Eric Boehm on the Chinese balloon incident

On Saturday, the F-22 [which officially entered military service in 2005] scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.  There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent.  But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world's most expensive military by a massive margin.

~ Eric Boehm, "By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight," Reason.com, February 6, 2023