Originally Posted by FL 4Motion

I explained the F35s shortcomings in a previous post a couple pages back. Also, the more technologically advanced something is, the more sh1t can and will go wrong.

Hurricane hunters fly modified C-130 Hercules cargo planes, Military cargo planes. But the C-130 has been in service in some form or another since Vietnam. It’s a reliable military airframe. I personally love C-130s. It’s a fun bus in the sky.

As far as the spy balloon goes, one possibility they waited so long to shoot it down as so we could conduct counter intelligence ops. You can learn a lot from spying on how the enemy spy’s on you. Or they could have just fvcked up and should have shot it down sooner.

My take is our national air defense wasn’t set up to look for/flag slow moving objects, the Chinese figured this out and exploited this hole in our defenses. We realized they had got in our airspace too late so to save face and not publicly admit they “beat” us, we started conducting counter surveillance on the spy balloon and then shot it down.

As far as two missles costing 1 million each, that’s pretty typical costs for advanced smart guided weapons systems. I’m not sure why a burst of 20mm cannon fire from the F16 wouldn’t have more cheaply done the trick but I wasn’t in the room where those decisions got made.

Again, not everything is a conspiracy guys.