The company also employs a software program to pilot and monitor its balloon fleet and has a mission operations center manned with trained flight engineers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he added. Raven Aerostar uses a proprietary machine-learning algorithm that predicts wind directions and fuses incoming sensor data in real time, Van Der Werff said. Wind currents allow the balloon to float along a desired flight path, and the company takes advantage of different wind speeds and directions to move the balloon to the target area.īut that’s not all. They also have a payload electronics package that controls flight safety, navigation and communications, Russell Van Der Werff, engineering director at Raven Aerostar, said in an interview. Raven said they consist of a flight control unit, powered by batteries that are charged using renewable solar panels. Raven Aerostar, a division of Raven Industries, produces the balloons. Special Operations Command, according to budget documents.įinding other ways to track ground targets is a priority for the Pentagon as the Air Force retires airborne surveillance aircraft. The idea is for the technology to transition to the Army and U.S. “They can be trucks for any number of platforms, whether it be communication and datalink nodes, ISR, tracking air and missile threats, or even various weapons - and without the predictable orbits of satellites,” Karako said.ĭoD is also working to use drones equipped with “stratospheric payloads” along with balloons to track moving ground targets, provide communications and intercept electronic signals. The Pentagon is conducting demonstrations to evaluate how to incorporate high-altitude balloons and commercial satellites in an attack, known as the “kill chain.” DoD would not disclose details about the effort because it is classified.Īnother initiative aims to tie all the technology together. The Pentagon confirmed to POLITICO that the COLD STAR program has transitioned to the services. At the time, the Pentagon launched 25 surveillance balloons from South Dakota as part of a demonstration. The Covert Long-Dwell Stratospheric Architecture (COLD STAR), a project designed to locate drug traffickers, was widely reported in 2019. The Pentagon is quietly transitioning the balloon projects to the military services to collect data and transmit information to aircraft, POLITICO discovered in DoD budget justification documents. Hiding in plain sightįor years, DoD has conducted tests using high-altitude balloons and solar-powered drones to collect data, provide ground forces with communication and mitigate satellite problems. The teardrop-shaped balloons harvest complex data and navigate using AI algorithms. That’s one way the balloons could be useful - augmenting expensive satellites in tracking the missiles. The Russian government claimed to fire a hypersonic missile in an attack on Ukraine in March, marking its first use in combat. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Russia began ramping up hypersonic weapons development in response to the U.S. is the balloons may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.Ĭhina surprised the Pentagon in August by testing a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which narrowly missed its target by roughly two dozen miles. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is working on its own hypersonic weapons program, despite Wednesday’s failure of the latest test.Ī bright spot for the U.S. Over the past two years, the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to continue work on multiple efforts, according to budget documents. The Pentagon continues to invest in these projects because the military could use the balloons for various missions. “High or very high-altitude platforms have a lot of benefit for their endurance on station, maneuverability and also flexibility for multiple payloads,” said Tom Karako, senior fellow for the International Security Program and Missile Defense Project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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