The American fighter became the first combat aircraft in the world to shoot down a real target at an altitude of almost 20 kilometers.

Despite the fact that it took the United States about a week to detect and hit a reconnaissance balloon in its airspace, the American F-22 fighter that shot down a balloon about a day ago became the first combat aircraft in the world to hit a real combat target at an altitude of about 20 kilometers.

On the presented video frames, you can see the moment the target was hit by the American F-22 fighter. Apparently, the fired AIM-9X missile was detonated remotely in order to cover as large an area as possible with striking elements and thereby guaranteed to shoot down the balloon, however, a number of sources report that the missile was aimed at the target by the pilot himself.

Experts note that training high-altitude targets are hit by combat aircraft quite often, however, in this context, the target was combat, although it did not pose an immediate danger to the fighter, and today this is the first high-altitude target hit in real combat conditions with the help of an aircraft missile.