“In the wake of that … the military fine-tunes their radar parameters to see more and of course they’re finding more. And you got these three, and they’re unidentified, they’re not responding to any kind of communication, so we don’t know who owns them or what their purpose is,” Kirby went on. “They’re also at altitudes that could effect the safety of civilian air traffic, and based on the flight path and prevailing winds, potentially moving over sensitive military sites.”
Source: Joe Biden did ‘right thing’ shooting down UFO with missile
First, it’s “affect” not “effect”.
A 32-inch pico-balloon is, by the FAA’s own definition’s, not a hazard to civilian air traffic. This is an invented straw man argument that does not hold up. This was a legally launched and operated pico-balloon system that met FAA requirements for safety.
They shot down a $13 balloon carrying an inexpensive 10 oz payload package – using a $400,000 missile, from a fleet of aircraft – the operation easily spent over a million $s.
White House NSC spokesman John Kirby is lying about this. They know this looks foolish and that the fear of “monsters under my bed”, while appropriate for children, is no way to run NORAD. NORAD screwed up and decided to shoot first, ask questions later. Now they lie about it to cover up the obvious fact that NORAD either didn’t know about legal pico-balloons – or acted foolishly.
It is NORAD’s job to understand what’s flying overhead – they should have been aware of these balloons – it’s their job!
Weather balloons are much larger than pico-balloons – you can read about what happened when an airliner collided with a weather balloon (short answer: not much): Air Canada Rouge A321 Collides With Weather Balloon (simpleflying.com)
