There quite possibly are energy weapons that could shoot it down, perhaps some kind of spooky ship based anti missile systems (edit: I’ve looked into this and there’s definitely not anything public that can shoot that far). I suspect that if this were really a Chinese spy balloon, getting detailed data on such a weapon would be an amazing added bonus (think wavelength, energy output, etc). An AAMRAM is pretty well known tech at this point. On the other hand, it might have been a fun show of force to use something spooky. It’s hard to speculate.
As far as swamping air defences with balloons, yeah that’s a thing that’s pretty concerning. If you add swarm drones into the equation, it gets very scary.
As far as swamping air defences with balloons, yeah that’s a thing that’s pretty concerning. If you add swarm drones into the equation, it gets very scary.