Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) could invest in a fleet of spy balloons in a bid to boost surveillance and intelligence gathering.
The new equipment—similar to the Chinese spy balloons shot down over America last month—would be developed under Project Aether.
Last year, ministers signed a £100 million contract with a U.S. company to develop “unscrewed platforms for stratospheric communications” as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance purposes.
The surveillance balloons fly between 50,000 and 80,000 feet, meaning that they are less likely to be battered by turbulence.
Writing in the latest edition of Desider, Ross Corbett, Project Aether military requirements manager, said: “Successfully exploiting this space could mean huge potential benefits but there’s still a lot left for us to learn about how to operate there, especially for long periods of time.
“Our working theory is that the turbulence we’ve all experienced in aeroplanes cruising at 40,000ft doesn’t exist to the same degree in the stratosphere.
Test Flights Carried Out
Corbett said the ministry was looking at both “balloon-based” and “fixed-wing systems.”He said it would be better to have “a range of capabilities” that included “platforms that loiter in the stratosphere for longer periods of time” and others that can stay there “for shorter fixed durations instead.”
He added that the project was currently running test flights with prototypes from three industry partners: Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), Voltitude, and Airbus.
Corbett added: “I am absolutely convinced that Project Aether as a capability, and as a package, will give Defence that extra operational initiative to be more globally aware, more globally potent, more globally effective, both within the UK Armed Forces and alongside our NATO allies.
“I really think the future capability of these platforms could be an important element in winning the battles to come.”
In response to queries on the balloons from The Epoch Times, an MoD spokesman said, “We regularly keep our capabilities under review and while assessment activity is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
SNC was awarded the British government contract on “stratospheric unscrewed platforms” last year.
Since then, the company has successfully tested a balloon that took off from in the southwestern state of Arizona, before drifting northeast across cities in a number of other states.
According to a press release issued on SNC’s website at the time, the company was “delighted” with the results.
The press release added: “SNC has considerable experience with these ‘lighter than air’ high-altitude platforms and collection systems. We are confident that our HAB both meets and exceeds the mission requirements of our MOD customer, as well as other SNC partners around the world.”
The balloon is to embark on a 60-day flight in a trial this year, according to SNC.
Security Review
Last month, the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced he was launching a security review following the discovery of a number of Chinese spy balloons over the Americas.The announcement came after the United States sanctioned six Chinese entities involved in aiding Beijing’s surveillance balloon programs.
“The UK and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security,” Wallace said.
“This development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse.”
The U.S. and Canadian military shot down one Chinese spy balloon, and three other unidentified flying objects in North American airspace within nine days at the beginning of February.
Another Chinese balloon was found flying over Latin America on Feb. 3.
On Feb. 4, U.S. military jets shot down a 200-foot-tall high-altitude surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean after the balloon traversed from Alaska to across Canada and the United States.
A senior defence official told reporters that the balloon had flown near “many potential sensitive sites.”
U.S. President Joe Biden said he had considered shooting the balloon down earlier but decided against the move over fears of harming civilians on the ground.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has acknowledged that both that balloons over the United States and the one in Latin America were from China but insisted they were civilian weather balloons.
At the time, a U.S. State Department official told The Epoch Times that high-resolution imagery showed that equipment on the first balloon was “clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons.”
