Nice try. I used this excuse when I tied a bunch of balloons to myself and hopped the fence at Area-51, had a clipboard and everything, they didn't buy it.

Should've worn a high vis jacket and a hard hat and you would have been fine

Or a pilots uniform. You can get just about anywhere when you walk briskly in a pilots uniform. I’ve been upstairs in the White House while the Obamas were sleeping.

We should send a civilian aircraft carrier for "research."

"Don't your citizens have these too?"

"Deviated from course" by 15,000 km?

If this were a civilian construction the Chinese government would have likely shot it down themselves.

Use that batplane balloon catcher attachment thingamabobber from Batman, dissect it then send it back.

Simple, really.

Assuming it's a weather balloon, it's gonna just ride the wind until it eventually deflates. It's possible that it was supposed to deflate but didn't, and it drifted out over the ocean and they were like "guess it's gone forever." If they don't burst they can stay aloft for weeks, which would be plenty of time to drift from China to the US.

Edit: Appears the Pentagon has said it's not a weather device. They said it can maneuver, which I don't know much about balloons, but appears they do that by changing altitude, which doesn't seem like something that you'd bother have a weather balloon be able to do. Looking at the pics of it, it appears to have solar panels on it too.

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It was just Venus, guys.

You were attacking Venus.

Wait...

No, sorry... That was Japan. Japan did that a long time ago.

Shakes fist in HMAS Sydney

Both have high res spy satellites. 🤦‍♂️

Fake news.

Because they couldn't have asked the US for meteorological research...

How is this oniony. It’s a weather balloon, the US has them too. It got blown over the north pole through Alaska and Canada. This isn’t that bizarre.

I mean, doesn't that actually make sense? Why would you send in a spy balloon. That's like comically obvious.

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