The Army Wants Balloons Over the Pacific
High-altitude balloons carrying drones, radars, and strike munitions could punch holes in China's A2/AD defenses—cheaply.
By The Defense Desk
The U.S. Army is betting on high-altitude balloons—not stealth jets or exquisite missiles—to crack China's anti-access/area-denial network across the Pacific. Operating above 60,000 feet, the platforms can see deep into rival territory while staying in international airspace, all at a fraction of satellite cost. [1]
Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, commander of the Army's 7th Infantry Division/Multi-Domain Command-Pacific, laid out the case at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference in Washington, D.C. HABs—high-altitude balloons—would carry "launched effects": attack drones and one-way munitions cheaper than precision missiles, available in greater numbers, and harder for adversaries to spot. [1]
Technological improvements now let HABs stay aloft for weeks or months and give operators more directional control. Harrington described them as part of "an ecosystem" of data-collecting assets spanning space, air, land, and sea—a backstop if satellites are degraded. [1][2]
MDC-Europe commander Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter described the ambition in starker terms: "200, 300 at a time," used for electromagnetic sensing, electronic attack, and air-launched effects. The Army's Multi-Domain Command-Europe has done dozens of HAB launches over the past year to examine the logistics of employing balloons and to test sensing and communications capabilities. Separately, at exercise Valiant Shield in Guam, soldiers tested a HAB aloft towing a long-endurance drone, and tested the same balloon-drone combo in Japan during Orient Shield in September. [1]
The appeal is structural: cheap, diffuse, persistent. A swarm of slow-moving platforms above the weather is a harder problem to solve than a single exquisite system—and it forces an adversary to spend accordingly.
Harrington's pitch to the Joint Force is temporal: create a window, not a win. "Maybe I don't necessarily need to sink a ship, but if I take out certain systems on that vessel, well, then it creates this temporal window of opportunity," he said. [1]