You can fine tune what you want to see on the display of a primary radar, and remove fixed objects, rain etc,, not rocket science.
There are lots of weather ballons launched around every day , some do not come down as expected and others drift to where they are not epecected as very high altitude winds are very difficult to predict, and when they are , it is done using... guess what ? weather balloons.
I personally think that this wave of shooting down balloons ( except the first one of course which clearly is not a weather balloon) is more political than anything else.
I found for instance the shotting down using an F-16 and a missile to shoot down a small balloon at 20.000 ft over lake Huron a bit overdone . If you really wanted to know what it was , quietly send an helicopter , a few are quite able to go to 20.000ft , , take 100s of photos in all angles of it, and if you want to put it down ,open the door , use a sniper with a rifle, to do minimal dammage and go down with it to drop a marker where exactly if falls down on tthe water . But a F16 and a missile looks better on CNN ..
Last edited by ATC Watcher; 16th Feb 2023 at 09:47.