Yeah, I agree. The "they're going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down" feels like a low-blow to me. Shooting them down seems like a perfectly r

Yeah, I agree. The "they're going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down" feels like a low-blow to me. Shooting them down seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me at this time. Seems like we weren't even really looking for balloons until recently. Now that we've noticed the Chinese Spy balloon, we're reviewing radar logs with refined analysis and are finding some in the past. So we don't really know the characterization of this potential threat. Our ability to positively ID things in this realm is still developing. Until it's a matured discipline, seems reasonable to act with an abundance of caution. Even if the military could positively ID a pico balloon as such, who's to say pico balloons couldn't be used for nefarious purposes? Purposes still warranting being shot down? I could see the hobby moving to align with drones -- requiring FAA registration and a transponder. That seems like a solution that would allow well-intentioned pico balloons to continue operating and allow military to more easily discern: friend or foe?