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A comment on Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers. Parent comment

Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by mattmaroon on Friday December 27, 2024 @12:35PM (#42524153)
Ummm, no. We recovered the balloons and they were full of surveillance equipment.

They seemed to not have a way to phone home, so more than likely China’s plan was to recover the balloon to get the data. That may be what you recall. For all we know they had been doing so for years successfully.

But they were definitely spy balloons.

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Re:Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers by jameshart on Friday December 27, 2024 @02:01PM (#42524994)
The US downed and recovered a Chinese balloon, not balloons.

The 2023 incident is pretty well written up on Wikipedia[1].

There was one Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down. Subsequent shoot-downs of balloons over the arctic and Great Lakes were not attributed to China - one that was recovered was definitively identified as a private weather balloon.

There were also previous Chinese surveillance balloon overflights - as well as one over Central America - that were not shot down.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Chinese_balloon_incident

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