One Man’s Opinion: The

Moon’s a Balloon

By Bill Crane

There is a tendency, well-documented by historians and military experts, to defend and prepare for the next enemy of the United States with the tools and techniques that worked well in the prior war.

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (I know the acronym doesn’t match...take it up with the Pentagon), was founded by the U.S. and Canada in 1958, relatively early in the Cold War, to both monitor U.S. airspace and particularly to identify fast-moving projectiles or aircraft headings towards the U.S. land mass (including Alaska and Hawaii). Identifying, intercepting, and deflecting the detonation of an intercontinental ballistic missile in the early outer atmosphere or meeting unidentified or hostile enemy aircraft flying in formation (like Pearl Harbor) before reaching U.S. landfall were top mission priorities.

NORAD has served us well, but its radar, sonar, and multiple early detection technologies were not really ever intended to detect large, slow-moving craft, particularly at lower altitudes. Balloons, blimps, and Zeppelins were long ago reduced in terms of threat analysis after the explosion of the Hindenburg. However, the Germans continued using various airships for reconnaissance and submarine surveillance throughout World War II.

You may remember our U-2 spy planes, first commissioned by the United States Air Force for high-altitude reconnaissance in 1957. Lockheed has built 104 U-2s since, many which are still in service. One of these single-engine jets was shot down over Russia on May 1, 1960, causing an international incident and resulting in the U.S.S.R. imprisonment of pilot Francis Gary Powers. Powers was released in 1962 in exchange for a Russian spy in U.S. custody. He returned stateside and eventually became a pilot for a Los Angeles news station and its news chopper. Powers was killed flying that craft in 1977.

Still later in 1990 during the first Persian Gulf War, a coalition of nations challenged Iraq after its invasion of the neighboring sovereign nation Kuwait. The first night’s bombing of Baghdad by U.S. and allied forces were well documented and covered live by CNN and other news outlets. Departing Baghdad days later to maintain their safety, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw, and then war correspondent John Holliman left Baghdad in the dark of night for a long desert drive on the only road available connecting Baghdad to Damascus, Syria. When the caravan arrived safely in Syria, they received a secure phone call from CNN President Tom Johnson, inquiring about their condition and safety, and then asking for a fax number.

The caravan had made at least one pit stop along the 90+ mile route to Damascus. The fax showed a photograph taken by a U.S. military satellite showing the top of Holliman’s bald head and the motorcade in the complete dark of a desert night in Syria while Holliman was doing his business facing a small shrub roadside.

Ryan’s Remarks Continued from

page 7 historians will define this period. However, we have made it through this time together. Together indeed!

So, let us continue to give each other the benefit of the doubt, love more, listen better, judge less, care more, smile, and be patient. Simply said, we need to BE KIND. I do not profess to have mastered all these things, and I work on them daily. And please know we can only control what we can control.

To all my family, friends, colleagues, and this community, you are the best. Your support and partnership mean more than I can ever tell you. I wish all of you the best, and thank you for continuing with me on the journey of my town, your town, OUR TOWN!

True, a Chinese-launched balloon, for whatever purpose, carrying a payload we now understand to be as large as three buses, should NOT have been flying through U.S. airspace without clearance. But other than surveillance and monitoring multiple telecom and broadcast frequencies or potentially looking into buildings at night with infrared technology, that burst balloon and the three other lesser unidentified flying objects subsequently taken down recently don’t terribly concern me.

Our next war will begin more like our 1990 attacks on Iraq. Take out their telecommunications infrastructure, and knock out power and water supplies as the Russians continue to focus their efforts in Ukraine. And though the potential of nuclear warfare still looms large as a potential world-ender, most of our enemies still seem to prefer global domination over the extinction of our species, I am a bit more concerned about all the data being gobbled, assembled, and prepared for use against us by foreign-owned/controlled media apps like TikTok.

And if/when otherworldly aliens decide on an invasion or have already landed on our planet, I think they will make their presence a bit more known and threatening than balloons gliding through mid-atmosphere, when they likely would have arrived here at something closer to the speed of light. It remains to me the height of U.S. hubris to believe that we are the only planet in the universe capable of hosting intelligent life.

In the words of Rod Serling, “Imagine if you will…” a U.S. without Wi-Fi and mobile phone networks in operation for a period of a month or more from the perspective of our digital-first Generation Z and Millennial population. Now THAT scares me.

Bill Crane owns the full-service communications firm CSI Crane. More information at www.CSICrane.com