This USAF aircraft in international airspace was almost certainly indirectly involved in an ongoing military conflict. It's not there for no reason. It's very likely providing intelligence to the Ukrainian military, which will cause deaths in the Russian military.

I'm not saying whether that's good or bad, just that we should not be surprised they are expressing their displeasure with us being there. They avoided using missiles for diplomatic reasons, but given that this is clearly an aircraft aiding a combatant in a war, it's understandable that they could just shoot it down. The only reason they are not is because they're being cautious about expanding the war, but we're already provoking an expansion of the war by using our aircraft in this way.

That "expansion of the war" would be very ugly in multiple ways so both sides trying very hard to avoid it is good.

That this was an unmanned drone also means it's downing is overall less serious.

As opposed to war?

I'll take strongly worded letter.

What would you prefer? An armed strike over the loss of a remote controlled plane?

Wait until you learn about Gary Powers’s “civilian” U-2, or the USS Pueblo, or the USS Liberty, Korean Airlines 007 and Congressman Larry McDonald.

We literally just shot down spy balloons from china. Downing unmanned spy resources is fair game.

Yeah, over our own territory, not over international waters.

Small correction on your first sentence: only one (the huge one shot down off the coast of SC) was confirmed to be a spy balloon from China.

The other three (Alaska, Yukon, Lake Huron) were explicitly referred to as "objects, not balloons" initially. This was later updated to "intelligence agencies believe they were civilian research platforms/balloons" but not from China. That seems to be where the story ends with no further updates. Feds say that no debris was ever located for any of the last three.

Off-topic and/or pedantic but I followed the story pretty closely and don't understand why people lump the first shoot down (of the confirmed spy balloon from China) with the latter three. The circumstances and details emerging in the aftermath were wildly different.