Ukraine's Ministry of Defence has officially codified Aerobavovna's AB12TC aerostat complex. The system is now listed in the MoD Supply Items Catalogue with a NATO Stock Number and added to both Brave1 Market and DOT-Chain Defence — Ukraine's two principal state defense procurement platforms.

The first purchase came a few hours after the listing went live.

A unit earned eBonuses through the Army of Drones.Bonus program — rewards issued to Defence Forces personnel for confirmed combat results against Russian forces. They used those bonuses to procure an AB12TC system through Brave1 Market. An aerostat, procured through a state catalogue, paid for with government-issued credits tied to confirmed combat results against Russian forces.

That sequence — from battlefield action to state procurement to delivered system — is not a metaphor. It is how procurement now works in Ukraine.

What codification means in practice

Before codification, procuring an aerostat required custom contracting, individual approvals, and a process that varied by unit and command. Codification standardizes the path: a unit identifies the system in the catalogue, initiates procurement through the standard procedure, and the Defence Procurement Agency handles the contract and payment. No improvisation required.

Listing on DOT-Chain Defence means any brigade can select the AB12TC independently. Listing on Brave1 Market opens a second channel specifically for eBonuses — credits earned by personnel under the Army of Drones.Bonus program and redeemable for defense equipment.

The system

AB12TC lifts up to 5.66 kg to 100–700 m altitude and holds it there for up to 72 hours continuously in field conditions. Supported payload classes include digital and analogue communications relays, FPV and UAV control relay, electronic warfare systems, and electro-optical surveillance. Fill: helium. Mode: tethered.

More than 50 complexes are currently deployed with units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Special Operations Forces, and National Guard — all outside the formal state procurement system. Codification changes that.

Two larger variants — 10 kg and 25 kg payload capacity — are in the codification pipeline.

Codification is a slow process. The NSN assignment, catalogue entry, and platform approvals took time. The first sale took hours.

That gap — years of process, hours of market response — says something about where demand sits. Units know what they need. The procurement infrastructure is catching up.

Aerobavovna designs and manufactures military-grade aerostat systems for elevated connectivity — communications relay, ELINT, and antenna elevation — deployed with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In early May 2026, the U.S. Army conducted a training exercise over the Baltic region: Micro-HABs launched from Sweden and landed in Latvia after 24–30 hours of flight at altitudes above 18,000 meters. The stated objective — validating sensors and communications relay under real operational conditions.

Over the past two years, exercises like this have been happening regularly, across different parts of the world.

• Vanguard 24 (September 2024) — microHABs tested CURTAIN: a continuous long-range signal relay through a chain of high-altitude balloons.
• Valiant Shield 2024 (Guam, June 2024) — Raven Aerostar Thunderhead balloons deployed under Indo-Pacific Command for surveillance and communications across the Pacific theater.
• Balikatan 2024 (Philippines, April–May 2024) — Urban Sky Microballoon tested by the U.S. Army's 1st Multi-Domain Task Force over the South China Sea.
• Arctic Edge 2025 (Alaska) — Raven Aerostar high-altitude platform launched in Arctic conditions, validating performance in extreme environments.
• UNITAS 2025 (Atlantic Ocean, September 2025) — World View Stratollite selected as exclusive high-altitude balloon provider for the world's longest-running multinational maritime exercise. Integrated with AI-driven ISR analytics and a resilient communications mesh.
• Indo-Pacific, 2026 — large-scale swarming balloon exercises planned.

And this is only what made it into open sources.

Armies are testing HAPS for communications and surveillance — consistently, regularly, across different conditions.

Starlink transformed battlefield communications in Ukraine. Tens of thousands of terminals, near-instant connectivity, decentralized command. It worked.

And then, in certain places and situations, it stopped working — or became a liability rather than an asset. Not because the technology failed. Because the battlefield placed conditions around it that the technology was never designed to handle.

That is the Starlink gap: not an indictment of satellite connectivity, but a recognition that it has limits — and that those limits tend to show up exactly where communications matter most.

Why Starlink Is Unavailable (The Short Version)

There are several reasons a unit may find itself without satellite connectivity, and they fall into roughly three categories.

Tactical exposure — thermal, not radio. Starlink terminals work fine at depth. The risk near the line of contact is not primarily about radio-frequency detection — locating an active terminal via RF intelligence is technically difficult. The real vulnerability is simpler: a working Starlink terminal generates significant heat. Any drone equipped with a thermal camera can identify it. In an environment saturated with reconnaissance UAVs, a hot terminal on the ground is a visible target. That is a different threat model than EW, but in many ways a more immediate one — and it is enough to make commanders weigh the value of connectivity against the exposure it creates.

State-level denial. The more documented threat to Starlink is not battlefield jamming but deliberate government action. Russia has not demonstrated a reliable capability to suppress Starlink across Ukrainian territory — the network has remained largely functional throughout the war. A clearer precedent came in January 2026, when Iranian authorities imposed a nationwide internet blackout during civil unrest. Using a combination of RF jamming, GPS spoofing, and equipment seizures — backed by criminal penalties of up to ten years for terminal possession — they degraded Starlink traffic to over 80% packet loss by the end of the first day. It became the longest nationwide internet shutdown ever recorded. The lesson is not that Starlink is easy to jam. The lesson is that a sufficiently motivated state, with the right combination of technical and legal tools, can make it functionally unavailable within its territory.

Regulatory and access restrictions. Starlink's availability is controlled by SpaceX's operational decisions, export licenses, and government agreements. The network is geofenced by country — a terminal authorized for Ukraine does not function in Russia. When Ukrainian forces crossed into Kursk Oblast in August 2024, they discovered this constraint in real time: units that had operated on Starlink connectivity for months found themselves without a link the moment they crossed the border. The communication gap was immediate and operationally significant — troops reported difficulty coordinating positions and distinguishing units in unfamiliar terrain without the network they had built their procedures around. Part of the solution came from elevated relay platforms deployed behind the line of contact, on the Ukrainian side, extending radio range across the border to units that had lost satellite access. The terminals themselves could not be moved forward. The connectivity could be.

Single-provider reliability. In August 2025, a global Starlink outage left two dozen U.S. Navy unmanned surface vessels drifting without control off the California coast for nearly an hour. The incident — revealed in internal Pentagon reports released in April 2026 — was not an edge case. Similar connectivity failures had disrupted Navy drone tests as early as April 2025, when the network struggled to handle the data load of multiple autonomous vehicles operating in formation. The disclosure triggered a debate in Congress about the military's "de facto monopoly" dependence on a single commercial provider for critical command-and-control links. The Pentagon's own conclusion: redundancy is not optional.

