If an interceptor is dispatched they can distinguish the difference. They are not confusing birds with spy balloons. They are shooting at high flying, man made objects who’s purpose they may not be certain of.
If it was (and I think most signs are pointing to probably) a hobbyist balloon the payload is already a very tiny piece, essentially a small circuit board and a couple of tiny solar panels, all weighing a few ounces and not much bigger than your hand.
Sure, sure… 20,000 feet isn’t exactly “high flying” by modern standards. Anything in that altitude range is potentially a hazard to air navigation.
This is in contrast to the known Chinese surveillance balloon at 60,000 feet.
No, I don’t think they do. Bolting on multiple bomb ejection racks and LANTIRN pods to a '22 would make it kinda ‘un-stealthy’.
I know these balloons won’t ‘pop’, but I still like the thought of an A-10’s GAU-8A shreddin’ some plastic for an anti-climactic ‘payload drop’ out of the sky. C’mon, just a li’l burp or two of the gun . . .
Tripler
BURP! BUR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-P! 
on a lighter side of things …
Innnnteresting:
I may be the only person i know who still thinks the US should have let the first Chinese balloon just float away last month. None of the reasons anyone in Congress or the White House said seemed good enough. I’ll bet if there were a survey other people might think the same though we’d hardly be popular.
Survey of which “other people?” And why do their opinions matter?
We totally had the right under international law. The intel we get from the wreckage will be very valuable. OTOH, letting it float out over the Atlantic where the Chinese could have scuttled it mid-ocean would have advantaged the US exactly zero. And virtually eliminated any chance of gathering useful intel from the wreckage that we’d almost certainly never find, much less recover.
Care to try again?
I’d like to accede your point LSL-thanks for your pts.
And in recent news…
US says Chinese spy balloon downed in February did not collect information
“It’s been our assessment now that it did not collect intelligence while it was transiting the United States or overflying the United States,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Pat Ryder.
Wait, what?
Ryder said the US “took steps to mitigate” intelligence collection by the balloon.
So, we had a laser pointed at it’s camera while it went flying by? Strung up camo netting over sensitive locations?
Someone help me out here.
Secret stuff is going to remain secret.
Supposedly, our government has the means to jam/block/whatever their spy devices. But they aren’t going to tell the public about how that’s done because then the other guys would know and try to counter it.
So… you don’t know, I don’t know, and anyone claiming to know is probably blowing smoke.
I take the claim to mean the balloon was not able to ‘phone home’ any data (as opposed to not being able to collect any).
Starting around post #375 there was a discussion about claims the military was jamming the balloon and a debate about how effective that would be. I didn’t go back and reread the thread, but I think there was a claim that the military flew a jamming plane above the balloon.
That would be my take. Given the low-ish power requirements for a solar-powered balloon, it’s be relatively easy to put a much more powerful noise jammer over / near it and interrupt the datacomms. Although how DoD could know for sure they’d interrupted the comm link is an open question.
If there was any other intel that told them what sorts of signals the Chinese were listening for, DoD could certainly have done some EMCON to shut off various emitters while the balloon was close enough to detect [whatever]. There’s nothing critical to DoD communications that doesn’t have alternates and backups. The nuke forces are especially set up with belt, suspenders, an extra rope, some bailing wire, and a tin can.
All the above, plus some convenient public face-saving for DoD that may or may not be 100% truthful is probably the best answer we’re ever going to get.
Talking of Chinese spy balloons, they had also been flying over Japan and Taiwan. Japan says it will shoot them down in future.
You forgot the parachute, spit, duct tape, and rivets for that. 
Yeah. They tried carrier pigeons, but discovered that EMP confused their little compasses.
They took measures, like jamming, that would have prevented intelligence-gathering or communication, if it was attempting those things. But it turns out that it wasn’t doing those things anyway, so the measures taken were unnecessary. I don’t see any conflict, there.
Cool. I’m not disputing you, but do you have any cites about any analysis of the balloon’s capabilities. Hoping to learn a bit more about them.
The Chinese went to great pains to create something that navigated thousands of miles and was able to steer over sensitive areas of the country and it wasn’t involved in spying.
Yah. The register is coming up No Sale on that one.
That’s the thing though. Jammers operate against receivers, not transmitters. So unless they were RF scanning the balloon and then blasting noise on whatever frequencies it was using, the jammer theory doesn’t really hold up.