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Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade’s small circumnavigating pico balloon is “missing in action.”
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Last Saturday, high above Canada’s Yukon territory, the pilot of a $150 million U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor, acting on orders from the leaders of both Canada and the U.S., fired a $472,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at a small unidentified cylindrical object flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet, resulting in a confirmed air-to-air “kill.” What NORAD still hasn’t been able to confirm, almost a week later, is what exactly was blown out of the sky on February 11.

Since then, members of the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a club of high-altitude-balloon hobbyists, have been waiting to hear from K9YO-15, the group’s $100 silver mylar “pico” balloon.

Pico balloons are small antenna-and-tracker-equipped circumnavigational balloons that typically cost less than $200 to build. K9YO-15, which had been airborne nearly 124 days and was in the middle of its seventh circumnavigation of the globe, sent its last signal on February 10, just southwest of Alaska, as Aviation Week reports:

The club’s silver-coated, party-style “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool — the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11.

NIBBB said in a blog post that, as of Tuesday, K9YO-15 was officially “missing in action.”
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NVP said:
nymag.com

Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade’s small circumnavigating pico balloon is “missing in action.”
nymag.com nymag.com
Click to expand...
It's possible but the Pentagon said it was definitely not a balloon and was the size of a VW Beetle so their description differs to that of pico balloons, it would be funny if it wasn't just coincedence though
 
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