The specific reason varies by unit and sector. The outcome is consistent: there are conditions — tactical, regulatory, technical — under which satellite connectivity is unavailable or constrained, precisely at the edge where it would matter most. And when that happens, there is often nothing between the satellite and a short-range radio.

The Real Gap Is Architectural

Here is the problem stated precisely: modern military communications have two layers that work reasonably well, and a missing middle.

Satellite (high layer): Global coverage, high bandwidth, latency in the range of 20–60ms for LEO systems. Excellent for logistics, rear-area coordination, and long-haul data. Subject to EW degradation and exposure constraints in specific contested zones near the contact line.

Ground infrastructure (low layer): Short-range radios, mesh networks, fiber where it exists. Reliable inside their range envelope, but range-limited by terrain and earth's curvature. A soldier in a trench can talk to the next position. Coordinating across 40 kilometers of broken terrain is a different problem.

The missing middle: An elevated relay layer — something between the satellite and the ground — that extends radio range without the signature problems of a satellite terminal, without the range limitations of ground radio, and without requiring a pilot, fuel, or constant maintenance.

This is not a new concept. Militaries have understood the value of elevated communications for decades. What has changed is the cost, the deployment time, and the threat environment that now makes the missing middle layer tactically urgent.

What Fills the Gap

The solution space for elevated connectivity is narrow. You need something that can get a communications payload to altitude, hold it there persistently, survive wind and weather, and ideally not cost more than the payload it carries.

Drones can carry relay payloads, but their endurance is measured in hours, not days. Continuous coverage requires constant rotation of aircraft, crews, and logistics. In a sustained operation, this becomes expensive and operationally complex.

HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites) — stratospheric platforms operating at 18–22km — offer wide coverage but are still nascent technology, expensive to develop, and difficult to operate tactically.

Tethered aerostats occupy a specific and practical niche: a lighter-than-air platform, tethered to the ground, capable of lifting a communications payload to 1,000 meters of altitude and holding it there for days or weeks at a time. No fuel. No pilot. No rotation schedule. Power and data travel up the tether. The platform stays up.

At 1,000 meters of altitude, geometric line-of-sight extends approximately 130 kilometers to the horizon — but that is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Modern tactical data radios — Silvus, Persistent Systems, DTC, Harris, Motorola — typically achieve 30 to 80 kilometers of working range when transmitting real data payloads. On the ground, that range is further compressed by terrain, buildings, and vegetation. An aerostat does not change the radio's physics. What it does is remove the terrain masking: a payload elevated to altitude achieves its full specified range consistently, across broken ground, in all directions simultaneously. The practical result is a relay node that covers a brigade-sized sector from a single tether point — with no orbit, no uplink to space, and no latency penalty beyond the radio link itself.

Critically: the aerostat itself does not transmit to space. The RF signature profile is that of the payload radio, not a satellite uplink. The tactical exposure calculus is different.

The Middle Layer as Doctrine

There is also a scenario that belongs in any serious discussion of satellite dependency, even if it sits at the far end of the probability distribution. In a high-intensity conflict between peer adversaries, low Earth orbit itself becomes a target. Anti-satellite weapons — kinetic interceptors, directed energy, co-orbital systems — have been tested by Russia, China, and the United States. The destruction of even a modest number of satellites at LEO altitudes generates debris fields that travel at orbital velocity, colliding with other satellites and producing exponentially more debris. This cascade effect, known as the Kessler Syndrome, can render entire orbital shells unusable for decades. A conflict that begins with ASAT strikes on military communications constellations does not need to be a global nuclear exchange to produce an outcome where LEO-dependent infrastructure — including Starlink — is functionally gone for a generation. Elevated terrestrial platforms do not orbit. They are not affected by orbital debris. In a post-Kessler environment, they may be the only persistent connectivity layer that still works.

The Starlink gap is a symptom of a larger architectural problem: the assumption that satellite connectivity will be available, accessible, and reliable wherever it is needed. That assumption has not held in Ukraine's contested front-line zones. It did not hold for the U.S. Navy off California in August 2025. It is unlikely to hold in future high-intensity conflicts where electromagnetic warfare is a first-order capability on both sides — and where a single outage can leave dozens of autonomous systems without a command link.

Armies that build their communications architecture around a two-layer model — satellite for the rear, ground radio for the immediate tactical environment — are leaving a gap in the middle. Units operating at range, coordinating across terrain, or working in EW-contested zones fall into that gap.

Filling it requires persistent elevated platforms. Not as a replacement for Starlink — satellite connectivity remains essential for the rear and for certain tactical applications. But as an intermediate layer that extends range, reduces satellite dependency at the edge, and survives in the electromagnetic environment that modern warfare actually produces.

The technology exists. The platforms are deployable in minutes. The operational case is being proven in combat, now.

The question is whether force structure catches up to the architecture that the battlefield is demanding.

Aerobavovna designs and manufactures military-grade aerostat systems for elevated connectivity — communications relay, ELINT, and antenna elevation — deployed with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense has set an unusually specific goal for 2026: transfer all frontline logistics to unmanned ground vehicles and procure more than fifty thousand of them within the year. It is one of the largest single-year robotic procurement targets in military history — and it is already underway.

The vehicles themselves are not the hard part. The hard part is keeping them connected.

The Starlink Default

Walk up to almost any Ukrainian UGV operating in the field today and you will find the same thing mounted somewhere on the platform: a Starlink terminal. Estimates from Ukrainian operators and defense industry sources put the figure at roughly 99 percent of deployed ground robots. The reason is straightforward — Starlink works, it is available, and it is already in wide use across Ukrainian units. When the armed forces needed to push unmanned logistics vehicles into contested terrain, they reached for the same connectivity solution that had proven itself everywhere else.

The result is a de facto standard that nobody designed and nobody formally approved. Starlink became the default UGV communications layer by force of circumstance.

This created a capability. It also created a dependency — and a set of constraints that are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore as the fleet scales toward five-figure numbers.

Why the Starlink Default Doesn't Scale

The problems with a Starlink-dominant UGV communications architecture fall into three categories, each with different implications for Ukraine's partners and for the long-term viability of the model.

