So Biden shoots down the Chinese balloon after all

Within minutes of my blog appearing calling for the Chinese spy balloon to be shot down, it was duly broght down by one missile fired by an F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet. Haha! I can't claim I persuaded Joe Biden to do the obvious thing. Apparently he had decided to do it four days ago (on Wednesday) but the Pentagon wanted to wait until the balloon was over water. The balloon duly obliged yesterday and down it came into shallow water off the Atlantic coast of South Carolina. Good shot. Once the US Navy has retrieved all the bits from the water, we hopefully will get a full rundown from the Pentagon on exactly what this mighty balloon contained - meteorological as Beijing claims or espionage as the Pentagon and intelligence services say. It was interesting that a small FBI team of counter-intelligence officers are part of the salvaging operation. I assume they are the experts at telling whether a piece of kit is innocent or guilty of espionage. Whatever they decide, Beijing will still claim the balloon was an innocent weather gatherer and will accuse the US of lying. So we won't be any further down the path of knowing exactly what it has all been about. If by any tiny chance the balloon equipment turns out to be what Beijing says it is it could be quite awkward for the Pentagon but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. So when the Pentagon calls a press conference and details the "proof" that China was spying, what then? I suspect that neither the US nor China will want the balloon incident to create a dangerous freeze in relations. And anyway Beijing will have got the message that any more spy balloons spotted over the US will be treated as a monstrous violation of American sovereignty and that further repercussions would follow. As for Beijing's threat to take further action following the shooting down of the balloon, I suspect that's blather. They got caught out and even the devious Xi Zinping will realise that ballooning over the US is over. At least for the forseeable future.