About The Balloon

China launched -- and then lost control of -- a weather balloon, according to China. Days later, said weather balloon, which everyone else said was a surveillance system, was shot down off the South Carolina coast; falling into the shallow waters of the Continental shelf where it should be easily recovered.

China was upset, to say the least, that we shot down their balloon, which was at best a hazard to aviation and to residents on the ground below it. Or, it was -- in addition to being a hazard -- an intentional violation of U. S. and Canadian sovereignty if it was launched and maintained on a preset course meant to carry it over Canada and the U.S. without our permission. In either case, the U.S. government was fully within its rights to bring it down.

Predictably, many GOP political figures blasted the Biden administration for not shooting the balloon down over Montana or some other (preferably red?) state along its course. And, predictably, several noted that Donald Trump wouldn't have put up with such shenanigans (actually, he did, three times at least).

It's been reported that the balloon was the size of three school busses. Plus, the array it was towing was even larger and weighed an estimated 1,000 pounds. Had it crashed into a populated area it could have done considerable damage to life, limb, and property. Moreover, if it was indeed a spy balloon, any intelligence we could glean from it could be lost.

So rather than follow the advice of Donald Trump, Jr who tweeted that the good folks of Montana should do what President Biden was too "weak" to do, and shoot the thing down with their -- what -- AR-15s; or bow to the admonishments of MTG to do what TFG was tough enough to (but didn't, thrice) do, President Biden directed the Department of Defense to shoot it down when doing so would not endanger Americans on the ground.

And that's what happened yesterday afternoon, off the South Carolina coast, in shallow water, from which the Navy can quite likely recover the wreckage for examination and determination of its mission and derive other good intelligence, in addition to that already captured while monitoring the balloon's journey through our skies.

It was the proper, and adult, thing to do.