The regulatory barrier. Starlink's availability is governed by SpaceX's operational licenses, country-level agreements, and export controls. EU member states operate under a different regulatory environment. Several NATO allies have been unable to integrate Starlink terminals into their military procurement programs due to certification requirements, sovereignty concerns about dependence on a single American commercial provider, and specific national regulations around frequency allocation and terminal authorization. For European armies looking at UGV programs — and the interest is real, given what Ukraine has demonstrated — the Ukrainian model is not directly transferable. They cannot simply replicate the Starlink-on-every-robot approach. They need an alternative. Right now, credible alternatives for this specific application are thin.

The duration mismatch. This is the less-discussed constraint, and in many ways the more structurally difficult one. Drone relay systems — using a UAV to carry a communications payload above the terrain and extend radio range — are a reasonable interim solution for some tactical problems. They are not a workable solution for UGV logistics. The reason is simple: a ground vehicle running a logistics route can be in motion for six, eight, twelve hours at a stretch. The rotary-wing drones typically used for relay missions have endurance measured in twenty to forty minutes. Fixed-wing endurance is better but still measured in hours, not shifts. Maintaining continuous communications coverage over a multi-hour UGV mission via drone relay requires either a rotation schedule of aircraft that multiplies cost and complexity by an order of magnitude, or accepting gaps in coverage — which, for an unmanned vehicle operating in contested terrain without a human driver, is not a gap. It is a loss of control.

The drone relay workaround solves the terrain problem. It does not solve the endurance problem.

The control-link dependency. A UGV operating beyond line of sight requires a continuous, low-latency communications link for command and control. This is not a logistics optimization — it is a safety-critical function. When the link drops, the vehicle either stops, continues autonomously on its last instruction, or behaves in ways that were not intended. At scale, across fifty thousand vehicles operating in a contested electromagnetic environment, link reliability becomes a first-order operational requirement. Routing everything through a single commercial satellite constellation — one that has already experienced a global outage that left U.S. Navy unmanned surface vessels adrift — is an architecture that assumes the link will always be available. That assumption has been tested repeatedly, and it has not always held.

What the Problem Actually Requires

Stated precisely: a UGV communications architecture needs elevated relay coverage that is persistent across multi-hour mission windows, does not depend on a foreign commercial provider, and can be deployed close enough to the operating area to maintain low-latency command-and-control links.

"Elevated" is not optional. Ground-based radio range is constrained by terrain and earth's curvature. A vehicle operating several kilometers from its control node across broken ground cannot rely on surface-level propagation. The payload has to be at altitude.

"Persistent" is the operative word. Not elevated for twenty minutes while a drone is on station. Elevated continuously — for the duration of the mission, across the mission cycle, through weather, day and night. The communications layer cannot have a shorter operational lifespan than the vehicle it is supporting.

"Independent" matters for the export case. European customers will not build national UGV programs on top of connectivity infrastructure they cannot control, cannot certify under their own regulatory frameworks, and cannot operate in contested environments where a commercial provider's service agreement may not include battlefield continuity guarantees.

The Platform That Fits

Tethered aerostats do not require orbital infrastructure. They lift a communications payload — a tactical data radio, a mesh network node, whatever the mission requires — to several hundred meters of altitude, where it achieves full specified range across all directions simultaneously. Power and data travel through the tether. The platform holds position through wind and weather. It does not rotate. It does not need fuel. It does not need a crew on a six-hour shift cycle.

At 500 meters of altitude, a relay payload achieves geometric line-of-sight across a radius sufficient to cover a brigade-sized logistics sector. A UGV on a twelve-hour route stays within that coverage envelope for the full mission. When the next mission begins, the aerostat is still up.

This is not a theoretical capability. Aerostats were used during Ukraine's Kursk incursion to extend radio coverage to units that had lost Starlink access after crossing the border. The operational logic is identical: a platform that stays elevated regardless of what is happening at the satellite layer, the regulatory layer, or the electromagnetic layer.

For European armies, the case is more direct. An aerostat relay uses standard tactical radios — whatever the national standard happens to be. It does not require a commercial connectivity agreement with a foreign provider. It does not require regulatory approval for a satellite terminal. It requires helium, a tether, and a platform capable of carrying the payload. The platform can be domestic. The radio can be domestic. The data link stays within the national military network.

The Architecture Question

The fifty-thousand-unit procurement target is a statement about scale. At that scale, the communications infrastructure is not a secondary concern — it is the enabling constraint. You can build the vehicles. If you cannot keep them connected across multi-hour missions in a contested electromagnetic environment, you have a fleet of expensive objects that stop responding when the link drops.

The Ukrainian experience has produced a clear set of requirements: elevated, persistent, controllable, independent. Starlink answered the first requirement cheaply and immediately. The other three are harder to satisfy with satellite connectivity alone — and they become harder to ignore as the fleet grows.

Ground robots are changing military logistics. The connectivity architecture that supports them needs to be designed with the same rigor applied to the vehicles themselves.

The platforms capable of meeting that requirement already exist and are already operating in the field. The question is whether they get integrated into UGV programs before scale exposes the gaps, or after.

Aerobavovna designs and manufactures military-grade aerostat systems for elevated connectivity — communications relay, ELINT, and antenna elevation — deployed with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Fiction has understood this for a long time. Military observation balloons appear in the earliest war games. A Ukrainian studio set in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone put one at the center of its most critical tactical location. And an animated film imagined floating wind farms above a megacity years before any real prototype flew. Below are the most interesting examples — what each one does, and why it's worth knowing about.

01 — The Drachen Kite Balloon

Battlefield 1 · EA DICE · 2016 · Game

Battlefield 1 is set in WWI and gets the aerostat exactly right. The Drachen — the German kite balloon used for artillery observation — appears as a destructible, capturable tactical objective on several multiplayer maps. It flies tethered at altitude with an observer in the basket. When active, it allows the controlling team to call in accurate artillery strikes. When destroyed, that advantage disappears. Teams fight over it.

This is not a game abstraction. The Drachen was the defining aerostat of WWI — both sides used tethered observation balloons for exactly this purpose, and both sides sent fighter pilots on dedicated "balloon busting" missions to destroy them. The balloon observer had one of the most dangerous jobs in the war. DICE modeled the tactical logic faithfully: the aerostat is a force multiplier, not a weapon. You don't fight with it. You fight for it.

What makes it interesting: The most mechanically accurate depiction of aerostat tactical doctrine in any game. Capture the high ground. Hold the high ground. The balloon isn't a vehicle — it's a resource that changes what every other asset can do.

