Best image I can find of the shootdown:

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Considering the radar cross section something with a huge payload like that must have UNLESS it was well designed for stealth, I don't see how they were missed. Even VISUALLY it would be hard to miss. I suspect this is just an excuse for a "failure to communicate" between huge bureaucracies, exactly what allowed 9/11.

Cool Hand Luke - Failure to Communicate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2f-MZ2HRHQ

Anyway, in US airspace, any unmanned free flight balloon over 12 pounds must have a radar retroreflector and remote controlled cutdown and recovery system (parachute). Good conduct internationally would require the same.

NORAD Missed Previous Chinese Spy Balloons: ‘A Domain Awareness Gap We Have to Figure Out’
Feb. 6, 2023

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/n...-to-figure-out/

Chinese surveillance balloons have previously entered U.S. airspace but went undetected by the Pentagon, the commander in charge of protecting American skies said Feb. 6.

The revelation comes as the Pentagon has sought to explain how a Chinese surveillance balloon was able to float over North America last week, getting far enough into U.S. airspace that the military said it was unsafe to shoot down without risking injuries to civilians on the ground.

“As NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America,” Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), told reporters. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”

Pentagon officials said Feb. 4 surveillance balloons had entered U.S. airspace at least four times in recent years, during both President Joe Biden’s and President Donald Trump’s administrations. The intelligence community eventually made “us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America,” according to VanHerck, but NORAD did not know about those cases in real-time, showing a deficiency in protecting American skies.

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Remember Xi, that's ten million for Hunter and don't forget the 10% for the Big Guy.

__________________
Neal Miller
Master Blaster NAR# 58296

Apparently it did have a parachute which didn't deploy properly for obvious reasons - "hit by missile" is not it's usual activation mode.

Radio audio of Chinese spy balloon shoot down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUwvJ_RU2D4

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

You know if that was the actual truth, they would have said that right from the beginning, nice and loud to all media outlets covering the fiasco. Bringing up "damage control" at this point is just...damage control.

__________________
I love sanding.

The Soviets Built Bespoke Balloon-Killer Planes During The Cold War
With high-altitude surveillance balloons back in vogue, it’s worth taking a look at how the Soviets considered fighting these tricky targets.
FEB 7, 2023

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...ng-the-cold-war

The Soviet Lunik-3 used captured, radiation and cold resistant Genetrix (US spy balloon) film to take the famous first image of the far side of the moon:

[NOTE: **** in the link below destroying the link must be caused by auto-censoring overwriting the minor curse word for "darn" which sounds like "dam"]

Faxes from the Far Side

https://www.****interesting.com/fax...m-the-far-side/

The Genetrix balloons were designed to be practically invisible to radar, using very thin balloon film and a gondola much smaller than a typical aircraft. And this might have worked were it not for the fact that one of the steel rods in the balloon rigging was 91 centimeters long. US Air Force engineers didn’t realize it at the time, but 91 centimeters happened to correspond to one of the frequencies used by Soviet early-warning radar. This caused the otherwise inconsequential rod to resonate and glint like a mirror on Soviet radar screens.

Project Genetrix

http://ufxufo.org/russell/gophergenetrix.htm

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Looks like it used carbon fiber tubing for payload structure.

Our First Look At Chinese Spy Balloon Debris Being Recovered
The U.S. government began a retrieval operation of the Chinese spy balloon’s remains the moment after it was shot down.
FEB 7, 2023

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...being-recovered

The NORAD/NORTHCOM boss had also offered some details about the sheer size of the balloon itself.

"So the balloon assessment was up to 200 feet tall for the actual balloon. The payload itself, I would categorize that as a jet airliner type of size, maybe a regional jet such as a [Embraer] ERJ or something like that," VanHerck explained. "Probably weighed in excess of a couple thousand pounds."

Beyond all this, intelligence exploitation of the debris will help the U.S. government reinforce its position that this is indeed a Chinese government intelligence-gathering asset. Portions of the intelligence gathered could be shared with allies and partners, as well as the general public. A number of other countries are now looking into the possibility that their airspace has been violated by similar Chinese balloons in the past.

This would all be on top of intelligence the U.S. government already gathered about the balloon and its capabilities during its flight, including using U.S. Air Force U-2 spy planes, as The War Zone was first to report.

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

China is mad at the US for blasting its suspected spy balloon, but a few years ago, state TV bragged its fighter pilots could shoot one down - February 7, 2023

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-ma...-192024810.html

As the jets take off, command gives the pilot a mission, explaining that 60 kilometers out at a heading of 220 degrees, an unidentified aerial situation has been discovered. The pilot is ordered to "conduct identification and verification."

In the video, the pilot quickly locates the object and monitors it.

The CCTV narrator identified the object first as a white sphere-shaped object. Closer observation found it to be an unmanned balloon. "The supervising command organization judged that it was possibly a super high-altitude surveillance balloon that threatened air defense security," the narrator says.

A pilot is then ordered to shoot it down with a missile.

The CCTV documentary said "the white balloon exploded with the launch of a missile from the fighter jet's left wing," adding that it only took about 30 seconds for the pilot to lock onto and then destroy the target.

The segment concludes with a shot of balloon debris scattered in a forest.

Video:

https://youtu.be/TqGeiJmKpwU?t=797

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

F-22s Scrambled To Investigate A Mysterious High-Altitude Balloon Off The Coast Of Hawaii (Updated) - The intercept of a suspicious balloon near Kauai’s north shore is peculiar for a number of reasons.
FEB 18, 2022

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...coast-of-hawaii

"Someone who works in aviation here on the island received communications that there were F22’s intercepting a UFO. UFO meaning an unidentified flying object to them. I wonder what the fighter pilots saw. It being a STATIONARY object,” one comment reads. "The aviation person told me that the UFO is many miles offshore from Princeville ( ?) over the ocean. It remained in one spot for at least 40 minutes."

As we mentioned earlier, the Pacific Missile Range's primary installation is located at the northwestern end of Kauai. It is used for some of the U.S. military's most sensitive and advanced testing, especially when it comes to missile defense trials. This includes hosting one of the latest ballistic missile defense radar systems [note my previous speculation above about the possible reason why the recent balloon went near our ballistic missile defense installation in Alaska] and executing tests for the weapons like the MIM-104 Patriot and SM-6 and others. The Navy describes the range that the base is a part of as "the world's largest instrumented multi-environmental range capable of supporting surface, subsurface, air, and space operations simultaneously." Such an installation would certainly be of extreme interest to America's peer-state adversaries and the presence of a mysterious balloon nearby would provoke a higher response from the military given the critical systems located there as well as the sensitive electromagnetic waveforms some of them emit.

It's also worth noting that normally, F-22s aren't scrambled to intercept weather balloons or other high-flying lighter-than-air craft. The suspicious location of this balloon likely played a factor in the scramble.

Balloon prompts jet scramble over Kauai, Air Force says
Feb. 18, 2022

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2022...air-force-says/

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan

Nice analysis, even using Chinese media, of their changing story:

Spy Balloon - I Found China’s Dirty Secret
9 Feb 2023

https://youtu.be/UZuyC-XFFdw?t=211

__________________
The other day I sat next to a woman who has a profound fear of flying. I wanted to comfort her, so I said, "Don't worry, we're not gonna' crash. Statistically, we got a better chance of being bitten by a shark." Then I showed her the scar on my elbow from a shark attack. I said, "I got this when my plane went down off of Florida." - Dennis Regan