The extraordinary scene of U.S. fighter jets getting ready to strike a Chinese balloon had many people along the Carolina coast straining their necks and pointing their smartphones to the sky to capture the moment of impact.
But a group of aviation enthusiasts was, instead, intently scanning radio frequencies for the exchanges between the pilots that would follow, as, Huntress, NORAD’s eastern air defense sector controller, tracked the exact distance as two Air Force F-22 fighter jets closed in on the target.