02 — The Balloon Tower

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl · GSC Game World (Kyiv) · 2024 · 🇺🇦 Game

GSC Game World is a Ukrainian studio. Their game is set in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone — a 30km radius of abandoned Soviet infrastructure, anomalous fields, and contested territory. The Balloon Tower is one of the game's most critical tactical locations: a tethered military aerostat adjacent to the Lesser Zone's main administrative building, serving as the operational headquarters of the Ward faction under Captain Zotov. The tower carries radar equipment and a device central to one of the game's main quest lines.

The choice to anchor a key story location to an aerostat is not random. In the Zone's logic, a tethered balloon at altitude gives the controlling faction something ground-based installations cannot: coverage over terrain that anomalies make impassable on foot. It sees without moving. In a landscape where the ground itself is dangerous, the aerostat's altitude is the only safe vantage point.

The Zone, of course, is a fictional version of a real place. And in the real Exclusion Zone — and in real conflict zones across Ukraine — military observation platforms at altitude serve exactly this function.

What makes it interesting: A Ukrainian studio put a tethered surveillance aerostat at the center of its most contested tactical location, in a game set on Ukrainian territory. The fiction and the present-day military reality are closer here than anywhere else on this list.

03 — Eden's Gate Surveillance Aerostats

Far Cry 5 · Ubisoft · 2018 · Game

Eden's Gate — the cult that controls Hope County in Far Cry 5 — uses tethered observation aerostats at outposts throughout their territory. The aerostats carry observers who can spot intruders and trigger reinforcement calls. They're not heavily armed. They don't need to be. At altitude, with line of sight over the surrounding terrain, a single observer with a radio is worth more than a dozen guards on the ground.

Ubisoft's design is tactically sound: destroying the aerostat (or eliminating the observer silently) before breaching an outpost removes the early warning system and makes the attack significantly easier. Players learn quickly to look up before moving in. The game quietly teaches the lesson that control of low airspace — even just a few dozen metres of it — changes the ground situation entirely.

What makes it interesting: The aerostat as force multiplier for a low-tech insurgent group. Eden's Gate doesn't need sophisticated sensors. A person at altitude with a radio is enough to make the whole facility harder to take.

04 — San Fransokyo Wind Aerostats

Big Hero 6 · Disney · 2014 · Film

In the background of San Fransokyo's skyline: dozens of tethered aerostats hovering at altitude above the city, each carrying a wind turbine. No tower. No foundation. No land footprint. A balloon, a tether, and a turbine running continuously in the stronger, more consistent winds that exist at altitude. Wind speed doubles at 300 metres compared to ground level. Available power increases by a factor of eight.

In the same year the film released, Altaeros Energies (MIT spinout) completed the first grid-connected deployment of its Buoyant Airborne Turbine at 300 metres altitude in Alaska — a helium aerostat carrying a wind turbine on a tether. The concept worked.

China has gone further. The S2000 Stratosphere Airborne Wind Energy System (SAWES) targets stratospheric altitude where winds are dramatically stronger and more consistent — accessible neither by conventional turbines nor by any other platform. The aerostat is the only viable solution at those altitudes. What Disney put in the San Fransokyo background as world-dressing is a real engineering program.

What makes it interesting: Every other entry on this list uses the aerostat for observation, communication, or control. Big Hero 6 uses it for energy generation — and the real world followed. The S2000 SAWES is the fiction made literal.

The Pattern

Across every entry on this list — from Battlefield 1's WWI kite balloon to Disney's floating wind farms — the tethered aerostat solves the same problem: how do you maintain useful presence at altitude, continuously, without the complexity and cost of powered flight?

The answer is always the same. You use buoyancy. You use a tether. You let the physics do the work. And you stay.

What changes across these examples is only the application: observation, denial of airspace, early warning, energy generation. The concept beneath all of them is identical.

Somewhere in that lineage sits Aerobavovna. A Ukrainian company, building tethered aerostat systems for Ukrainian forces, in an active war where the tactical logic of every entry on this list plays out daily — observation, coverage, contested airspace, the value of altitude held patiently. The aerostats on these pages are fictional. Ours are not. We hope that one day they'll make it into both categories.

The aerostat doesn't move. That's its entire value proposition.

Incident 01 Shot Down by Missiles 1981

"Fat Albert" and the Lobster Fishermen of Florida

📍 Cudjoe Key, Florida, USA · August 1981

The TARS aerostat over Cudjoe Key — the one locals nicknamed "Fat Albert." Photo: U.S. Customs and Border Protection

It started as a routine descent ahead of an approaching storm. But something went wrong — "Fat Albert," a 53-meter helium aerostat of the TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System) program, broke free from its tether and began drifting uncontrolled over the Florida Keys.

Four lobster fishermen on a 23-foot boat decided to help the Air Force and tried to lasso the runaway balloon. They succeeded — briefly. For a few seconds, the boat and its 175-horsepower engine were lifted into the air before the fishermen were thrown into the water near the Mud Keys.

To stop the runaway multi-million-dollar aerostat, the Air Force scrambled F-4 Phantom jets and shot it down with air-to-air missiles over the ocean.$4Min lossesF-4Phantom, missiles fired4fishermen survived

The TARS program wasn't shut down — the aerostat was replaced. "Fat Albert" kept watch over Cudjoe Key for over 30 more years and was only retired in 2019.

Incident 02 Uncontrolled Drift 1991

100 Miles Over the Everglades Swamps

📍 Cudjoe Key → Everglades National Park, Florida, USA · January 1991

"Fat Albert" over Florida. Photo: Ron Nehrig / Flickr

During routine maintenance, the aerostat broke free from its moorings and slipped out of the ground crew's control. The wind caught it and carried it toward mainland Florida.

Operators managed to activate the remote helium release valve. The aerostat began slowly losing altitude — but it had already drifted past the Florida Keys and out over the wetlands of Everglades National Park.

The aerostat traveled roughly 100 miles before settling into the Everglades swamp. The search operation cost $35,000 and took several days.~100 mitraveled uncontrolled$35Ksearch cost0casualties

The aerostat was found in the swamp — damaged, but with some equipment still intact. The incident highlighted a key advantage of aerostats even in emergencies: the system lands, it doesn't crash. Where a drone would have been destroyed, the aerostat simply came down.

