MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Decisions to shoot down dozens of unidentified objects in the US and Canada this month have put a spotlight on amateur balloonists who insist their creations pose no threat.
In the past three weeks, US President Joe Biden has ordered fighter jets to shoot down three objects found in US airspace – a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. as well as smaller unidentified objects in Alaska and Lake Huron. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week ordered another shot over the Yukon; a US fighter jet performed that mission.
US government officials have yet to identify the items, but Biden said Thursday that they were likely wolves 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 contacted a club in Illinois that believed the object shot in the Yukon was one of their balloons. No one from the club responded to messages left Friday, but Medlin said the club tracked the balloon and it disappeared in the Yukon the same day the unidentified object was shot.
The incidents left balloonists scrambling to defend their hobby. They insist that 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 was, I think, the government got a little worried. Maybe the word trigger-happy. I don’t know. When they shot them, they didn’t know what they were. That was one little worry.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday that the Biden administration could not confirm reports that the object belonged to the Illinois club. He said the debris has not been recovered and “we all have to accept the possibility that we will never get it back.”
US officials said Friday that they had stopped searching for debris from the object that was shot down in Lake Huron and found nothing. Search efforts for debris from items in Alaska and Yukon are ongoing.
Kirby pushed back against the idea that Biden’s decision to use missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to shoot down likely wolves costing less than $20 was an overreaction.
“Absolutely not,” Kirby said. “Given our situation, the information available, the recommendation of our military commanders – this is the exact thing to do at the exact time.”
Medlin said the balloons he flies now cost about $12 and are about 32 inches in diameter.
The balloons carry solar-powered transmitters which weighs less than 2 grams and which broadcasts a signal every 10 minutes or so ham radio operators around the world can use to track the balloons’ location, he said. He now has a balloon that has been in the air for 250 days and circled the world 10 times, he said.
The fun is watching the balloon go around the world and build the tiny transmitters, Medlin said, adding that the devices are so small that he needs a microscope to make them. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collects data from ham radio operators to track wind patterns, he said.
The balloons are so light that the Federal Aviation Administration does not regulate them and does not require balloonists to file flight plans, Medlin said. He inflated his balloons with enough hydrogen to ensure they would fly at about 50,000 feet. That’s more than most commercial aircraft, he said.
Current regulations posted on the FAA website state that no one can operate an unmanned balloon in a manner that creates a hazard, and the agency’s regulations only apply to balloons carrying a payload that more than four pounds.
Medlin speculated that after US officials spotted the suspected Chinese balloon, they adjusted their radar to pick up smaller objects. But hobbyist balloons are not a threat to aircraft, he said.
“We follow FAA rules and regulations,” Medlin said. “They are the experts on whether it should be done or not. Take a cork and drop it in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Will it hit a ship? It seems unlikely. And if it does it won’t hurt the ship.
Ron Meadows founded San Jose-based Scientific Balloon Solutions with his son Lee. He said the company makes balloons as large as 8 1/2 feet in diameter for university and middle school science students. He said the balloons weigh 10 to 20 grams, with transmitters the size of a popsicle stick. Some balloons have 20-foot (6-meter) antennas, he said.
He understood that government officials were trying to protect people, he said, but they didn’t understand that the balloons were completely benign and there was no doubt that they were overreacting. Jet engines tend to eat larger things, like birds, and most pilots probably don’t even know it when they hit a balloon, Meadows said.
He said he tried to contact the US Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to educate officials about the balloons, but that his calls went to voicemail.
“It would be great if our government could get the information they need,” he said.
Meadows said he expects that after this month’s incidents, the FAA will come out with tighter restrictions on balloons.. He said he wasn’t too worried, because his balloon business was a side job; he also runs a swimming pool repair service.
“We are in this (balloon) business more for the students, not to make money,” he said. “This is for education. When we build these things, the time it takes to build them, we can do more than our day job. “
Medlin said the balloons can reach speeds of up to 130 mph (210 kmh) if they are caught in the jet stream. But Bob Boutin, a flight instructor in Chicago, said it is unlikely that such balloons would pose a significant threat to aircraft.
Most commercial jets fly between 25,000 and 45,000 feet, below the level of balloons, he said. Some corporate jets climb higher than 50,000 feet, but at that altitude the sky is usually clear with visibility of 20 to 40 miles, Boutin said.
The White House’s Kirby said the objects shot down travel too low to pose a danger to civilian aircraft, but Boutin said even at low altitudes, a small balloon isn’t worth a military strike.
“Birds and airplanes are more of an issue than a balloon,” he said. Even if the balloon enters a jet engine, “most jets have two engines, and if one goes missing, technically it’s an emergency but not one that means the plane will crash,” Boutin said. .
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Associated Press reporter Aamer Madhani in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.
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Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on classified issues. Follow Harm on Twitter.