We think it is over now. Or, perhaps better said, now that the Chinese reconnaissance mission is complete we were permitted to shoot it down. It is possible that the PRC intended to fly their “balloon” around the world. Then they could recover the innocent scientific camera and blameless electronic devices back in their own territory after traveling over many of the other nations of the globe.
Back in the days of Science, the probable course of the mission would have been broadly disseminated and the results shared to enrich all researchers for useful information. We recall, as kids, the publicity that went along with the famed “International Geophysical Year (IGY)” of 1957. That was, to the best of our recollection, some 65 years ago. Some of the publicity back then was practical and intended to permit nations to be alert and to avoid any unpleasant interactions between scientific research and routine civilian activities. We remember the logo:
The military veterans in the Writer’s Section have decided to universally and without exception accept the well-crafted response by America’s leadership, which we gather was to only admit the presence of a gigantic Chinese dirigible flying in partially-controlled manner over the United States for a week. And then taking forthright and decisive action only after the ‘scientific mission’ had been completed.
Buck, our resident civilian Economist joined with Melissa in wonderment. “They only made an announcement about it after that guy in Billings, Montana, took some pictures of it. They apparently knew about it days before it appeared over Billings. Then they said it wasn’t that unusual, since several such overflights had already been conducted without any response since there was no threat associated with giant balloons carrying unidentified sensors wandering around at 60,000 feet. And then they shot it down only after the mission was leaving US territorial air space. Presumably all the data had already been transmitted back to China. If Mr. Doaks had not reported it, would we have been informed that this sort of thing happens fairly regularly?”
That led to a discussion of a shoot-down in 1960 of an American reconnaissance flight over the Soviet Union, which was only a couple years after the IGY. We agreed that it should have had a logo in Russian and English advertising its peaceful intent- which it was, of course, to avoid unintentional international incidents- and we might have avoided the minor misunderstanding of the time that could have resulted in an atomic exchange.
We spent a moment wondering why the briefly unidentified object hadn’t been disabled in US airspace before it flew merrily and peacefully across sensitive military installations on the entire width of North America. “Didn’t we pay for an integrated radar system to prevent this sort of thing a half century ago?” No one who knew anything about NORAD response said a thing.
The Veterans of that time had no complaints about current (and past) policymakers. They also agreed that the whole Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) program was refreshing but a little strange. It used to have another name and use of those initials only referred to paranoid delusions about aliens who didn’t care about the legality of their flights in saucer-shaped machines. Buck and Melissa thought the whole thing was kind of strange but were relieved the matter was over. The rest of us just kept our mouths shut. This may be our version of the Roaring Twenties, but it it could wind up being even louder than the last one!
Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com