Incident 03 Tether Failure 2015

JLENS: Three Hours of F-16s Chasing a Runaway Aerostat

📍 Aberdeen, Maryland → Pennsylvania, USA · October 28, 2015

Recovery of the JLENS aerostat after landing in Pennsylvania. Photo: NORAD / DVIDS (public domain)

On October 28, 2015, one of two aerostats in the JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System) program — a 240-foot helium giant worth hundreds of millions of dollars — broke free from its moorings at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The aerostat climbed to roughly 16,000 feet and began drifting north toward Pennsylvania. The military scrambled two F-16s from Langley Air Force Base. The interceptors shadowed the balloon for hours — but shooting it down over populated areas was out of the question.

The 6,700-foot tether dragged across the landscape, tearing down power lines and cutting electricity to around 20,000 homes.3 hrsof uncontrolled drift~100 mifrom launch point20,000homes lost power

The aerostat came down in trees near Anthony Township. Pennsylvania State Police deflated the envelope with shotgun rounds before military personnel recovered the sensitive equipment.

An investigation concluded the cause: a faulty pressure sensor in the tail fins caused loss of aerodynamic stability and ultimately snapped the tether. The $2.7 billion JLENS program was cancelled in 2016 — this incident was its final chapter.

Incident 04 Combat Conditions 2024

US Reconnaissance Aerostat ASRR Down in Syria

📍 Rmeilan, Hasakah Province, Syria · May 15, 2024

The US ASRR aerostat on the ground near Rmeilan, Hasakah. Photo captured by local residents and shared on social media. Source: Militarnyi

On May 15, 2024, a US military airborne surveillance and reconnaissance aerostat — an ASRR (Airspace and Surface Radar Reconnaissance) — came down near the town of Rmeilan in northeastern Syria. Local residents filmed the system on the ground and shared the footage on social media, from which regional outlets quickly picked it up.

The ASRR is built by Raytheon Intelligence and Space in partnership with Elta North America and Avantus Federal. The system carries radar for scanning both airspace and ground surfaces, along with airborne early warning radar with friend-or-foe identification capability.

Some outlets reported it was shot down. The Pentagon issued no official comment.ASRRsystem typeRaytheonmanufacturer0casualties (no crew aboard)

The incident again underscored one of the defining characteristics of aerostat systems: even when destroyed, there is no crew on board. The ground team keeps working. No pilot, no casualties.

Combat Experience · Aerobavovna

What Actually Happens to Aerostats in a Real War

Cases from the front line, 2022–2024. Not a single system was completely destroyed.

Friendly Fire · Small Arms

128 Bullet Holes — and the Aerostat Just Landed

Several times our aerostats fell victim to friendly fire — friendly units opened fire on an unidentified aerial object. In one of the most severe documented cases, the envelope received 128 punctures: each round passes through both sides, entry and exit, meaning there were 64 actual hits.

The result: the aerostat descended slowly. The payload survived. No casualties. The envelope was repaired or replaced — and the system returned to operations.

Where a drone is destroyed by a single bullet, an aerostat with 64 hits simply comes down.

Over time, these incidents have become far less frequent. Most frontline units now know what an aerostat looks like in the sky. Platform recognition is part of operational safety.

Friendly Fire · FPV Drone"General Chereshnya" vs. Its Own Aerostat

In one case, an aerostat was lost after being struck by an FPV drone. The event looked like an enemy attack — until the details emerged. The drone turned out to be Ukrainian: the "General Chereshnya" FPV strike drone had engaged its own aerostat.

The cause was a lack of coordination between units operating in the same area under conditions of heavy drone traffic. The aerostat was destroyed. The payload was a question of coordination and timely communication — not system design.

Enemy Strikes · Ground Equipment

Molniya and FPV Strikes on Ground Systems: Damaged, Never Destroyed

On several occasions the enemy struck directly at ground equipment — winches, control stations, vehicles. Both FPV drones and guided munitions of the Molniya type were used.

In every case: varying degrees of damage and temporary downtime. But not a single complex was completely destroyed — crews restored operations.

The enemy targets the ground station because hitting an aerostat in the air is harder. That, incidentally, is also an advantage.

Damaged AB12 complex — interior of the shelter after the strike

Same complex — exterior view showing thermal damage128punctures from 64 hits in one incident0systems completely destroyed0operator casualties

This week brought two airship headlines that look similar at first glance: both silver, both lighter than air, both positioned as the ISR or connectivity platforms of the future. But comparing them is a bit like comparing a moped and a Boeing 747 just because both have engines.

Sceye SE2: Stratospheric Internet for 12 Days

In March 2026, American startup Sceye completed a 12-day mission over Brazil. Their SE2 — an 82-meter solar-powered airship — held an altitude above 52,000 feet (roughly 16 km) while staying within one kilometer of its hover point the entire time. That's the stratosphere: above the clouds, above turbulence, above drones and most air defense systems.

The SE2 is a HAPS — a High-Altitude Platform System. Its mission isn't surveillance but connectivity. On board is the SceyeCELL antenna, which beams a broadband cellular signal hundreds of kilometers down to the ground. Think of it as a geostationary satellite, only 20 times closer to Earth and thousands of times cheaper to deploy. The aircraft runs on solar panels and lithium-sulfur batteries (425 Wh/kg — roughly twice the energy density of most commercial cells). Next up: a commercial test flight in Japan this summer with SoftBank, focused on backhaul connectivity.

Kelluu: Arctic Scout at One Kilometer

Finnish startup Kelluu this week closed a €15M Series A led by the NATO Innovation Fund — the fund's first investment in Finland. Kelluu is doing something fundamentally different: a small tactical airship for ISR, flying at 1–2 km altitude with 12-hour endurance (the next generation promises multi-day flights).

The platform is pitched for surveillance on NATO's eastern flank and in the Arctic — environments where quadcopters freeze and manned reconnaissance aircraft are too expensive for persistent patrol. Kelluu has participated in roughly 12 NATO exercises, about half of them in arctic conditions. Real-time data sharing with Palantir's Maven Smart System was confirmed during Exercise Steadfast Dart 26.

What's the Difference — and Why It Matters

Altitude isn't just a number. It's different physics, a different mission, and a different adversary.

Kelluu operates in the tactical space: below 2 km, visible to everything around it, vulnerable to small-arms fire and MANPADS — but cheap, mobile, and effective enough for border patrol or target designation. It's a tool for the field commander.

Sceye operates in the stratosphere, where there is no weather, no drones, and no short-range air defense. From there, a single aircraft can serve an area 500+ km across — simultaneously. It's a strategic-level tool: giving armies connectivity where there are no towers, no satellite coverage, and no possibility of laying cable.

