On February 4, 2023, the F-22 Raptor family of fighter jets recorded its first official aerial kill of an actual enemy target. Said target was not a near-peer airplane, nor some killer missile, but a balloon of apparent Chinese provenance flying over the continental U.S. with nefarious goals in mind.
Since that time, the American and Canadian Air Forces scrambled their forces on several more occasions, taking down, one after the other, members of what appears to be an army of Chinese balloons popping up here and there.
Now, these things are just that, balloons, and pose no threat to anything on the ground. Yet fighter jets head out and shoot them down as they have the potential of revealing some sensitive info about critical American assets, and that’s not something anyone wants.
Now, being harmless balloons and all means these things do not carry weapons, only equipment we the general public know nothing about, and meant to gather intelligence. They also have no engines to help them maneuver (as far as we know, at least), making them a sort of sitting ducks for some of the most advanced fighter jets in the world.
Take the F-22 Raptor, for instance, we’re talking about a $143 million piece of equipment capable of flying at speeds of Mach 2 (1,534 mph/2,468 kph) and to distances of 1,850 miles (2,977 km). Its pair of Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines allow it to maneuver any position needed to fire its 20-millimeter cannon, or the AIM-9, AIM-120 or GBU-32 missiles straight at the target.
Photo: Indo-Pacific News/Twitter
Since the February 4 F-22 vs balloon fight, various clips and images flooded the Internet with a single goal in mind: make fun of this apparent American overkill.
The video you can watch below is one of them, perhaps the best in terms of approaching the whole matter. It appears to have been made by someone in China (or at least a Chinese sympathizer), and shows an actual dogfight between the airplane and spying hardware.
That’s right, you can see the balloon actively trying to evade the F-22, to the tune of the Mission Impossible theme (a fitting choice, given what the balloon is up against), performing all sorts of aerial maneuvers only fighter planes can perform in a bid to avoid machine gun rounds and missiles.
It mostly succeeds, and despite the crazy maneuvers the F-22 itself performs, even manages to take aim at the chasing airplane a couple of times.
Now, as said, the actual spy balloon carried no weapons, and this imagined one does the same. But at the very end of the clip, it uses its own body to slam into the F-22, ending the chase. Not a desirable outcome, but not something likely to ever happen, either. Fun to watch, though, a balloon doing all those crazy things.
#China is trolling the #US with this #ChineseSpyBallon vs F-22 dogfight with "Mission Impossible" music.
Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies. Full profile
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