FAQs

This section will attempt to answer some of the questions people have about the event. As we can assume DARPA is being vague on purpose, some assumptions will have to be made.

Q: How will we know a balloon is genuine?

A: The rules state that a DARPA representative will be with each official balloon. How they will be identifying themselves is unknown. But it can be assumed that anyone putting up a fake balloon would baulk at at risk of being arrested for impersonating a federal official.

Q: What do the balloons look like?

A: All we know is that they are 8 foot red balloons. The picture on the DARPA webpage announcing the event suggests that this is a round balloon rather than a long weather or high altitude balloon. But there is no guarantee the balloons all look like that.

Q: Won't people on Twitter find all of these in about an hour.

A: Perhaps. But that seems like an unlikely thing for DARPA to be interested in. It can be assumed they will be harder to find than that.

Q: I found a red balloon. What do I do?

A: We will have information available soon for how and where to report balloon sightings.