High-Altitude Balloon Research Gets Millions From Pentagon
The program started out with the purpose of looking for drug smugglers and their locations...now it has shifted over to the military as a means to monitor weapons programs and other proceedings by the United States to be used to gather information about China and Russia.The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.
"One of the main benefits of utilizing balloons as a method to gather intelligence instead of powered aircraft is the total cost. For balloons to do these types of sorties over several weeks or months sports a price tag to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars versus a cost of millions to do the same thing with satellites or powered aircraft."
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