analysis
The U.S. Army just renewed its tethered-aerostat surveillance program through 2031. It confirms the category is here to stay — and it draws a clean line between what legacy aerostats are for and what we are building.
analysis
A cheap drone or missile was enough to knock out a strategic radar aerostat — and it has now happened twice. The lesson isn't "build a tougher big aerostat" — it's the opposite.
haps
An open-source map of HAPS alerts over Russia, aggregated from open Russian sources.
aerostats
The question is not whether this works. It's who else has done it. Three Olympics. One World Cup. One European Championship. Two papal visits with crowds in the hundreds of thousands. G8 summits. COP21. State funerals with sitting presidents. **Rio de Janeiro, FIFA World Cup 2014.** Fan Fest
aerostats
Key takeaways TL;DR. Tethered aerostats have a proven emergency-response record in three roles: communications restoration, wide-area environmental monitoring, and persistent search-and-rescue. After Hurricane Katrina, a TCOM 17M at 305 m restored a 1,550 km² cellular umbrella for 2,000 subscribers, deployable in 3 hours.
News
Ukraine's Ministry of Defence has officially codified the AB12TC aerostat complex. The first purchase came in hours — paid for with eBonuses earned through confirmed combat results.
haps
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
Connectivity
Starlink transformed battlefield communications. And then, in certain places and situations, it stopped working. Here is why — and what fills the gap.
UGV
Ukraine plans to procure 50,000 unmanned ground vehicles in 2026. Nearly all of them run on Starlink. That is a capability. It is also a dependency — and one that European armies cannot replicate at all.
aerostats
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