Both platforms answer the same question — how do you stay airborne for a long time at low cost — but at different altitudes and for entirely different customers.

Relevance to Ukraine

Kelluu isn't suited for Ukraine, and the issue goes beyond flight endurance. The fundamental problem with small airships is physics: the smaller the platform, the worse it holds position in wind. Field conditions over open terrain regularly produce 30–60 km/h winds — and that's precisely when operations intensify and a small airship is forced to land or drift. The mechanics behind this are explained in detail here. Kelluu is well-suited for predictable Arctic NATO exercises. For a dynamic front line — it isn't.

Sceye is an entirely different conversation. If the SE2 could maintain stationkeeping at our latitudes — and stratospheric winds over Central Europe are significantly more complex than over tropical Brazil, where the test was conducted — it would be transformative for Ukrainian communications. A single aircraft over neutral airspace could provide secured broadband connectivity for the entire theater of operations: no ground infrastructure, beyond the reach of most strike systems, around the clock. That is the HAPS mission in a sentence: not to look down, but to keep the sky open for those below.

A new class of aerial platform is emerging: small, autonomous, lighter-than-air drones. Not the giant rigid airships of the 1930s — purpose-built, technology-dense machines that can stay aloft for hours, carry sensor payloads, and operate silently in environments where conventional drones struggle.

Three converging technologies are making this possible now: lightweight materials that make small envelopes structurally viable; hydrogen PEM fuel cells that matured post-2020, providing power and ballast management simultaneously; and new regulatory frameworks like the FAA's Part 108 rule (2025/2026) that created standardized BVLOS operating frameworks — replacing the previous system of per-flight waivers with something operators can actually build businesses around.

The core physics advantage is straightforward. A lighter-than-air drone uses buoyancy to stay aloft, not thrust. The same energy budget that powers a multirotor for 30 minutes keeps a small airship flying for 10 to 12 hours. Beyond endurance, they're quieter, more stable for sensitive payloads, safer in the event of power loss, and permitted to fly in airspace categories where other drones cannot operate.

Who's Building This

Kelluu (Finland) is the most operationally credible small airship in the field. Their 11–12 meter hydrogen-powered platform carries 5–6 kg, stays aloft 12 hours, and has completed five NATO deployments. Selected for NATO's DIANA innovation accelerator in 2024, tested in Arctic conditions down to -30°C, designed for GNSS-denied environments. They hold a patent on a variable-shape hull that adjusts geometry in flight — shorter and wider for lift, longer and narrower for speed. Maximum airspeed: 53 km/h.

HyLight (France) — the HyLighter carries up to 10 kg of sensors over 350 km in a single 10-hour flight. Hydrogen-powered. Cruise speed 35 km/h. Currently deployed for infrastructure inspection in Europe; no defense contracts disclosed.

Cloudline (South Africa) — 18.2m solar-powered autonomous airship, production-ready as of early 2026. Carries ~20 kg of payload, range 200–400 km at 40 km/h cruise, effectively unlimited endurance in daylight. Designed for logistics and monitoring in infrastructure-poor environments.

Hemeria (France) — a different scale entirely. An established French defense contractor with platforms carrying up to 250 kg, configured for EO/IR, radar, comms relay, and SIGINT/COMINT. Partner of France's DGA defense procurement agency. Not a "tiny blimp" — a medium airship with real defense pedigree, and a signal of where the technology needs to go for full battlefield relevance.

H-Aero (Germany) — 3 kg payload, 10 km/h wind tolerance. Useful for confined indoor inspection; limited outdoor applicability.

Roboloon (Germany) — 8m autonomous airship, 1.5 kg payload, 25–30 km/h max airspeed. Excellent close-in maneuverability for infrastructure inspection. Civilian only.

Windreiter (Germany) — spans racing airships to autonomous inspection platforms. Notable for their CERN deployment: an airship operating autonomously through radiation-filled underground caverns where no other platform could safely go.

The Size Problem

To understand what these platforms can and can't do, the full spectrum is instructive.

The Goodyear Blimp (75m) tops out at 117 km/h. China's AS700 "Xiangyun" manned airship (50m), which entered commercial operation in late 2025, reaches 100 km/h with a 700 km range. Both fly reliably in real weather. This isn't surprising — volume scales with the cube of linear dimensions while drag scales only with the square. Bigger is disproportionately better.

The current state of the art for small platforms:

The pattern is clear. Below roughly 15 meters, wind tolerance drops sharply and payload becomes marginal. The 8–12 meter platforms dominating current media coverage are operating near the lower boundary of what physics permits for outdoor autonomous missions.

The Defense Gap

For actual defense applications, two requirements collide with current small airship capabilities.

Wind. Field conditions routinely produce 30–60 km/h winds in open terrain. Kelluu is the only small airship that approaches this range, and at ~40 km/h effective operational wind it's still on the margin. HyLight's ~20–25 km/h effective limit is a gentle wind. Most of these platforms ground themselves precisely when field operations intensify.

Payload + power budget. Meaningful defense sensors — comms relay equipment, ELINT receivers, direction-finding antennas — start at 5–10 kg and draw continuous power. The two requirements compete directly: more payload requires a larger envelope, more drag, more propulsion, and less wind penetration. Most small airships trade payload for endurance in favorable conditions. When conditions worsen, the trade collapses.

The platforms that come closest to defense-viable are not "tiny." Cloudline's 20 kg payload comes on an 18-meter airship. Hemeria's defense-grade platforms are larger still. The physics assert themselves at every scale reduction.

This isn't a criticism of the companies working in this space — it's an engineering reality that will take years to fully resolve. The progress is genuine. But the gap between current small airship demonstrations and what a defense operator needs in the field today remains significant.

The Warfare Context

Ukraine has become the world's first drone war at scale, and the operational lesson is clear: persistent elevated presence, over time, in degraded conditions, shapes the information environment that everything else depends on.

Free-flying autonomous airships occupy a real niche as the technology matures — lower cost than fixed-wing UAVs, longer endurance than multirotors, quieter than either, operable over urban areas where other platforms cannot go. NATO's investment in Kelluu through DIANA signals the alliance recognizes this. The question is timing and conditions.

Where We Stand

At Aerobavovna, we've been deploying tethered aerostat systems to Ukrainian military units since before this space attracted widespread attention. We know from field experience what elevated connectivity means when communications fail, when drones are jammed, when the enemy controls the electromagnetic spectrum.

