“just maybe we were collecting our own intelligence on the balloon, its intelligence gathering equipment and its operating parameters. This is what intelligence agencies do.”
One of the news conferences sort of implied this. Then why shoot it down and destroy the payload? They might say we already know what it transmitted and we don’t need the actual equipment itself to tell us anything. Maybe. But I would have found a way to bring it down in a controlled manner off the coast of Alaska.
the one in alaska hit the ice in the ocean, so i am sure something was recovered