We were told that you really didn't know what the payload was or what its capabilities were until you were able to take a look at the array that's been retrieved off the coast of South Carolina.
General Prévost said that he knew there wasn't a danger from the hypersonic missiles because they had known about them in the past but they hadn't seen anything to do with them in the past several years.
We have footage on the Internet that shows the potential for a similar balloon to carry hypersonic missiles. If they can't tell what the payload really was until they retrieve the arrays, how did they know, when it was over continental North America, that there wasn't something dangerous to the population below as part of the payload?