Boots & Sabers

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1800, 04 Feb 23

Biden’s Balloon Finally Pops

Oh, fer cripes’s sakes. He waits until it has traversed the entire nation collecting whatever data it could before doing anything. This isn’t the 1960s where a surveillance craft had to drop its payload to be retrieved and analyzed. Whatever it collected has already been transmitted. And while I have mad respect for our pilots, it’s not much of a brag to say that they shot it down with “one missile.” It’s a friggin’ balloon. This whole fiasco has been a national embarrassment and the world is laughing at us.

Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to ‘take care of it.’

 

An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.

 

Footage showed the jet screaming towards the spy aircraft before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the coast.

 

[…]

 

Biden first became aware of the balloon last Sunday, January 28, when it was spotted over Alaska. The US military tracked it over Canadian airspace and as it re-entered US territory on Tuesday.

 

The following day, Biden was given a detailed report on the aircraft and its course, attended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

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1800, 04 February 2023

20 Comments

  1. MHMaley

    No complaints about the 3 Chinese ballon’s Trump didn’t shoot down ( per the Pentagon ) ?

  2. MjM

    MuhMaley absorbs lies as fast as Biden spews them.

  3. MHMaley

    Spy Balloons shot down

    Biden + 1

    Trump -3

  4. Merlin

    To be fair, Joe Biden properly praised the ‘aviators’ for the balloon kill. The inaccurate Top Gun characterization belongs to the Daily Mail; not that anyone outside of the Air Force or naval aviation gives a shit about the distinction. The rubes will buy whatever they’re told if it comes with cool pictures.

    That Raptor pilot is going to be razzed by his colleagues for the rest of his career over that balloon kill…. especially if it turns out to have not been a ‘spy balloon’ after all. Wouldn’t be a bit surprised to someday read that the short straw got stuck with that mission.

  5. Merlin

    The Pentagon tends to tell folks only what it finds convenient at any given moment. Like WMDs in Iraq, Tillman was killed by the Taliban, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a sweet op, and you can’t do anything about spy balloons over Montana.

    It was Trump who withdrew the US from the Treaty on Open Skies effective 11/22/2020. President-elect Biden was against that withdrawal until he was no longer President-elect, at which time he reaffirmed the now current status. Joe gets to shoot at a few things that Bush, Clinton, Dubya, Obama, and Trump found obscured in red tape.

    Trump made this easy for Biden. It was Barack Obama who so famously warned us not to underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up. The man is doggedly consistent.

  6. Mark Hoefert

    Good article and ownage of Maley, Mar.

    Technology has not changed that much since 2020 – where are the videos of these alleged balloon flyovers that occurred during the Trump administration?

    Of course, the Biden administration has after the fact proof, but won’t share it.

    Sounds like the previous fly overs under Trump were “testing the fence”. Now, with Biden in charge, it’s “swinging for the fences.”

  7. dad29

    Poor ol’ Maley. You pick on him by using facts and logic. He doesn’t like the Catholic Church’s stand on abortion either–which is also supported by facts and logic.

    If nothing else, he’s consistent.

  8. MHMaley

    The balloons were there and we’ll find out if Trump himself was briefed .

    MTG is looking into it .

    What will be the response here if the Trump administration WAS informed and Trump did nothing ?

    Crickets here followed by rapidly changing the subject ..

  9. dad29

    As it turns out, NORAD says that they didn’t know about them at the time………whatever that actually means.

    Your gal AOC will be looking into it on your behalf, Maley.

  10. Merlin

    “Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” VanHerck said. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”

    That’s a polite way for an O-8 to say this particular ‘domain awareness gap’ likely originated in the White House press office. Very recently.

  11. Merlin

    Sorry. Gen. VanHerck wears four stars, not two.

  12. Randall Flagg

    Reports are the previous balloons were “detected “now because of changes the Biden administration made to surveillance and such. That is why they were not found under the Trump Administration.

    PS – The flip-flop award on this whole affair goes to Tucker Carlson. Before Biden shot down the balloon he said Biden was weak for not shooting it down. Afterwards said Biden was reckless in shooting it down as he may have just set off WWIII.

  13. Jason

    >This information was discovered after the prior administration left.

    In a box in the garage? Or a closet in a conference room in a college?

  14. Jason

    >Reports are the previous balloons were “detected “now because of changes the Biden administration made to surveillance and such. That is why they were not found under the Trump Administration

    Buwahahaha. Pure and utter bullshit lapped up by a mental midget and they/their cave dwelling friends. Good old Randy, dumb as always.

  15. MjM

    Randy Flags goes Back To The Future: “ Reports are the previous balloons were “detected “now because of changes the Biden administration made to surveillance and such.”

    Oh, the magic! Kinda like Amtrak Joe talking to long retired, not to mention dead, conductors.

    Btw, at today’s highly serious and official security Ballon Briefing, not one mention of Trump Balloons.

  16. MHMaley

    I try not to spend a lot of time thinking about the facts and logic from an institution that moved child rapists around and did everything in their power to stop paying the victims ..

    Once the raping of children is facilitated and covered up , the perch on the moral high ground becomes laughably hypocritical

    “Save the preborn , rape the already born” is a lousy bumper sticker . or Yard sign .

  17. MjM

    MuhMaley comes clean: “I try not to spend a lot of time thinking…”

    Obviously.

  18. dad29

    from an institution that moved child rapists around and did everything in their power to stop paying the victims

    As usual, your facts lack……..facts.

    The ‘movers’ and ‘stop payment’ MEN (?) were co-conspirator homosexuals, not “the institution.”

    MJM’ s take on your blathering is dead-nuts on.

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