Bad Shot
Okay, we have a saying in Texas about people who are a bad shot. Mostly, we just call it hunting Dick Cheney style, but there’s also this one: Honey, he couldn’t hit the side of a barn, even if he was shooting from inside.
So here we have an airplane that cost about $30 million dollars to build and about $85,325 an hour to operate. Each Sidewinder missile cost $400,000. Each. No buy one, get one free deals on this stuff.
And this little Cloud Captain fired and freekin’ missed. (I get to call the Air Force names because my family has a service history with them going back to the Army Air Corp.) It was pretty much a stationary target and they had been close enough to know it was octagonal.
They still don’t know where the sidewinder landed.
Aunt Thelma’s solution is looking better and better. Crop dusting is a helluva lot more complicated than most people think. But, she wouldn’t charge you but maybe $100 an hour and that includes her plane, her ammo and delivery system, and a really cool leather aviator cap. You don’t get to keep the hat, though. Aunt Thelma wears that – sometimes even on bad hair days.
They missed. Holy cow. A lot of shocking, but short on the awe.
Was this a Space Force mission?
1I know an old boy that has a vintage P-51 Mustang. I betcha he wouldn’t miss for a whole lot cheaper than one of those $$$$ missiles.
2Heck. A piper cup and a M-14 might work better. Modern jet fighters have such a closing rate on a semi-stationary target, we’re probably talking a micro- window on-station.
3Afternoon J.J. So I gotta ask. Is Thelma’s crop duster a 2 seater?
4Cause I’d pay good money to go on that ride along.
Hell, with all the free publicity right now in the media, she might have the beginnings of a new cottage industry.
Y’all really should not be using Fox ‘News’ as a source.. There are numerous other sources for this story.
I got the following popup [quote below] when I reluctantly used that given Fox link about the fighter miss, in addition to it being one of those irritating websites that automatically starts up an audio and video feed, polluting your browser.
Oh yeah, my Opera browser’s ‘Privacy Protection’ blocked more than FORTY -40- trackers, beacons, ads, etc., from that Fox webpage; and I didn’t even view what was under the popup before I closed the tab!
Y’all really don’t have much idea about just the amount of online surveillance and nefarious crap that is intruding into your lives.
From the Fox weblink given:
“We’ve got news for you
If you like our coverage, please disable your ad blocker.
Allow ads on FOX News”
HELL NO…
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Here’s a related story that I’ll link because it has some maps.
And, when I was a teen I used to crew aboard big sailboats in the Lake Huron Mackinac Regattas under that location, had family to the east of there [in Killarney, Ontario], where we vacationed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Huron_to_Mackinac_Boat_Race
C130-Search-Track-Lake-Huron:
5https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/14/2152890/-C130-Search-Track-Lake-Huron
I always thought Sidewinder missiles were heat seekers. No heat from a balloon.
40,000 feet is probably too high for a non-pressurized plane. However, guns would definitely be a better use of taxpayer money.
Maybe we need some air defense dirigibles.
6RepubAnon @6, 40,000ft is way beyond the limit.
The altitude limit for non-pressurized [supl O2 required] aircraft is about 8-12K feet.
This whole deal is getting a bit absurd [like anything that gets the Rethugs wound up]. The Chinese et al are going to be jerking our chains for a while now.
7While we think Aunt Thelma taking out a ufo with her crop duster is just tongue in cheek, she actually has a top secret (classified) weapon that JJ can’t divulge or she’d have to be arrested by the classified stuff police unit of the FBI. I’m thinking it’s kind of like those transformer weapons my son (now 43) used to play with.
8Although all this conjecture is fun, there’s apparently good reasons for using missiles:
https://theweek.com/us-military/1021008/why-the-us-used-missiles-not-cheap-bullets-to-shoot-down-chinese-balloon-3
Of course the single most important reason is that the military-industrial complex will get to charge the US $7M to replace that $400k missile ….
9I know Lake Huron. At its deepest it is 300 feet. And yes, it is so wide that you cannot see Canada from the Michigan shore. Whatever was shot and fell out of the sky that looked anything like a balloon is probably stuck somewhere on the fore or aft undersides of a freighter headed round the lower peninsula for Chicago. Also, a former senior security analyst guy on TV certainly said that from what he could tell from the pictures of the balloon shot down near the South Carolina shore looked to be anywhere from 20 to 30 years old which should actually embarass the Chinees being so way behind.
10