Four more and he'll be the first balloon busting ace since WW1.
Seriously and from the aviation side, the Canadians tried shooting a prior one down with the gattling gun and even with over 1,000 holes the balloon was so big it made no difference. That's one type of the "debris" the Govt was worried about. The other was that a missile would likely go through the thin mylar and keep on going. In the middle of the country the missile coming down from 60,000 feet could lock onto an airliner at 30-40,000 ft or something warm on the ground. The answer was to let it have the ocean as the background and ground stop all airliners for an hour in the area.
I understand most of the debris is in only about 50 ft of water and with the balloon as a streamer it would not have hit hard.