What would they cost? $10k seems reasonably close given the price below.

https://weatherscientific.com/collections/weather-balloons/p...

That’s just the fabric. What about all the equipment you’ll put inside? And for the US to bother to shoot them down my guess is that they’re doing something really funky with what they’re carrying.

If you fly dummies for the purpose of having them shot down, they wouldn't have to carry much. It's probably nothing too expensive or they'd put it on a satellite.

If they're flying really expensive stuff at commercial flight levels, that's pretty dumb since it will be shot down.

> If they're flying really expensive stuff at commercial flight levels, that's pretty dumb since it will be shot down.

Seemed like a good strategy until about a week ago!

The prior ones weren't at the commercial level.

IF they’re dummies why bother shooting them down?

We won't know that until the debris is recovered. There's no way to know what payload the next one will be carrying either.

And what if it's just "upcycled" electronics. We could spend a boat load trying to recover bogus data from seawater logged flash drives for nothing.

In which case they won't cost just 10k. We're coming full circle to my initial comment.

My understanding is that basically all of these balloons require missiles due to their altitude,not because of their structure.

Do we the modern jets have guns still?

Yes, some do.

Did it require it, or was that just what they used?