This is dramatically under selling the sophistication of the balloon. Zoom into the payload from the u2 shot and you'll see this is more akin to a floating radi

This is dramatically under selling the sophistication of the balloon. Zoom into the payload from the u2 shot and you'll see this is more akin to a floating radio tower than a simple commodity tv tuner turned sdr. The entire craft and payload are likely over a million dollars and as mentioned, the additional costs for the US destroying it are likely close to 0 if used en lieu of already mandatory training flight hours.