The emergence of autonomous free-flying airships is a development we follow with genuine interest. But for missions requiring operation above 40 km/h wind, payloads above 10 kg, and endurance measured in days — the current generation of free-flying small airships isn't there yet.

The new airship era is coming. For now, it complements rather than replaces platforms built for the conditions that actually exist on the battlefield.

Aerobavovna designs and manufactures tethered aerostat systems for elevated connectivity — communications relay, electronic intelligence, and antenna elevation for military operations. Deployed to Ukrainian Armed Forces, Special Operations Forces, Intelligence Services, Border Guard, and National Guard. Learn more →

The Rise of Tethered Aerial Platforms

Over the past three years, tethered aerial platforms have moved from niche research projects into active military and public safety procurement. The driver is straightforward: free-flying drones are limited by battery life. A multirotor that carries a useful payload — a communications radio, a surveillance camera, an EW sensor — can stay airborne for 20 to 40 minutes before it must land and recharge. For persistent operations, that is operationally unacceptable.

The tether solves the energy problem by connecting the aircraft to a ground power source via a cable, enabling flights measured in hours or days rather than minutes. In parallel, the tether provides a secure, jam-resistant data link — a significant advantage in contested electromagnetic environments where Wi-Fi and radio control links are actively jammed.

Two distinct technology families have emerged to fill this persistent-elevation role: tethered drones(multirotor or fixed-wing aircraft powered through the tether) and tethered aerostats (lighter-than-air envelopes lifted by helium and moored to a ground station). Both solve the endurance problem, but they do so with different physics — and those differences show up clearly in payload capacity, operating altitude, and operational cost.

Major Tethered Drone Manufacturers

The global tethered drone market is dominated by a handful of companies, each targeting a slightly different segment of the market.

Elistair (France) is the most widely deployed tethered drone manufacturer, with systems fielded in over 70 countries. Their flagship product, the Orion 2.2 TE, is an octorotor designed for persistent ISR and communications relay. It carries up to 5 kg of payload to 90 meters altitude and has completed a validated 50-hour continuous flight. The system is powered and data-linked through Elistair's Safe-T 2 ground station, which delivers up to 2,200 W through a micro-tether. The Orion is modular — it can carry a dual EO/IR camera block or a communications relay payload without changing the airframe.

Hoverfly Technologies (United States) focuses on military and public safety customers. Their Sentryplatform has been sold to the U.S. Army in quantity (over 500 units) primarily for use as a variable-height antenna — lifting tactical radios to 60 meters (200 ft) to dramatically extend the range of ground communications networks. The Sentry carries up to approximately 3.6 kg of payload and, like all tethered systems, can remain airborne indefinitely when connected to grid or generator power. Hoverfly raised a $20 M Series B in late 2025 and is expanding into airborne counter-UAS and electronic warfare payloads.

Fotokite (Switzerland / United States) takes a different approach. Their Sigma platform is designed for fast autonomous deployment by first responders — it launches, hovers, and lands with a single button press and requires no pilot. The Sigma reaches 45 meters altitude and can fly for 24 continuous hours connected to a vehicle's power supply. The airframe itself weighs 1.3 kg, and the primary payload is an integrated multi-sensor camera (thermal, wide-angle, and 16x optical zoom). Fotokite targets fire departments and emergency management agencies rather than military customers, though their defense-variant Gamma is under development.

Huless (Ukraine) is one of the few domestic Ukrainian manufacturers of tethered drone systems. Their Highline-T is designed specifically for military communications relay in GPS-denied, EW-contested environments. Power, control, and data are delivered through a 170-meter tether cable, with a 7-minute onboard battery providing emergency backup. The system lifts payloads of up to 5 kg to 150 meters altitude, delivers data throughput of up to 100 Mbps, and deploys in approximately 2.5 minutes. Notably, the Highline-T does not emit any radio signal — making it electromagnetically invisible to enemy detection — and operates under full GPS denial using optical stabilization. Wind resistance is rated to 10 m/s. The system includes a one-axis antenna suspension for relay equipment, an onboard course camera, and optional EO payloads. Huless raised over $1 million in early 2025 through private investors and a Brave1 defense cluster grant.

150 m500 m1,000 maltitude scaleGROUND STATION150 mTethered Drone↕ Max altitude: 150 m⚖ Payload: 3–5 kg⏱ Endurance: 4–50 h⚡ Needs continuous powerTethered Dronerotary-wing · electrically poweredWINCH STATIONAB-20up to 1,000 mTethered Aerostat↕ Max altitude: 1,000 m⚖ Payload: 6–25 kg⏱ Endurance: days–weeks⚡ No power (helium lift)Tethered Aerostatlighter-than-air · helium buoyancyFigure 1. Altitude comparison — tethered drone vs. tethered aerostat (proportional scale)

Side-by-Side Specification Comparison

* Unlimited endurance subject to ground power availability and maintenance cycles.

Where the Two Technologies Diverge

Payload capacity. Tethered multirotors are constrained by the physics of rotary-wing flight — lift is produced by spinning rotors, which consume power proportional to the weight they lift. Even with unlimited ground power through the tether, the most capable systems top out at 4–5 kg of useful payload. Aerostats generate lift through buoyancy: a 40 m³ helium envelope displaces roughly 44 kg of air, providing lift with no power consumption at all. That is why the AB40PSN carries 15 kg of payload, and the company's newest platform carries 25–30 kg — figures that would require a large, power-hungry multirotor to match.

Altitude. Current commercial tethered drones operate at 45–100 meters, constrained partly by tether weight and partly by power loss over longer cable runs. Aerostats can operate at up to 1,000 meters depending on tether length — an order of magnitude higher than most tethered multirotors. That altitude gap is not cosmetic: line-of-sight communications range scales with the square root of antenna height, so a payload at 1,000 m extends radio coverage dramatically further than the same payload at 90 m.

Endurance. Tethered drones connected to ground power achieve effectively unlimited flight time in theory, but in practice face limitations from motor wear, electronic stress, and the logistics of maintaining continuous power. Aerostats require no power to stay aloft — helium provides lift passively. An aerostat can remain on station for several days to several weeks depending on envelope size and helium retention rate.

Mobility and setup time. This is where tethered drones hold a genuine advantage. The Fotokite Sigma deploys autonomously in under a minute. Hoverfly's Sentry can be operational in a few minutes by a small crew. Small aerostats require inflation time — the AB12DMR is designed for rapid deployment and can be transported pre-inflated, taking approximately 7 minutes to station. Larger aerostats require 30+ minutes and a team of operators. For highly mobile tactical units that need to reposition frequently, the setup overhead of an aerostat is a real operational consideration.

