IE dumped me off the site for a while. So ... silence. (I hear cheering by all)
Unless the military intel community gives us more specifics on the now-famous balloon, all commentary is BS.
Here's what the responsible UFO community thinks at this time:
1. The famous object is a spy balloon from China. (China has admitted this), therefore it has nothing to do with UFOs.
2. This is just another of a very long history of irritating balloon overflights by countries over other countries. The Japanese FUGU balloons over the US in WWII are probably the first famous ones, but the US began longrange spying in the late 1940s before we developed the U2 spyplane. Anyone who thinks that this is particularly unusual doesn't know history.
3. So why? This is speculation: This balloon MIGHT have contained instrumentation of a type which would not work as well at low Earth orbit distances, so that universally-available satellite data could not get. If true, this probably would mean sensors penetrating the surface at that distance and with finer accuracy. Then such data would need to be sent back home by satellite bounce to China. There had also to be some small amount of propulsion ability to hold the balloon over Montana even at that altitude.
4. The government handled this properly. They detected this early on, and immediately (apparently) sent signal jamming radiation at the thing to stop the send-back. Then they waited until the thing moved on before shooting it down over a safe place (water) and still shallow enough to allow easy harvesting of the technology. This seems very well done, and China has feigned being pissed.
5. The balloon MIGHT not have contained much of anything at all. We need to remember that the Chinese Premier has been particularly "political" in his posturing to his people (who are still somewhat pissed at him.) This particular display might have been for non-military reasons --- thus the easy viewing of this one by the American press.
6. Anyone believing that this stupid techno-dance of poke-and-respond has not been going on continuously doesn't understand anything about the cold US/China engagement over many years. Our military and theirs are very experienced in coping with these stupidities. It is the publics who are not. China can corral its press; we cannot. This reminds me a bit of the dances between the US and Soviet nuclear subs where they would "test" one anothers' Rules of Engagement by swimming so close that "You could hear the Russians when they flushed their toilets."
7. The American press will now for a brief while put forward every odd balloon like thing that someone reports and glom it all together to create fears and clicks. These other stories will have nothing to do with the China/Montana incident (almost suredly.)
So what the He!l could a serious reason be for such a blatant display? It's really hard to say without more info. Our recovery analysis will tell us for sure what if anything the Chinese were trying to measure. IF they thought that they could get away with fine detailed subterranean mapping of the missile sites, MAYBE that tells them what sort of orbital nuke strike it would take to fry the base electronics. I.E. how much blocking Earth do we likely have here to add to the techno-hardening that we'd add to our mechanisms. Even then ....