In order to understand why anyone would want this, remember when the cold war began, the primary nuclear delivery system was the bomber plane like the one that dropped bombs over japan. the u.s. had built up enough radar stations that they would be alerted of an attack with about an hour s notice. then both russia and the u.s. began using the intercontinental ballistic missile, icbm, which could travel across the northern hemisphere in 30 minutes. now they would have a mere half hour to figure out what to do as a nuclear warhead approached the united states. nuclear submarines cut that response time in half yet again. and any technology will cut it further. so very soon a u.s. president could have mere minutes to decide what to do in the even of a nuclear attack. a.i. could instantly evaluate an attack and trigger a response. but should it?
Guarding the coastline. they have an air force base with 11 airports there. they have 18 different radar stations. so when a balloon like that comes over, they re going to tip on it and send that into defense intelligence agency so it goes out in something that i as a commander and all other commanders get on a daily basis called a black book. and until something becomes important, you don t do anything about it. the military has a phrase called o and r, observe and report. if there s a danger associated with something, you do something about it. when you re just observing it and tracking it, and they had fine control of it as it moved across alaska and then into canada, a different nation in coordination with canada, then into the united states, i think that s when it started to rise to the level that the joint chief of staffs heard about the intelligence and then the president eventually did. right, and of course now they know the signature of it. it appears that this had happened
That? first, erin, i would go back to what he said at the very beginning about the military failing to flag the balloon and going over alaska has an urgent matter. i m not sure i agree with that. the tipper that some of our reporters talked about in a recent article in .com. talked about information that was provided to the command about this balloon coming across the aleutian s and going into africa. now, i hate to see aaron, erin burnett, but i will give you a hierarchy of information military information. and organizations. there s an organization called, alaska command, and it is near anchorage, actually. they have responsibility, that s part of northern command, the command that eventually shot down this balloon. it s kind of guarding the coastline. they have an air force base with the 11 airports there. they have 18 different radar stations. so when a balloon like that comes over, they re going to tip on it. and send that into the defense intelligence agency. so it goes out a
He thinks it s going. first of all, general, what do you think it is? certainly it s more than just a meteorological balloon or something to the extent that the chinese have said it is. it s very different than almost any others that we ve been in contact with. so your thoughts. well, they it s a spy surveillance device that they have attached to it. probably a little bit more comprehensive than what they would fly on one of their spy airplanes. but look, i want the american people to understand, we just didn t know about this yesterday. north what we have in this country is norad, the north african american aero space defend command. they have surveillance. they have a sophisticated sweep of radar stations around the world and satellites.
The rocket is looking great. but they have had a bit of a problem at one of the radar stations which will be tracking the rocket, that is a faulty ethernet switch. they have had to repair that. when this rocket goes up you have to track it to see where it is going and this radar station can send a control to the rocket to blow up the rocket if it is veering off course, so it has a very important role. at the moment, that station is not working so they are testing that as we speak. at the moment the rocket is looking good but there is an issue with station that will be tracking the rocket. the launch window has just opened, ten or 15 minutes in, they have got untilfour minutes ten or 15 minutes in, they have got until four minutes past eight to get this rocket up. it feels like everything is going well with the rocket, but there have been delays caused by this problem with the radar station. caused by this problem with the radarstation. i caused by this problem with the radar station. i