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HOBBY CLUB’S MISSING BALLOON FEARED SHOT DOWN BY USAF


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Steve Trimble February 16, 2023

A middle school class learns how to use a Scientific Balloon Solutions pico
balloon. 

Credit: Scientific Balloon Solutions

A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an
Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain
one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles
launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10. 

The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing
fingers yet. 

But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club’s
silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10
at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool—the
HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA)—projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the
central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed
Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and
altitude in the same general area.



There are suspicions among other prominent members of the small, pico-ballooning
enthusiasts’ community, which combines ham radio and high-altitude ballooning
into a single, relatively affordable hobby.

“I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try
to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going
to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down,” says Ron Meadows, the
founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), a Silicon Valley company that
makes purpose-built pico balloons for hobbyists, educators and scientists.

The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match
the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually
be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type.

“I’m guessing probably they were pico balloons,” said Tom Medlin, a retired
FedEx engineer and co-host of the Amateur Radio Roundtable show. Medlin has
three pico balloons in flight in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Aviation Week contacted a host of government agencies, including the FBI, North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Security Council (NSC)
and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for comment about the possibility of
pico balloons. The NSC did not respond to repeated requests. The FBI and OSD did
not acknowledge that harmless pico balloons are being considered as possible
identities for the mystery objects shot down by the Air Force.

“I have no update for you from NORAD on these objects,” a NORAD spokesman says. 

On Feb. 15, NSC spokesman John Kirby told reporters all three objects “could
just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” but he did not
mention the possibility of pico balloons. 

Launching high-altitude, circumnavigational pico balloons has emerged only
within the past decade. Meadows and his son Lee discovered it was possible to
calculate the amount of helium gas necessary to make a common latex balloon
neutrally buoyant at altitudes above 43,000 ft. The balloons carry an 11-gram
tracker on a tether, along with HF and VHF/UHF antennas to update their
positions to ham radio receivers around the world. At any given moment, several
dozen such balloons are aloft, with some circling the globe several times before
they malfunction or fail for other reasons. The launch teams seldom recover
their balloons.

The balloons can come in several forms. Some enthusiasts still use common, Mylar
party balloons, with a set of published calculations to determine the amount of
gas to inject. But the round-shaped Mylar balloons often are unable to ascend
higher than 20,000-30,000 ft., so some pico balloonists have upgraded to
different materials. 

Medlin says he uses a foil balloon sold by Japanese company Yokohama for $12.
The material has proven to be resilient for long periods at high altitude, he
says, even if the manufacturer never intended the balloon to be used for that
purpose. An alternative is Meadows’ SBS, which makes a series of balloons
designed specially for circumnavigational flights.

The pico-ballooning community is nervous about the negative attention by some
members of Congress and the White House, who have called the objects shot down
at altitudes of 20,000-40,000 ft. dangerous to civil aviation.

“We did assess that their altitudes were considerably lower than the Chinese
high-altitude balloon and did pose a threat to civilian commercial air traffic,”
Kirby says. “And while we have no specific reason to suspect that they were
conducting surveillance of any kind, we couldn’t rule that out.”

In fact, the pico balloons weigh less than 6 lb. and therefore are exempt from
most FAA airspace restrictions, Meadows and Medlin said. Three countries—North
Korea, Yemen and the UK­—restrict transmissions from balloons in their airspace,
so the community has integrated geofencing software into the tracking devices.
The balloons still overfly the countries, but do not transmit their positions
over their airspace. 

The community is also nervous that their balloons could be shot down next.
Medlin says one of his balloons—call sign W5KUB-112—is projected by HYSPLIT to
enter U.S. airspace on Feb. 17. It already circumnavigated the globe several
times, but its trajectory last carried the object over China before it will
enter either Mexican or U.S. airspace.

“I hope,” Medlin said, “that in the next few days when that happens we’re not
real trigger-happy and start shooting down everything.”

Steve Trimble

Steve covers military aviation, missiles and space for the Aviation Week
Network, based in Washington DC.

 * U.S. Air Force (USAF)
 * U.S. Department of Defense


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