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Worth even over rural montana which has roughly a population density of about 35 people evere mile, but if the debris field as they modeled it out was going to be several square miles, then it wasn't worth risking those american lives for what they thought the chinese were getting. so we want to know what did they get in terms of intelligence value, what were we able to even potentially jam or obfuscate, and then why was action not taken when we saw this crossing the pacific, when we saw it crossing our air space in the aleutian islands in alaska? why did we deal with this on the back end, at ...

Patience they waited until today to take it down. >> reporter: fredricka, we are getting new information literally just in right now from a senior defense official who tells reporters that the fighter jets that took off to take down this balloon were actually -- they took off from langley air force base, located in virginia, and it was a single missile that took down that balloon. interestingly, they added that the surveillance balloon is of value to the united states. they said that, quote, i would note that we took all necessary steps to keep the surveillance balloon from gathering informati...

Shoot it down. >> if they knew we were going to catch them, why would they do it? >> they may still have obtained some intelligence value from it. i think they're also testing this capability to see how they can direct the balloon, how they can direct the surveillance aircraft to what degree they can go undetected, what's the quickest route. they have a number of objectives in fielding any capability. but ultimately, it's in a treatable asset, that sort of fancy way of saying they don't really care if it gets shot down. there's no people on board, if it gets shot down, they'll just throw anoth...

Think that's true and i think that's going to be really the most significant aspect of this. the but these flight crews did a tremendous job putting it together and as you can see there with the contrails there, the missile going after that target, a very hardle target for an aircraft to go after, that, you know, really gives you an idea of, you know, how complex this operation really was. >> thank you so much, colonel cedric leighton. hey, john miller, in 20 seconds or less, what did you hear in that statement from the pentagon? the payload is of significance intelligence value. >> what i hea...

That's the envelope as it was deflated, but the really important step -- we don't care so much about what is in the balloon. it is really so much about what is in the enstrumt tags that was dangling below it which we know was the size of a few buses, a few school bus sizes. >> the mechanics of it as well as the pay load of it. >> that's really critical. >> natasha had mentioned there's an acknowledgment from the u.s. military, the pentagon, that the pay load is of significant intelligence value. >> right. >> u.s. military, u.s. intelligence wants it to dissect, to understand. >> yeah. the fact...