We need a cheaper way to down these spy balloons. The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. Send over the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler (HELIOS) to protect the west coast.
A "sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs" are a rounding error in the national security budget. The experience and lessons learnt from using it are valuable to all layers of the military and administration, significantly more so than the financial cost.
(I'm British and so not a US tax payer, just a spectator, but would argue the same here)
Absolutely. The value of F-22s actually launching some $400k AIM-9Xs not at training targets with a 100% success rate would be far, far greater than those unit costs.
It's a crying shame the F-22 production line was shut down, so it's great to see it performing well.
(Speaking as a DCS sim pilot with a long time interest in military aviation).
Oh yes the useful and oh so important lesson that F-22 is indeed capable of disposing of not only maneuverable airborne crafts but also non-maneuverable ones!
Clearly a baloon is so hard to dispose target that making sure the aircraft indeed can be up to this task is worth any money!
The IR signature/target profile of a balloon contraption is very different to that of a jet exhaust, for one. Far less friction heat of movement etc + no engine.
Although the X is an all aspect missile, the parameters would still be quite different.
I think this is would all be firmly in the "not public domain" bucket of details though, as I haven't seen much of this modelled in DCS.
(I suppose they could also have used eg a radar guided AIM-120, but they are primarily for BVR, more expensive at ~$1.1, and far, far more scope for erroneous target locking, so why risk it when the 9X obviously gets the job done. Again, from the point of view of an armchair - or a rig to be precise - sim pilot. I claim no credentials beyond this interest).
DCS World is a multi and single player combat simulator platform for the PC made by Eagle Dynamics, which features modules such as the A-10C, F-16, F/A-18 and the F-14. The platform is free, the modules' pricing is reflective of the development work gone in to them - and requires a lot of time to learn. Great fun.
Yes, because some people apparently think there is a lesson here. The "it can be spy, shoot it down" is sound reasoning but "we need to test whether F-22 can shoot down balloons" does sound like clown speak.
the problem is as long as the target you send up are cheaper for you to produce than the countermeasure used against them you can spam your opponent and bleed them financially while having a minimal impact on your own budget.
Air to air missiles cost on the order of $300,000.00 weather balloons cost and order of magnitude less.
If someone starts sending thousands or tens of thousands of balloons into American airspace to make the cost of shooting them down "significant", won't your congress consider that an act of war? It's quite a leap from the odd stray weather balloon to send them en masse.
We'll all have bigger problems if that day comes than the pesky billion or two it will cost from the US $773B DoD budget.
We need to base the number of occurances against our average training flight time/ammo expenditure. Currently we train a hell of a lot more than we actively shoot down targets so the expenditure is practically nothing. Now if a lot more show up that's a different equation.
The balloon shot down last week was likely order of magnitude more expensive than the Sidewinder that shot it down. Someone posted link to similar sized NASA balloon that cost $1 million for just the balloon and maybe platform but not the payload.
It might be possible to shoot down balloons with unguided rockets. It depends on how close the fighter can get and how accurate the rockets are. Rockets are super cheap.
Yeah, but that’s a NASA balloon which adds one or more “0” to the price tag just so it can source components from, and support jobs in, all 50 states. (Ok, being sarcastic, but I’m curious on the actual cost.)
The shootdowns did not involve using airplane guns/cannons. Those are less accurate, especially at the engagement range (the aircraft were at 40,000 ft., IIRC, and shooting at 60,000 ft. balloons), and would have likely damaged the payload.
The shoot-downs used AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles (per TFA). We also don’t know the ceiling altitude of the F-22 since it’s classified.
However, the F-22 can carry the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile (AMRAAM) which has a disclosed engagement altitude of 70,000 feet - capable of engaging even higher altitude balloons than these. As I understand it, the Extended Range AMRAAM-ER is believed to have an engagement ceiling of 85,000 feet.
Meanwhile, the US also has the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system, an air defense system capable of engaging targets at very high altitude. While its capabilities are classified, its max engagement altitude is at least 490,000 ft. or 93 miles … though using it to attack a balloon is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. THAAD is mobile and could be deployed in response to a high altitude balloon threat (some of which can fly 120,000 ft.)
I'm going to ask what might seem like a naive question - but how do you get a sidewinder to lock onto the balloon part of the balloon and not hit the payload?
True, but the max effective range of the F-22’s 20mm M61A2 Vulcan cannon is about 2000 feet (600m), which isn’t nearly enough to engage these balloons — assuming an F-22 is flying at 40,000 ft. vs. a balloon at 60,000 ft.
Even if the ceiling of the F-22 is substantially higher than 40,000 ft. (which I think is plausible), and is close enough to effectively engage these balloons, then I doubt that the Air Force would choose to make the tradeoff of disclosing the F-22’s performance capabilities to adversaries in order to save the cost of an AIM-9; the F-22’s performance is a secret and classified.
If we were faced with defending against a large number of high-flying objects then the reasoning might be different.
The USAF "fact sheet" page on the F-22[1] states "above 50,000 ft" flight ceiling. Wikipedia lists 65,000 ft but provides no easily verifiable citation (none of the citations for the section that I could retrieve online list that figure).
