If you don't blow it up with the most expensive waste of money but show of explosive power it just wouldn't be the american way.
Using million dollar rockets is good for the economy, cause when they do that they have to order another one to replace it out of tax dollars (and then increase military funding to pay for it next year). Which props up a military industrial complex, that really has no real reason to exist at the level it is anymore. Which is why they keep making up reasons, aka perma wars & bogeymen.
This Chinese balloon is actually great honestly, cause it will scare/shame people and help them increase the military budget next year to fight off the great bogeyman.
Ukraine war is more about propping up the failing economy, via massive military arms dealing than anything humanitarian. There have been plenty of chances to fix the problems there peacefully, they don't want that cause it's bad for buisness. They want the war in some far off country and they want it to go in for 10-15 years so they can sell them the military hardware to kill each other with.
>Countries give money to Ukraine for the war effort
>Ukraine buys US military hardware
>western nations falling over each other to send crappy tanks and hardware to ukrain, so they can fund new ones
Military spending has always been one of the main ways western countries try counter recession. They don't even need to goto war anymore themselves, they can just have proxy wars where they fund other people killing each other instead of meat grinding their own people.