I seem to recall reading .mil nerdery (probably off some Reddit threads) about these things in 2021/22. Weird shaped drones, swarms of smaller ones, surveilling military activity at the edges of the US. It’s not a huge surprise that drone tech is being used for this, is it?
My slightly more anodyne guess is that China has been sending these spy balloons for ages and the US has just finally decided enough is enough.