...that shooting down the bird during re-entry will not present the same hazard to space travel as destroying one in orbit as was the case of the Chinese shootdown. The debris will simply burn up in the atmosphere immediately.

A few questions, though. Can the path of this object be calculated with sufficient precision that a ship can be dispatched to the right place to intercept it? Also, the AA missiles normally carried by ships were probably never designed to attack re-entry vehicles. Could this be a disguised ABM test?

If this story proves correct, we already must know the satellite will land on land (otherwise, why shoot it down?), and that it will be vulnerable to attack while over the ocean (otherwise, a ship couldn't get to it).