Spy Balloons Are the Slow and Silent Future of Surveillance

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[2022] F-22s Scrambled To Investigate A Mysterious High-Altitude Balloon Off The Coast Of Hawaii (Updated)

Raven Aerostar, a company that develops cutting-edge balloons that can remain relatively stationary for long periods and have an endurance exceeding 30 days, was operating a balloon to the southeast of Kauai, off Oahu, throughout the day on February 14 and in the week leading up to the event. This is the first time we have seen one of Raven Aerostar’s balloons near Hawaii.

The company works with the U.S. military to test balloons as sensor and communications relay platforms. You can read all about these advanced balloons that often get mistaken for UFOs in this past feature of ours on them. It’s unclear if those flights were related at all to the balloon that prompted the F-22 intercept, which appears to have been off the island chain’s northern-most main island, Kauai.

[2021] What We Know About The High-Altitude Balloons Recently Lingering Off America’s Coastlines

These high-altitude balloons are the property of Raven Aerostar, a division of Raven Industries, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In recent years, Raven Aerostar has been known for its collaboration with Google’s parent company Alphabet in Project Loon, an ambitious venture intended to extend Internet access to rural areas. The “Loon balloons” were designed by Raven Aerostar to fly at high altitude for extremely long durations. Project Loon announced it would shut down in January this year, despite making significant technical strides. Since then, Raven Aerostar has continued to develop its balloon technologies for other sectors, notably in the realm of intelligence and defense.

The vehicles appear to be derivatives of Raven Aerostar’s Thunderhead balloon system. The Thunderhead balloons are designed to be able to persist over an area of interest in order to carry out a wide variety of tasks. According to the company, common applications include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and acting as communications relays. Additionally, the balloons can also serve roles in augmenting navigational systems.

According to a recently published textbook titled “Stratospheric Balloons: Science and Commerce at the Edge of Space” by Manfred von Ehrenfried, the Thunderhead balloon system is steerable and can be flown individually or in constellations. The Thunderhead is a super-pressure balloon (SPB) with a gondola that contains a payload, flight system, and solar panels. The balloon itself is pumpkin-shaped and composed of polyethylene. The system has two configurations: the Thunderhead 200 SPB with a 64,000 cubic foot volume, or the 400 SPB with a 400,000 cubic foot volume. The 200 SPB has a maximum altitude of 50,000 to 60,000 feet, while the 400 SPB has a maximum altitude of up to 92,000 feet.