The Balloon

[Anomalocaris]

Wonder why they choose to use a million dollar missile to shoot down a ballon when one 50cal round would possibly make the payload fall slower with a drone parachute effect from the deflating/deflated ballon?

There are two general types of high altitude balloons, pressure equilibrated and constant volume

Pressure equilibrated balloons expand and contract with ambient air pressure to keep lifting gas at the same pressure as the air outside.   It will be hard to take town with a few pin pricks because the pressure of lifting gas is the same as ambient air pressure outside, so leakage of lifting gas through a few bullet hole would be very slow, and the balloon is very big, probably on the order of a few hundred feet across.

Constant volume balloons uses stronger envelop material that allows it to withstand pressure difference between lifting gas and ambient air to hold the lifting gas at constant pressure amd volume.    Causing these to lose lifting gas is easier because their lifting gas is under pressure.   So they will leak lifting gas faster.   But even so it is a big balloon.   So it would still take a while.

According to the pentagon,  the balloon is not disposable because the Chinese have always recovered this type of balloon at the completion of their missions.   This suggest the paths and destinations of this type of balloon can be targets fairly precisely, to the recovery area at least.    This also suggest to me these balloons are navigable.      Balloons navigate by changing their altitude to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes.   This would seem to be something difficult to do with a pressurized constant volume balloon, which can go up easily enough by dropping ballast, but would have trouble coming down unless it release lifting gas and thus lose pressure and volume.   So this suggest the Chinese balloon is a pressure equilibrated balloon that would be very hard to take down by poking some 50 cal or 20mm holes in the envelope.