Did the US Military Take Out a $12 Hobbyist Balloon With a $400,000 Missile?

These “pico balloon” enthusiasts have their suspicions.

A US fighter jet. Both F-22s and F-16s have been used to shoot down objects in US and Canadian airspace in recent weeks.bfk92/Getty

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The United States has popped a whole bunch of balloons lately. Earlier this month, famously, an American fighter jet took out a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina with a Sidewinder missile. In the weeks to follow, American jets shot down three more objects floating high above the United States and Canada.

Some amateur balloon enthusiasts suspect that one of their small, inflatable devices may have been among those objects.

The Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, an Illinois hobbyist group, declared one of its balloons “missing in action” on February 15. It was last seen February 1o off the coast of Alaska, Aviation Week reported. Balloonist groups often launch such “pico balloons” for radio experiments or just for fun, Dave Akerman, of the UK High Altitude Society, told the Washington Post

The Brigade calculated that its balloon would have been floating over the Yukon Territory in Canada on February 11—the same day officials shot down an object in the area with an F-22. “When I heard that [it was a] silver object with a payload attached to it, that could be one of our balloons,” an anonymous member of the group told Politico.

“I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down,” Ron Meadows, the founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions, a pico balloon supplier, told Aviation Week. Indeed, the type of balloons used by hobbyists can be had for as little as $12, the publication noted. Each AIM-9X Sidewinder missile costs up to about $400,000.  

The federal government has yet to confirm whether the object it shot down did, in fact, belong to the Bottlecappers. But on Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that intelligence officials believed the objects were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather, or conducting other scientific research.”

On Friday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said it may never be possible to link the downed object to the Brigade, Politico reports. “We haven’t recovered it so it’s very difficult until you can get your hands on something to be able to tell…we all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”

In the meantime, someone please buy these hobbyists a replacement.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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