A fine flower of the US Air Force, the pilot of the F-22 dexterously handled this stealth fighter, a jewel of sophistication at a tremendous price, to fly across the Atlantic and launch a state-of-the-art missile… a huge white one Balloon.
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This confrontation could not be more unbalanced when on February 4 the United States shot down a Chinese aircraft accused by Washington of espionage which had just overflown sensitive American locations.
The balloon then became the unlikely first aerial target of this sophisticated fighter plane, one of the most expensive in the world.
The proliferation of unidentified “objects” in American skies presented new opportunities to use these devices in the days that followed.
F-22 planes shot down high-flying planes over Alaska and then northwest Canada on Friday and Saturday.
On Sunday, an F-16 fighter jet fired at a fourth object over Lake Huron in the northern United States.
These operations took place under the aegis of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the American Northern Command (Northcom), who were not really used to issuing orders to fire.
“I believe this is the first time NORAD or Northcom has taken kinetic action against an airborne object in American skies,” NORAD Chief Gen. Glen VanHerck said Monday, using an Army-standard understatement to describe airstrikes.
His command was created by the United States and Canada in the middle of the Cold War to patrol the airspace of their two countries. He is best known to the general public for his website which follows Santa Claus on his gift delivery spree.
Northcom was formed specifically to protect the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Under her leadership, the F-22 fighter jets have so far been used primarily to intercept Russian planes approaching slightly too close to North American airspace.
Built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the F-22 Raptor is one of the most successful fighter planes in the world, the only one that – according to its manufacturers – is able to combine agility, stealth and supersonic speed.
Those traits should allow him to take down much tougher targets than a fairly slow three-bus sized ball.
Production of the F-22 began in 2001 but ended ten years later, largely because of its outrageous price ($143 million each, according to the Air Force), leaving only about 200 examples.
Entered service from 2005, they never took part in real dogfights.
Although they were used in the war against the Islamic State (IS) group from 2014, they only aimed at ground targets.
To shoot down the balloon and the three unidentified objects, the fighters also used another advanced technology: the AIM-9X, a new version of the Sidewinder missile equipped with an infrared guidance system.
General VanHerck said that a Par missile with a radar guidance system would have had a “lower probability of success” due to the small size of the objects and that the device would have risked traversing a debris field if it used its on-board cannon.