The Billings Gazette published a photograph of the balloon. An office worker in Billings who happened to be looking out the window said that he saw a white circle in the sky that was big, but not big enough to be the moon. He watched the white orb as it lingered outside his window for about 45 minutes, taking photographs and videos, in the soon-to-be-dashed hope that he was “documenting a legitimate UFO.”

From Montana the balloon passed over Kansas en route to the Atlantic, where it came to grief about 6 nautical miles off the South Carolina Coast. It was shot down on Feb. 4 by an F-22 stealth tactical fighter aircraft with a single sidewinder missile as Myrtle Beach residents watched.

What is a nautical mile?

A nautical mile is 1.1508 miles.

How was the balloon identified as Chinese?

As you know, everything made in China has the words “MADE IN CHINA,” or simply “CHINA,” in English, stamped on its underside.

Who says it’s a spy balloon?

Despite the fact that China and the United States have far more sophisticated and less obvious ways to spy on one another than using giant balloons, for example TikTok, Pentagon officials are convinced that the white balloon was in fact designed for surveillance.

“This was a buffoon operation by Chinese intelligence,” retired four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey stated on Twitter. He also called it “the most boneheaded operation by Chinese intelligence.”

On the other hand

On the other hand, Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China, while admitting that the balloon is of Chinese origin, has stated that it was a civilian weather aircraft that somehow escaped, heading who knew where. According to Xi, the balloon could not be directed or controlled, and just drifted wherever.

To be fair, it must be said here that Chinese sky lanterns are traditionally sent aloft as part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, this year on Feb. 5. Could this “spy balloon” have been simply a tribute to the Year of the Rabbit?

If so, no wonder Mr. Xi is so mad that the US shot it down.

To be fair, could it have been a weather balloon?

Unlikely.

There are several differences between the China balloon and the type of weather balloon the National Weather Service uses.

Size is one. While weather balloons are about 6 feet wide when they’re launched, expanding to about 20 feet in diameter as they rise, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the balloon was 200 feet tall, carrying a payload similar to that of a regional jetliner.

(Payload sometimes refers to explosives, but refers here to instruments or cargo necessary to the purpose of the flight.) According to NBC news, 200 feet is four times the size of the Snoopy balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, or a 20-storey building.

Weather balloons are airborne for about two hours, traveling no more than 100 miles. A weather balloon reaches an altitude of 60,000 feet or more, after which it bursts. The radioscope it carries to measure temperature, pressure and humidity returns to earth on a parachute.

Debris recovery and analysis

Pentagon officials recommended that the balloon not be downed over land because of the danger to the population of falling debris. The debris field has a radius of about seven miles. As an example, the distance from the Noon Mark Diner to Owls Head Rustic Furniture is roughly 7 miles. It landed in about 47 feet of water, luckily for recovery workers, because just a little farther out the depth drops to full ocean floor depth, 15,000 feet.

Domain awareness gap

In recent years there have been other information-gathering balloons floating over the U.S. and other countries which went undetected, according to Gen. VanHerck.

“So those balloons … I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don’t want to go into further detail.”

How the Pentagon later realized that this had happened I do not know. The whole thing is pretty inscrutable.

Have a good week.

(Martha Allen lives in Keene Valley. She has been writing for the News for more than 20 years.)