The balloon issue, as covered at the blog, is no joke, since these old, but still relevant vehicles of war are able to dominate near space, the area from 12 to 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, a region too high for jets, but too low for satellites. A good view of a country can be had from there.
Still, to troll the US the way it is doing to the Taiwanese, releasing a number of balloons, and as well, letting the first one go right over the US, has led to a sense of balloon paranoia, with the shooting down of what some have said is a party balloon, or a school science project. Still, while this is good material for jokes, the said balloon was in aircraft space, and could have posed a danger, so better safe than sorry. At least the $ 400,000 missiles seem to work.