Slow-moving aliens’ balloon was no match for clever earthlings’ rockets

It’s not the alien invasion I would fear as much as our rational capacity to cope with it.

Take this past weekend when the world adopted the posture of a 1950s scream queen: wide-eyed and knuckles to teeth in abject terror at the possibility that aliens were visiting our planet.

These aliens, we were told, had arrived in slow-moving balloons, the size of a small car, constructed from a high-tech material that miraculously disappeared the moment it was hit by a $400,000 AIM-9X sidewinder missile. But that was not all. So advanced were these “balloons” that their slow speed and fragility made it hard for even F22s to lock onto their targets. Harder too for any aircraft to move slowly enough to deal with the threat.

I think I see it… Oh I can see… Whoosh… Where did it go!?

The aliens were so advanced that they’d realised that the answer to the problem of speed was… wait for it… slowness! They’d crossed the vast interstellar distances in something the size of a Dacia Sandero driving at the speed of a moderate westerly breeze (well, plus a jet stream or two) only to see their mission blasted out of the sky somewhere over a Canadian goose reserve. How is ordinary human intelligence meant to defeat such an advanced civilization? AI can’t come soon enough to take over from us.

Now, of course, not everybody was hyperventilating about an alien invasion. Sober voices were explaining that if it walks like a balloon and quacks like a balloon then in all likelihood it is a balloon. And that was the only bit of this whole narrative that made any sense. These objects were moving from west to east, which would mean they happened to follow the natural atmospheric pattern for the northern hemisphere. They were also balloons with no obvious means of propulsion. It was extremely unlikely that, as some reports suggested, they were moving as though under power and making sharp right turns. Much more likely they were being propelled erratically by local wind currents.

The biggest clue was that these sightings came after America had already detected, photographed, and eventually downed a Chinese spy balloon. In response, NORAD has increased the sensitivity of their systems to detect smaller objects. This change was likely to have resulted in lots of false positives and no sooner was the change made than the system started to spot sky debris. F22s were essentially being sent up to do the work of high-tech Wombles, blasting trash out of the sky. And let’s not overlook the fact that there is a lot of rubbish up there. America is a large country, with many weather stations, schools, universities, and – almost uncountable – hobbyists, Youtubers, pranksters, and merely the curious messing around with weather balloons. The only surprise was that we didn’t get any reports of an F22 taking out Jake Paul floating at 30,000 feet in his patio chair.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, was caught between a rock and a hard place. No sooner had Biden’s military chiefs said there was no military or intelligence reason to down the Chinese balloon near populated areas than Republicans called him out for passivity in the face of Chinese aggression – happy to ignore the fact that these incursions have apparently been happening for years but had not been spotted under the previous administration. Biden then ordered that the balloon be shot down once it was safe to do so. Republicans then called him trigger-happy and asked why he was using expensive sidewinders on balloons. Maybe they thought he could just use a pin on a very long stick.

How ludicrous all this was never seemed to strike anybody. Nor did it seem to factor into the thinking inside the White House which appeared flat-footed when it came to shutting down the speculation around an alien invasion. The downed balloons were leaving little debris, or debris in hard-to-reach places in the middle of winter. As crazy as it sounds – and it does sound crazy – it’s as though they needed that little bit of balloon fabric with a label that read “Made in China / Machine Washable at 40°C” before they would conclusively rule out aliens. And, so, the Biden administration refused to comment, leaving a huge space for wild conjecture. (Yet if it had mistakenly ruled out aliens, any later announcement about a real invasion would have given them bigger headaches than dealing with the minor political pushback about their earlier denial. So why not just rule it out and stop all the ridiculous speculation?)

Meanwhile, over on this side of the pond (about 140 hours flying time at the speed of a UFO), the UK government reacted perhaps exactly how you would expect a sensible government to react: it issued assurances that the skies are being monitored and our defences would be reviewed in light of that. Reasonable talk even if the media were beginning to sound hysterical. Chinese balloons would need to travel nearly entirely around the globe before passing over us. Besides, does China need spy balloons over the UK when they apparently already own all CCTV cameras across the country (“Surveillance watchdog issues starkest warning yet over security risks posed by devices and drones built in Beijing that are used by Britain’s police forces”, Daily Mail, 15 February)?

The absurdity of the week belies some serious issues. China is being provocative in a way they would argue mirrors America’s belligerent attitude towards Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. It is a false equivalency to say that America’s insistence that they are navigating international waters is in any way comparable to China’s insistence that they can’t tell a balloon where to go. But China is playing a game whose ultimate goal might not be entirely about intelligence gathering.

If they were looking to give Western officials many late hours, cost America a small fortune in responding to a negligible threat, learn a little about America’s defences, but also cause widespread fear, paranoia, as well as increase misinformation and suspicion of Western institutions, then they achieved their goals.

Everybody has been made to look a bit silly this past week, except for any alien actually up there monitoring us. They sensibly kept their heads down. All seven of them.

Klaatu barada nikto.

Follow David on Twitter: @DavidWaywell

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