Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Coast to Coast. Richard Saratt sitting in
Speaker 1: for George Nori, coming to you live from my home
Speaker 1: studio in Thornhill, just north of Toronto, and asking about
Speaker 1: these Chinese surveillance balloons. I believe the surveillance balloons. I
Speaker 1: certainly don't for a minute believe the Communist Chinese government
Speaker 1: that these are meteorological balloons that have blown off course,
Speaker 1: because now there are two of them. These are high
Speaker 1: altitude balloons, and they are considered a key delivery platform
Speaker 1: for secret nuclear strikes on America's electric grid. I know
Speaker 1: this is something that George Nori has been very vocal
Speaker 1: about over many, many years, talking about the need to
Speaker 1: strengthen our electrical grids from an EMP attack and the
Speaker 1: threat of a balloon launched electromagnetic pulse attack. These have
Speaker 1: been warm about by Congressional EMP, the Congressional EMP Commission,
Speaker 1: and inside the military at a number of years ago.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty fifteen, a report from the American Leadership
Speaker 1: and Policy Foundation. Air Force Major David Stuckenberg, one of
Speaker 1: the nation's leading EMP experts, wrote extensively about the threat
Speaker 1: balloons carrying bombs pose to national security. All right, let's
Speaker 1: go to Billings, Montana Noles and welcome Jeff on the
Speaker 1: Wildcard Line. Jeff, Welcome to coast. How are you hi?
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking my call. Yeah, things are kind of
Speaker 1: crazy around here. They shut down our airspace Wednesday and
Speaker 1: diverted flights and they prevented a flight from taking off
Speaker 1: on time, So it's pretty crazy. Fighter jets landing at
Speaker 1: the airport and everything. Usually we get the Air National
Speaker 1: Guard will do stuff, but we had I think they
Speaker 1: just have F eighteens, but we had the F twenty twos,
Speaker 1: which those are the big boys. So lots of stuff
Speaker 1: going on here. Did you did you happen to catch
Speaker 1: sight of one of these balloons or were the balloon rather?
Speaker 1: I think I might have, UM, but I just thought
Speaker 1: it was like a just a weather balloon, And then
Speaker 1: I get home it's like, no, this is bigger and higher.
Speaker 1: So UM, I didn't think it'd be that high up
Speaker 1: in the air. But you know, with perspective, UM, you
Speaker 1: think it's closer and that's something small, but it was
Speaker 1: higher and something a lot larger. Um. And when I
Speaker 1: heard the news. My um thoughts immediately, I kind of
Speaker 1: a World War two buff And these aren't the first
Speaker 1: balloons to cross the Pacific and get here. Um, Japan
Speaker 1: launched probably like ten thousand balloons. Only three hundred made
Speaker 1: it here, but those were loaded with incendiary devices and explosives.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we don't really like these drifting in our airspace.
Speaker 1: And um, if it's China that sent them, they're probably
Speaker 1: testing us to see, well, how are they going to
Speaker 1: react to this? And if we're just letting him fly by,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's to prevent him from putting well the
Speaker 1: e MP thing or canisters of who knows what on
Speaker 1: there to just start dropping here. So yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: like it in our airspace. And I know our governor's
Speaker 1: not very happy about it either, because he didn't hear
Speaker 1: about it until it was already in the middle of
Speaker 1: our state. And but he's not happy that this is
Speaker 1: like right over our land here and above. He found
Speaker 1: out about it right when I was above buildings and
Speaker 1: that's the largest city in Montana. And I guess there's
Speaker 1: a video tonight of somebody catching UM. I didn't get
Speaker 1: that good of a look at it because I think
Speaker 1: the servers were jammed from people looking at it, but
Speaker 1: it looked like the witness heard some jets flying. This
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been a balloon because that's a drift that's
Speaker 1: long gone, that's drifted somewhere else. But they heard fighter
Speaker 1: jets and then some sort of explosion and he can
Speaker 1: kind of see this trail where it looks like something
Speaker 1: falling from the sky. So I don't know. I saw that.
Speaker 1: I saw that video and they were claiming this was
Speaker 1: the balloon, but as you say, no, it had drifted.
