LOCKING THE BARN DOOR TOO LATE ?

By Bob Walsh

The USAF shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean around noonish PST on Saturday.  I guess it is a bit tricky to figure out how to put enough holes in the balloon to bring the thing down slowly and therefore semi-intact.  Clearly we have some planes that can get up to 60,000 feet armed with cannon to make a sieve out of the balloon.  I confess I am a little puzzled by the fact that we waited a week or two depending on how you measure such things before taking action.

We COULD HAVE legitimately shot the thing down over the Aleutians.  We could have shot it down over Montana and put some prairie dogs at risk.  We didn't.  We allowed the thing to gather info and transmit it back to the ChiComs before we brought the thing down.  Maybe we will get some useful information out of it.  Maybe we won't.  There is no doubt the ChiComs got some useful information out of it.