I'm assuming that the cost of building and launching these balloons is lower that launching fighter aircraft to shoot them down with missiles. I wonder if we're about to see thousands.
But remember - these planes are often up in the air anyway for training. The US Air Force has some of the highest flight hours per pilot of any air forces. Yes it will cost more, but it's hard to say by how much.
Fighter jets don't just sit in hangars all day. They're no good without trained pilots.
They most likely always have been there, there are hundreds of balloons released all around the globe every day. This is some kind of mass hysteria we see every now and then. "china bad" + "spy balloon" + "UFO", I can't come up with a better keyword selection to trigger that
Fighter jets don't just sit in hangars all day. They're no good without trained pilots.