You may what to change up your definition of a 20mm round against a balloon. The statistics you reference is about accuracy and penetration. Take a look at distance until subsonic.
That’s definitely not their limit since they can shoot down satellites at the altitude of the International Space Station. And that’s the stuff we’re allowed to know about.
The SM-3, which is launched from ships for ballistic missile defense, can be used as anti-satellite missile. Its ceiling is supposed to be 1000 km. Which means could reach ISS.
It was tested in 2008 to destroy failed recon satellite.
This calculation is for a ballistic projectile without air resistance. For a missile with a rocket engine, there is no minimum velocity, but you can compute the fuel energy required for the change of altitude. Delta-v isn’t important for a sub-orbital intersection trajectory, although you’ll obviously want your interceptor missile to get there fairly quickly (which will end up being more fuel efficient than a slow climb).
The balloon last week could have easily been an order of magnitude more expensive than the AIM-9X. It was hundreds of feet in diameter with a suspended gantry with a multi-kw solar array. You don't put that much solar on to power nothing, so presumably there was a ton of military grade comms equipment on it.
It's conjecture for me to presume the sky is blue without looking out of my window, but it's a safe bet on days with good weather.
Unless this balloon -- or whatever it was -- was diamond-bedazzled and platinum-plated and filled with alien technology it's a safe bet that it was a fair amount cheaper to produce/launch/maintain than sortieing one of the most expensive and exclusive modern aircraft in the world and shooting off a missile that costs 600k/ea -- and that's not even considering collateral costs associated to the action.
Right, but presumably F-22s need to fly and pilots need to shoot down things with live ammo occasionally anyways to stay in shape? And logistics needs to know how to supply, and intelligence needs to know how to scramble them etc.
This seems like what amounts to a training program to me, unless a lot more start coming.
I don’t think that’s really such a good bet. The first one was supposedly the size of multiple buses. That is a bunch of computer hardware held up by a balloon rather than “just a balloon”. The price of such a thing could easily reach hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware, let alone any associated R&D costs.
That’s all before bringing up that the person I quoted claimed off-hand that it’s an order of magnitude difference. They’re probably rather similar in cost.
Anything needing bus-sized solar array gonna have some fancy equipment on board. All of that needs engineering to not fail at the temperature range up above and code to make it do what is needed
What would be ideal would be some kind of anti-balloon weaponry/recovery system.
Some kind of balloon-based counter-balloon technology that could take control of the balloon and bring it to the ground intact. Would be a fun project to say the least.
What keeps a cannon from working? That would already reduce the costs by a lot, and from the visual identification it seems that 40,000 feet is well within the flight ceiling of fighter jets
The closure rate thing reminds me of a great scene in The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob steals the Wright Flyer and they scramble jets to get him. After blowing by the Flyer too fast, the pilots get out and walk after it.
Balloons and airships aren't easily downed by gunfire- the holes create slow leaks that can take days or weeks to deflate the balloon. Fighter jets' guns are mostly an air-to-ground weapon these days.
> the holes create slow leaks that can take days or weeks to deflate the balloon
I've seen this claim often, but I'm still finding it hard to picture. I realize it's not going to "pop like a balloon", but days or weeks seems incredibly long. The weight of the payload causes at least some pressure on at least the top of the balloon, right?
Is the issue just the size of the hole versus total volume? Or maybe it's that the bouyancy increases as it starts to descend? Do you have a link that would make this clearer? I searched a little, but what I found were just assertions of fact.
I did find the 1998 story of the failed Canadian attempt to shoot down a balloon with fighter jets firing bullets (https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb). This makes me inclined to believe the conclusion, but it's still not intuitive to me.
If this became a frequent occurrence. Infrequently does it cost much more?
The airforce would have thousands of missiles. Assuming they have some FIFO system they would use missiles heading for expiry.
Not sure how pilot training goes but would assume they have training hours requirement. If a mission covers those hours all the better for more real experience on what they would be flying anyway.
Anyway I don't know this as an expert, but logically seems costs are largely sunk regardless of an infrequent balloon incident.
I've read about those but I'm more referring to the cost comment. In eve it is common to hedge a loss as "ISK Positive" if the value of the ammo that blew you up costed more than your ship, as tallied up on the killmail.
I can't not shake my head reading comments like this.
Seriously, the concept of weighing the cost of an action vs the cost of inaction was not... exactly invented by Eve Online players. The entire point of warfare is to make waging war more expensive to your opponent than to yourself, whether in terms of men, materiel, dollars, or popular support. And the concept of a Pyrrhic victory is likely as old as war itself – even our very term for it derives from a battle fought 2300 years ago!
HN happens to be one of the rare places on the modern internet where just flapping your figurative mouth pieces for the sake of flapping your figurative mouth pieces is not looked upon favorably. The attitude of "have something to say or shut the fuck up" is very refreshing.
And if you think that I didn't say anything… I suggest re-reading my comment.
The rest was important context, IMO. It was less “this already has a name” and more “this is the very essence of warfare”. And has been for tens of thousands of years.
Don’t necessarily disagree and I don’t know sufficient details to form a responsible opinion, but I imagine there’s expenditure for training, whether they hit actual stuff or not?
