The US is planning to launch balloons that are capable of providing high-altitude surveillance. It comes after the nation scrambled fighter jets to shoot down a Chinese balloon as it drifted through North American airspace last year.
Modern balloons can use artificial intelligence to predict and ride wind currents while operating at altitudes around 18 kilometres, or even higher, in Earth鈥檚 stratosphere for commercial and military purposes. Those heights make them hard to track and engage while also requiring expensive air-to-air missiles to shoot them down, says at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, a think tank in Washington DC.
Now, the US military has fast-tracked the development and deployment of such high-altitude surveillance balloons through its Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve programme, according to .
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, chief technology officer at the US Department of Defense, told the publication that the Army and Air Force are interested in deploying such balloons after seeing initial demonstrations by the programme.
These balloons are cheaper and more disposable than crewed aircraft, drones or satellites. They also offer a backup option in case an adversary disrupts the US military鈥檚 reliance on space satellites through jamming, spoofing or hacking.
鈥淭hey could also be used as a temporary substitute for a satellite capability for a limited area of interest, until overhead capability is restored,鈥� says Stutzriem. 鈥淲hile satellite constellations provide incredible capability, a high-altitude balloon positioned directly over an area of interest is maybe 10 times closer to the surface of the Earth, thereby providing significantly better resolution or detection sensitivity.鈥�
The push for balloons comes after the US shot down a Chinese balloon that drifted across North America in early 2023. US government officials described the wreckage as having included surveillance equipment, which the Chinese government denied, describing it as a weather balloon.
and over Taiwan around the time of its presidential elections in late 2023 and early 2024. China claims self-governing Taiwan as its own territory and has regularly deployed military aircraft and warships nearby.
Meanwhile, the US Army launched high-altitude balloons from and the during military exercises with US allies in the Pacific in June. The military service has also been looking for radar and communications sensors weighing less than 7 kilograms that can be carried by high-altitude balloons, .
an ongoing effort to develop and demonstrate a balloon-borne version of lidar, a sensor technology that uses laser pulses to create 3D digital maps of environments.
US military interest in balloons goes back to before the 2023 incident, says Stutzriem, who says 鈥渢he lack of capacity and capabilities to operate in a highly contested fight against China鈥� has 鈥渁ccelerated thinking in that direction鈥�.
鈥淗igh-altitude balloons fill some very important gaps in capability due to the rise of peer adversaries in this new era of great power competition,鈥� he says.
