Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go catch the thing and examine whatever tech was on board?
Why was shooting it down the first option?
How would you go about catching it? It flies higher than jets tend to work.
And is the size of several city buses.
And, even if altitude weren’t an issue, I’m fairly certain that the U.S. military doesn’t have a plane that’s even remotely set up to somehow “catch” something of that size and mass, and which was moving much more slowly than a jet airplane.
And, even if they did manage to snag it, given the mass of the balloon’s payload, it might well have caused a catastrophic event to both the balloon and its payload, and the “catching” aircraft.
The coast guard and Navy did retrieve most of what fell into the water.
That technology has existed since the late 60’s.
Other than that see @kenobi_65’s answer. Having that balloon on the wing would affect aerodynamics & may very well have caused the catch plane to crash.
Why not? Firstly, it is a spy balloon over our air space, so shooting down on principle alone is warranted. Secondly, they might have some tech of which we are not privy, so shooting it down allows us to discover and examine that.
“It’s fire and it crashing! . . . This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it’s crashing . . . oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen."
“Nobody ever knew a balloon could crash like that.”
I was wondering if the missile could have been disarmed so it just passed though it, a bullet shot through it, or perhaps could we use some laser weapon to burn a hole in it, so the balloon could not maintain altitude but have a more controlled decent. Perhaps even some sticky heavy liquid could be dropped over it to have ti start headed down. It seems like something that you could give the order to the military to do it and let them figure out the best way. Shooting it down as they did seemed to cause some debris and we don’t want to blow up evidence.
The military hasn’t earned much credence over the last few decades, but I have to believe that it there were any feasible chance of snatching the balloon whole from the sky, they would have figured it out and attempted it as the first try.
As it was explained to me, at least, the window was small. They wanted it over water but not beyond the 12 mile limit demarcating the end of U.S. waters and international waters. A slow descent would have carried it out to international waters before it crashed.
Have you seen any details about that?
How were the Chinese going to bring it down in a controlled way? Did it have a way to slowly vent the balloon to achieve a controlled decent? Unless we had a way to hack into their system and take control, I see no way for the US to bring it down other than shoot it down, which we had a right to do.
There was indications that it was observed to be under some form of steering control allowing it to travel over certain areas, and even stop over a site. Typically in a balloon that means altitude control, and catching different winds. If that was so they should have been able to bring it down as well.
Such things do have venting mechanisms.
IMHO they did just the right thing. No, there is no way to ‘catch’ it in the air. And timing was essential to bring it down near the coast.
I like this at the end of the article:
On Capitol Hill Tuesday, House Republicans continued to blast President Joe Biden over his handling of the balloon incident ahead of his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
“He really gave an order to shoot down a spy plane from China on Wednesday and it didn’t happen till Saturday?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said. “Have you fired every single person that refused to obey the commander in chief?”
No, the right course was chosen to let it be and then take it down when and where we wanted, with the most amount of predictability and the least risk to people and things on the ground. No, we do not want the Commander-in-Chief to be an impulsive dimwit that ignores his advisors, thanksverymuch.