Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

Re:Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon? by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday February 17, 2023 @02:35PM (#34839281)

When you think about it, not really. The F22 went into service 15 years ago and has a radar cross section about the size of a honey bee. I would hope that our air defenses would be designed to detect aircraft like that, and I would also imagine a balloon with no thought to stealth would show up really nicely on any radar that didn't filter it out.

As for the heat signature, and I admit I'm doing more guesswork here, it works via IR contrast. As long as the balloon was sufficiently warmer than the air around it, and you were close enough, it should track just fine.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon? by neodymiumphish on Friday February 17, 2023 @03:43PM (#34840277)

For NORAD and other air defense platforms, they're a ton of filtering that must be done to ignore cruft, otherwise they'd be responding to floating plastic bags, birds, etc, constantly.

From the missile system and fighter radar perspective, that's not something they heavily (if at all) test these platforms against, because that's not a threat there's any expectation to face.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon? by mrguyorama on Friday February 17, 2023 @04:52PM (#34841090)

I think it's hilarious that our defense tracking infrastructure is too good at seeing stuff and that causes problems.

[ Parent | on HN ]