False claims to cover for Biden Administration, would be my guess as to what is going on.
Honestly I can believe either scenario.
My theory is the Deep State allowed them but did not tell Trump, fearing he would down them. There probably have been several others. This one just happened to be seen and videoed by a guy in Montana. “Going off course” means dropping low enough to be seen.
I agree. China made Biden look like an absolute fool last week, so the deep state is scrambling to find a way to drag Trump into this. My guess is someone at the Pentagon dug up some old reports from the unexplained UFO files and said: "Here, use these...we'll say that these were also Chinese balloons.