and employees):
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