Any viehicle of useful size de-orbiting, even from a low orbit, needs a heat shield to reach the surface intact, right? And this thing needs to be going faster

Any viehicle of useful size de-orbiting, even from a low orbit, needs a heat shield to reach the surface intact, right? And this thing needs to be going faster than orbital speed at the surface - I don't see how that could work out without it becoming a fireball. At one point, I was thinking that perhaps a de-orbiting vehicle needs a heat shield only because it has to fall several tens of miles before it encounters enough atmosphere to matter, during which time it accelerates, but that cannot make a difference, because at that altitude, a ballistic vehicle being launched needs to be going at least as fast as the re-entering vehicle in order to end up in the same orbit.