Decision to shoot balloons puts spotlight on hobbyists
MADISON, Wis. — Decisions to shoot down multiple unidentified objects over the U.S. and Canada this month have put a spotlight on amateur balloonists who insist their creations pose no threat.
Over the past three weeks, U.S. President Joe Biden has ordered fighter jets to shoot down three objects detected in U.S. air space — a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast as well as smaller unidentified objects over Alaska and Lake Huron. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week ordered another object to be shot down over the Yukon; a U.S. fighter jet carried out that mission.
U.S. government officials have yet to definitively identify the objects, but Biden said Thursday that they were probably balloons linked to private companies, weather researchers or hobbyists.
Tom Medlin, the owner of the Tennessee-based Amateur Radio Roundtable podcast and a balloon hobbyist himself, said he’s been in contact with an Illinois club that believes the object shot down over the Yukon was one of their balloons. No one from the club responded to messages left Friday, but Medlin said the club was tracking the balloon and it disappeared over the Yukon on the same day the unidentified object was shot down.
The incidents have left balloonists scrambling to defend their hobby. They insist their balloons fly too high and are too small to pose a threat to aircraft and that government officials are overreacting.
“The spy balloon had to be shot down,” Medlin said. “That’s a national security threat, for sure. Then what happened is, I think, the government got a little anxious. Maybe the word is trigger-happy. I don’t know. When they shot them down, they didn’t know what they were. That’s a little concerning.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the Biden administration wasn’t able to confirm reports that the object belonged to the Illinois club. He said the debris has yet to be recovered and “we all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”
U.S. officials said Friday that they’ve stopped searching for debris from the objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron after finding nothing. Search efforts for debris from the Yukon object are ongoing.
Kirby pushed back at the notion that Biden’s decision to use missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot down what were most likely balloons that cost less than $20 was an overreaction.
“Absolutely not,” Kirby said. “Given the situation we were in, the information available, the recommendation of our military commanders — it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time.”
Medlin said the balloons he’s flying right now cost about $12 and are about 32 inches in diameter.
The balloons carry solar-powered transmitters that weigh less than 2 grams and that broadcast a signal every 10 minutes or so that ham radio operators around the world can use to track the balloons’ locations, he said. He has a balloon up right now that’s been in the air for 250 days and has circled the globe 10 times, he said.
The fun is watching the balloon circle the globe and building the tiny transmitters, said Medlin, adding that the devices are so small he needs a microscope to construct them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been collecting data from ham radio operators to track wind patterns, he said.