Problem with shooting them down is that you need a lot of bullets to get the thing to plummet. Helium is always leaking a bit anyway across the entire surface,

Problem with shooting them down is that you need a lot of bullets to get the thing to plummet. Helium is always leaking a bit anyway across the entire surface, so adding a few hundred small holes doesn't accomplish as much as one would hope. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/weather-balloon-canada-china-1.6737831 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/weather-balloon-canada-chin... Who knows how many of the thousand rounds actually hit the thing. I wonder if someone might start filling them with much cheaper hydrogen... what's the cost of all that helium anyway? Goodyear blimp costs about $100k in helium.