Speaker 1: It was long gone by that. So I'm one testing
Speaker 1: some sort of a weapon type delivery system to if
Speaker 1: another one comes. Were they testing some sort of system
Speaker 1: to knock it out of the air, This would be
Speaker 1: a good place to test it if UM kind of
Speaker 1: get practice for drills to knock it out, because there's
Speaker 1: enough blowback from UM. I know our congressman wasn't happy
Speaker 1: about it either, so I think if one of another
Speaker 1: one of these drifts, they're probably gonna take it out. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one coming up apparently from There's been another one
Speaker 1: spotted in Latin America that's coming up. So now I
Speaker 1: don't know why is it out of the question that
Speaker 1: they would shoot this thing out of the sky because
Speaker 1: it's a balloon. I mean, it's okay, it's the size
Speaker 1: of three buzzes. Apparently this idea that their concerned. The
Speaker 1: Pentagon is concerned that the debris field could possibly injure
Speaker 1: people on the ground. But I mean, when is that
Speaker 1: a consideration. I mean, you have to be careful, obviously,
Speaker 1: but when you have one of these vehicles, let's say,
Speaker 1: with monitoring and surveilling capabilities, flying over nuclear bases and
Speaker 1: so forth, if an airplane were to do that, the
Speaker 1: air Force wouldn't wouldn't hesitate, you know, to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: first they try to establish radio contact I suppose, and
Speaker 1: they would try to escort it out, but if it persisted,
Speaker 1: they would shoot that thing out of the sky. Why
Speaker 1: are they so hesitant space in Montana that this would
Speaker 1: have been the place to do it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they can figure out, like the wind um because
Speaker 1: it is really high up there, they can kind of
Speaker 1: get an estimate of where it would drift. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's possible to get the balloon um
Speaker 1: like put a hole in it so that it loses
Speaker 1: air and if it's if it's able to land sort
Speaker 1: of gently, we could retrieve it and see what alls
Speaker 1: in the like somehow get that technology to see what's
Speaker 1: in it and get more information on any capabilities it
Speaker 1: might have to have a payload or whatever. We just
Speaker 1: need to get more information on what this thing is.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if there's any way to have
Speaker 1: it have some sort of controlled landing, um like just
Speaker 1: puncture the balloon. It probably would have who knows of
Speaker 1: that atmosphere, It might have just collapsed and it would
Speaker 1: have probably would have been pretty ruined by the time
Speaker 1: it got down anyway, So I don't think they could have.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and how much damage could could have even
Speaker 1: a giant balloon do I mean, how much damage could
Speaker 1: it do? I don't know. Yeah, And again we may
Speaker 1: have plenty of time to get out of the way.
Speaker 1: I would think, Yeah, it'd be the stuff hanging off
Speaker 1: of it. Um, the balloon itself is that's probably not
Speaker 1: going to hurt anything. But if it's what two or
Speaker 1: three school bus is worth, it's not like a meteor
Speaker 1: strike because it's not coming in at like, how are
Speaker 1: many miles per hour meteorites come in and just be
Speaker 1: free falling, and I really don't see how much damage
Speaker 1: that could do if it landed like in a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: But the odds are it's going to land sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, and so I think the
Speaker 1: risk there's probably more risk keeping it up there and
Speaker 1: just letting it do whatever it's going to do. All right, Jeff,
Speaker 1: great call. I appreciate you checking in from Billings, Montana.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very insightful. Howard is West of the Rockies
Speaker 1: in Vancouver, Washington. Howard, Welcome to Coast. Good morning, Richard.
Speaker 1: I think I saw history repeat itself this afternoon. There
Speaker 1: was a rather heated press conference between a kind of
Speaker 1: guy general and the media this afternoon, and they were
Speaker 1: insisting that he told them exactly where the you know
Speaker 1: what position the Chinese bloom was in, and he just
Speaker 1: slatly refused to tell them. It got it got rather nasty. Now,
Speaker 1: whether he may have been have been unaware of it,
Speaker 1: but he was repeating an eighty year old strategy that
Speaker 1: was used in World War Two. The latter part of
Speaker 1: World War two, when the Japanese started manufacturing the two
Speaker 1: god Boon bombs and they sent up thousands of these things,
Speaker 1: as the previous color was talking about, they were landing
Speaker 1: all over the western United States, and the strategy that
Speaker 1: was the War Department used then was to just simply
Speaker 1: classify the whole thing. They would not allow the media
Speaker 1: to report any of this. The idea was that they
Speaker 1: didn't want the enemy to know how effective or accurate
Speaker 1: their balloons were. And they they actually did uh succeed
Speaker 1: in creating some damage. The Yes, there were casualties, there
Speaker 1: were people killed. Yes, there was a family attending a
Speaker 1: church picnic. It was in I believe it was in
Speaker 1: the spring of nineteen forty five, and they came across
Speaker 1: one of these things. I believe it was in the
Speaker 1: Willamit National Forest, and I believe it killed about three.
Speaker 1: They started messing with this thing. They didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was, that hadn't it hadn't been reported, and it detonated.
Speaker 1: I sum believe it killed three of them. But I
Speaker 1: believe that the strategy of just keeping quiet about it,
Speaker 1: that general or the Panic for that matter, really doesn't
Speaker 1: know what the Chinese know about the you know, they
Speaker 1: may not know it just exactly what the position of
Speaker 1: their balloon was. And he didn't want to let him
Speaker 1: know if he knew that if he said it there
Speaker 1: or they'd hear it. So anyway, I thought that was
Speaker 1: a rather interesting situation there. How this rerepeats itself like that. Indeed, Howard,
Speaker 1: great call, thank you for that. That makes a certain
Speaker 1: amount of sense. Although I don't know the technology that
Speaker 1: the Japanese had, whether they were just sending these over
Speaker 1: and whether they had any way of tracking where they
Speaker 1: were once they were in the United States, or whether
Speaker 1: they were basically sort of working blind, whereas here, obviously
Speaker 1: these surveillance balloons are there too, specifically surveill I believe,
Speaker 1: and they would have they would know the Communist Chinese
Speaker 1: where these balloons are within the United States. Listen to
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