When a weather balloon went rogue almost 25 years ago, fighter jets fired 1,000 rounds at it and couldn't bring it downTwo Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 fighter aircraft spotted the balloon over Newfoundland and fired more than 1,000 rounds at it. The AP reported that the jets, Canadian variants of the American F/A-18 Hornet, hit the balloon, but rather than popping or exploding and crashing to the earth, it slowly began leaking helium. The big balloon was still in the air.
A Canadian military spokesperson, a lieutenant named Steve Wills, told BBC that it was difficult to target the balloon, even though it was about the size of a 25-story building, and that the failure to take it out wasn't embarrassing.
"With something like this, which is stationary in the air when the CF-18s are flying very, very fast, it is difficult to shoot it," Wills said.
The CF-18s were reportedly equipped with air-to-air missiles, but Canadian Major Roland Lavoie told AP the pilots refrained from using them.
"Citizens would not have appreciated having a missile blowing over their heads,″ he said. "Also, it might be overkill spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars on a missile to shoot down a balloon that's drifting away."
The balloon, BBC reported, also survived encounters with British and American aircraft.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather-balloon-went-rogue-almost-161314996.html