Weather balloons have been pretty standard for decades, so if you want to start using a markedly different kind to blend in with your spy balloons you'll need to establish their plausibility first. Like showcasing them at metrological conferences where you enthusiastically explain the real advantages of such a large platform for weather monitoring and show the results you're getting and so on. Otherwise it's as if you turned up at a bank's drive-through in a tank claiming that it's just your family car.

I believe that is called the "Glomar Explorer" P.R. strategy !

> I don't buy the argument that all weather balloons look the same and this one is too big. If I wanted to camouflage spy balloons, I'd produce identically looking weather balloons.

That reasoning is topsy-turvy.

It would work if you would say: "It looks like a weather balloon, but I don't believe it is not a spy balloon just because of that. If I wanted to camouflage spy balloons, I'd produce identically looking weather balloons."

It doesn't work in a scenario where you are observing a balloon which looks different than the usual weather balloons. You cannot say "it cannot be a spy balloon because if it were a spy balloon I would design it to look like a weather balloon". Maybe it is a spy balloon and the people who made it didn't want to hide the fact. Maybe they wanted to hide the fact but couldn't.