Pentagon spent over $1.5 million shooting down harmless balloons, including $12 hobby balloon

In a series of shootdowns that made the headlines for weeks, the Pentagon spent over $1.5 million dollars shooting down "UFOs," some of which were harmless balloons made by hobbyists that cost as little as $12 dollars to create and launch.

The incident began when a Chinese high altitude balloon entered US airspace in late January, causing the military to respond with force, which led to a frenzy of UFO sightings.

Four AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles were used to shoot down the objects over Alaska, Lake Huron, and the Yukon region in Canada, each costing around $400,000, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The publication reported that the total cost was likely even higher due to the additional expenses involved in tracking the objects.

Despite this, the military did not include these expenses in their cost estimates since they consider the flights to be part of their pilots' training and have already budgeted for the flight hours.

During a recent press conference, President Joe Biden admitted that the military had used sophisticated air-to-air missiles to shoot down what they believed were "most likely" weather balloons.

As reported by Aviation Week, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a group of hobbyists, had a silver-coated "pico balloon" that went missing in almost the exact same location and altitude as one of the "UFOs" shot down in the Yukon Territory.

Ron Meadows, the founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), which makes the balloons for hobbyists, noted that he had tried to contact the military and the FBI to educate them on what many of these objects likely were, but he was given the runaround.

He expressed concern that shooting down harmless balloons could reflect poorly on the military's intelligence.

Some commentators speculated that the UFO flap was a convenient distraction to bury the story about U.S. involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines, and the Biden administration’s failure to address the ongoing disaster in East Palestine, Ohio.