If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fuss about it.
Source: https://twitter.com/ZaidSabah/status/1624527081026486274
Source?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/alaska-myste...
> It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.
https://news.sky.com/story/us-shoots-down-unknown-object-fly...
> The object, shot down on the order of President Joe Biden, was flying at a high altitude of about 40,000ft and was the size of a small car, the White House said.
"It did not appear to have maneuverability capability, he said. "It was virtually at the whim of the wind."Maybe Blue Beam is in effect.
Apparently the Alaska object shattered upon impact against the ice. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/pentagon-shoots-down...
But more importantly, it sends a message - don't fuck with our airspace, we won't even send body bags
https://www.space.com/281-sky-capture-nasa-bring-genesis-ear...
However, that was a known harmless object on a known trajectory versus an unknown and possibly hostile object.
Additionally, helicopters can't fly nearly high enough for these. 25,000 feet vs 40,000+ feet.
It's too high for helicopters or rotor drones so there's no kind of aircraft that can get their quickly and just hover next to it and retrieve it. (And sending an airship would be so slow and hard to control I'm not sure you could ever get it to reliably intercept in a reasonable amount of time.)
So since you've necessary got to launch something at speed, the only conceivable capture device would seem to necessarily involve 1) a missile to puncture and deflate the balloon/buoyant part, 2) a giant net to wrap the entire thing, and 3) a parachute attached to the net to let it down gently.
But I can't even begin to imagine how you'd get all three elements working together reliably, rather than interfering with each other.
they said the second object was freely drifting and not self-propelled or guided, so whether it's technically a balloon or just something that behaves like a balloon is kind of irrelevant to anybody who isn't working for whatever government department is tasked with analyzing it.
But now I am playing the guessing game a bit too much for my own liking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-altitude_long-endurance...
Also there is the Arctic you can take off and land on ice and use either an icebreaker or a sub for deployment and recovery.
China does have some advanced drones with a substantial range e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou_WZ-7_Soaring_Dragon
Ofc how they perform in reality vs their published specs no one knows.
In the past at least likes of China and Russia tended to inflate the specs that they made public whilst the west tended to keep the real figures hidden and release far more conservative figures especially when it came to things like maximum speed, range and operational ceiling.