{"id":136820,"date":"2023-02-05T12:27:30","date_gmt":"2023-02-05T17:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=136820"},"modified":"2023-02-05T12:27:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T17:27:42","slug":"a-final-word-on-the-chinese-balloon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=136820","title":{"rendered":"A final word on the Chinese balloon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-136809 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/13573-1675561686.3988-300x184.jpeg\" alt=\"13573.jpeg\" width=\"300\" height=\"184\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/13573-1675561686.3988-300x184.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/13573-1675561686.3988.jpeg 674w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Well the balloon is down. Only\u00a0<em>after\u00a0<\/em>it flew over the entirety of the Continental Unites States, and only after flying over several military sites. Including two DoD nuclear installations. Anyways, there is some video of the balloon being shot down. Retired naval aviator Ward Carroll breaks it down.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/k2xz21HvLs8\" width=\"480\" height=\"270\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">?<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The biggest takeaways;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The F-22 Raptor has scored its first air-to-air kill. Admittedly against the least stealthy target of all time.<\/li>\n<li>The Raptors flew with the callsign &#8220;Frank&#8221;, a nod to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=86570\">Second Lieutenant Frank Luke<\/a>, the American WWI pilot who was the first airman to receive the Medal of Honor, and a balloon ace.<\/li>\n<li>The Raptor shot the balloon with a AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. Carroll goes into the why and how of that in the video above.<\/li>\n<li>The balloon was between 60,000 and 65,000 feet and the Raptor fired\u00a0<em>up<\/em> from an altitude of ~58,000 feet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Interesting to watch. I really hope they paint a balloon on that Raptor&#8217;s nose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well the balloon is down. Only\u00a0after\u00a0it flew over the entirety of the Continental Unites States, and &hellip; <a title=\"A final word on the Chinese balloon\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=136820\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A final word on the Chinese balloon<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}