Pretty good analysis. But I wonder why the government tried at first to downplay the whole thing - and now they're shooting down everything in sight. Nothing about this makes a lot of sense to me.

A couple tidbits here: Those balloons (if they ARE balloons!) are not weather balloons, simple because they are flying too high, for the most part, to provide any useful weather information. Weather stops at the tropopause, and these things are (allegedly) up in the stratosphere. Secondly, these balloons just about have to be filled with hydrogen, not helium, to carry that much weight that high. At lower altitudes, it would be pretty spectacular to see one of these shot out of the sky. At higher altitudes, with less oxygen in the atmosphere, not so much.

Onward and upward,
airforce