Wind tolerance. Tethered drones are susceptible to wind load on their rotors and airframe. Most commercial systems are rated to around 40–50 km/h. Aerostats face wind drag on the envelope but with proper stabilization systems can operate in winds up to 90 km/h.

Cost Analysis

Cost is where the two technology families diverge most sharply over a full operational lifecycle — not just at point of purchase.

Acquisition cost. Entry-level tethered drone systems from established Western manufacturers (Elistair, Hoverfly) typically start at $20,000–$50,000 USD for the air vehicle and ground station, before payload integration. Full military-configured systems with EO/IR or comms relay payloads commonly exceed $80,000–$150,000. Military-grade aerostats from Aerobavovna start at approximately $20,000 USD for the smallest complex, with larger systems scaling by envelope volume and payload.

Operating cost. This is where the two platforms diverge most. Tethered drones are mechanically complex — spinning rotors accumulate wear hours, motors require scheduled replacement, and electronic speed controllers and power delivery systems must be maintained continuously. A system running 24/7 for 30 days accumulates 720 motor-hours. Aerostats have no moving parts in the lift system. The envelope, tether, and winch require periodic inspection, but there are no rotating components subject to fatigue failure. Helium top-off is the primary recurring cost.

Power consumption. Tethered drones draw continuous electrical power through the tether — the Elistair Safe-T 2 delivers up to 2,200 W to keep the Orion airborne. Running a generator at that load for 30 days consumes significant fuel and introduces supply chain dependency in the field. An aerostat at altitude consumes no power for lift. Any onboard power requirement covers only the payload electronics.

For short-duration missions measured in hours or a few days, the acquisition cost is the dominant factor and the two platforms are broadly comparable. For persistent operations lasting weeks — border monitoring, forward operating base protection, sustained communications relay — the total cost of ownership of an aerostat is substantially lower, primarily because it consumes no power for lift and has no rotating parts to replace.

Conclusion

Tethered drones and aerostats occupy overlapping but not identical niches. Tethered drones excel in rapid-deploy scenarios where a small team needs aerial awareness or a communications node within minutes, without pre-positioned helium supply. They are best suited for payloads under 5 kg at altitudes below 100 meters.

Aerostats become the more capable platform when the requirement is for heavier payloads, greater altitude (up to 1,000 m versus 45–100 m for tethered drones), multi-day endurance without a continuous power supply, and lower total operating cost over extended missions. In environments where electronic warfare is active and communications range is a limiting factor in operations, the physics of buoyancy-based flight offer advantages that rotor-based systems cannot yet match at comparable cost.

As battlefield requirements evolve, both technologies are likely to coexist — each filling a role the other cannot serve as efficiently.

When explaining aerostat-based RF infrastructure to clients, one concept comes up every time: how does radio horizon change with altitude?

The physics is straightforward — lift a relay higher and the line-of-sight footprint grows. But showing that relationship in a way that's quick to grasp has always been harder than it should be. We've accumulated a lot of real-world data on different systems and their reach from different altitudes, and turning that into something visual meant a lot of manual work.

So we built this calculator. Move the slider, see the horizon change, toggle the radio systems you're interested in.

You can try it - link below

Aerostat Radio Horizon Calculator

Aerostat Radio Horizon Calculator Interactive visualization of line-of-sight radio coverage from an Aerobavovna aerostat at altitudes between 100 m and 1,500 m, based on the radio horizon formula with atmospheric refraction (k=4/3). Aerostat Altitude 500m 100 m 400 m 750 m 1,100 m 1,500 m

Elevated connectivity — Aerobavovna BlogIurii Vysoven

A few things worth knowing before you dig in: all reach figures are measured using omnidirectional antennas. Directional antennas, terrain, weather conditions, and system-specific configurations will all shift the numbers — sometimes significantly. Think of these as solid baselines, not guarantees.

That's crazy that you can make such interactive visualisations in few ours using Claude.

Just read it at Defence-blog

https://defence-blog.com/ukrainian-company-brings-aerostats-back-to-modern-warfare/

At Aerobavovna, we recently conducted field tests to evaluate Persistent Systems MPU5 radios deployed on our aerostats — simulating a mobile air defence communication scenario. The goal: maintain stable, high-throughput network connectivity across moving units over large areas.

Three aerostats were positioned 30 km apart at 1,000 meters altitude, each equipped with MPU5 radios operating in S- and C-bands. Mobile teams on the ground tested network performance at 15 km, 30 km, and 50 km from the aerostats, while the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) monitored connectivity.

Results:

• Continuous network coverage over 13,000 km².

• Throughput remained stable at 2.5–6 Mbit/s, peaking at 9.3/8.4 Mbit/s at shorter distances.

• Stable mesh links between all three aerostats, even in foggy conditions.

This test proves that Aerobavovna aerostats combined with MPU5 radios can reliably provide large-scale, tactical communication coverage — a game-changer for mobile defence units and rapid deployment scenarios.

Recent Russian media reports describe tests of a stratospheric platform positioned as part of the HAPS (High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite)concept. The platform is claimed to lift up to 100 kg of payload to an altitude of 20 km and carry 5G communication equipment. According to these statements, the system is presented as a low-cost alternative to low Earth orbit satellite constellations, implicitly competing with Starlink.

A critical limitation largely ignored in these claims is the lack of effective station-keeping capability in this region. In the stratosphere over Ukraine and the European part of Russia, persistent west-to-east wind patterns dominate. As a result, such a platform can be launched, but it will inevitably drift eastward and cannot maintain a fixed position over a target area for extended periods, regardless of altitude control methods such as pneumatic ballast systems.

In practice, this restricts HAPS-based communication missions to short-duration operations, far from contested areas and without guaranteed coverage stability. This significantly limits the system’s usefulness for military applications, particularly as a replacement for satellite communications.

At the same time, the Ukrainian Defense Forces already make extensive use of tethered aerostats to provide tactical-level communications. These platforms can remain airborne for days or even weeks, delivering stable and predictable connectivity using proven radio systems from vendors such as Motorola, Silvus, Persistent systems and others.

While HAPS platforms are also used by the Ukrainian Defense Forces, they are not employed for 5G NTN communications and are not considered a substitute for satellite systems. Their real operational value is far more limited than suggested by recent Russian media narratives.