“Old news or new balloons?”
I never thought the balloons were important news unless they were carrying weapons, and we have equipment that could determine that, and weapons were not detected.
The Biden administration has produced more talk and less action about them than was worthwhile. With, I suspect, some lying thrown in.
Would you consider a complete spectrum analyzer with multi-protocol demodulation and decode a weapon? How about wide spectrum high resolution imaging systems? Add in the capability of real-time uplink to satellites.
Did you know that the EP-3 they captured was monitoring conversations between Chinese military and party officials, interpreting Chinese in real-time, translating to English, recording those files? Oh, the equipment could identify the speakers and label the output text accordingly.
That is what those balloons are most likely doing. Are they weapons? Most military planners treat "intelligence" with a higher value than weapons.