The Balloon

[Neo-Scholastic]

basically if the chinese can spy on us from compact cat sized balloons then we might as well stop transmitting because they can swarm us with thousands of balloons, too many for us to shoot down at the rate of half a million dollars per AIM-9X missile and 20K per flight hour for a f-22 or F-35.

The initial 200 foot balloon with its bus sized equipment bay probably cost more than what it took to shoot it down. but the compact car sized balloons almost certainly cost very little compared to effort to shoot them down.

...of which most would be decoys to those few armed with EMP warheads which could take out several cities.