(CNN) Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says

The ambiguous shape description suggests it may be a balloon made of multiple non-spherical gas cells, like an inflatable mattress.

This would allow the attachment of inconspicuous conformal antennas. See patch antenna.

So it may be a miniature, low capability spy balloon.

(Aljazeera) US has questions to answer over Nord Stream blasts, Russia says. Quoting,

Comments by Russia’s foreign ministry come after a piece by American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh alleging the US military was behind the Nord Steam attacks.

Hersch is wrong. He swallowed hook, line, and sinker.

See Who Sabotaged Nordstream Pipelines? and (Wapo) No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack.

Hint: amber.

Last week, major news outlets reported that the inner core of Earth was about to stop turning. Now a prominent columnist has declared that the Chinese balloon weighed as much as three buses, which is about 105,000 lbs. This is baloney. So I did a calculation.

We need the diameter of the balloon. Based on a photo, and the length of the truss, stated by U.S. authorities as three coach bus lengths (12 meters/bus X 3), the diameter is estimated as 50 meters.. We use:

• Density of helium at STP.
• Height of 20,000 meters.
• An altitude air density table for standard day,
• Adjustment of buoyancy  for altitude with Boyle’s Law.
•  F=m*g for the force to be balanced.

This determines a total weight in the vicinity of 11,000 pounds. The payload may be a third of that.

(CNN) What is a suspected Chinese spy balloon doing above the US?

Refer to CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications. A possible explanation:

• Inside the skin of the balloon, there is an electronically steerable antenna array.
• A goal is to intercept and precisely determine locations of 44 gHz uplinks (from ground station to satellite) of the Milstar system.
• This knowledge could be used to disable one of the redundant command paths for the nuclear deterrent.
• The uplink beams are very narrow, not practical targets for typical satellites.

The National Reconnaissance Office has space-based ability to do this; the sigint satellites cost $1BN apiece. This is currently beyond the capabilities of China.