Old balloons, new drones: U.S. Army tests both in Japan

U.S. Army soldiers launched micro-High-Altitude Balloons at the Yausubetsu Training Area on Hokkaido, Japan, on Sept. 18, including one that carried an APOLLO-R drone. Observers from Japan, the United Kingdom and Australia watched the demonstration during Exercise Orient Shield 26, according to the title of the U.S. Army’s video.

Balloons are often seen as relics of earlier wars. The Hokkaido launch is at least the third U.S. Army exercise this year to feature balloon-carried drones. Earlier this year, during African Lion 26, the U.S. Army launched drone-carrying micro balloons from a vessel off Morocco, Naval News reported. On June 24, soldiers from the 3d Multi-Domain Task Force launched an Apollo R on an Urban Sky balloon at Orote Airfield, Naval Station Guam, during Valiant Shield 2026. That test looked at sensing from the stratosphere and at extending joint communications networks.

A micro-High-Altitude Balloon is a small balloon that lifts equipment high into the atmosphere. In the Hokkaido photos, one rises with the APOLLO-R attached. A second U.S. Army video shows soldiers recovering the balloons on Sept. 19.

Icarus, a Los Angeles aerospace company, builds the APOLLO-R. The Defence Blog reported in June that it is an autonomous, solar-powered aircraft designed to fly indefinitely at altitudes above 18,300 meters (60,000 feet). The balloon does the initial lifting. TWZ reported that the U.S. Army has supported the aircraft’s development through its xTech innovation challenge.

Russ Van Der Werff, vice president of stratospheric solutions at balloon maker Aerostar, has argued that balloons offer survivability advantages over aircraft such as the Global Hawk and the Reaper.

Orient Shield 26 is the 41st edition of the annual exercise and the largest so far, with about 3,700 personnel from U.S. Army Pacific, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and the Australian Army. The opening ceremony took place Sept. 17 at Camp Higashi-Chitose.

The U.S. Army has not said how high the balloon climbed, whether the APOLLO-R separated and flew on its own, or how many balloons were launched. The captions do not name the balloon’s maker or the unit that ran the launch, and they do not say what the drone collected or relayed.

Ukraine offers a wartime example with a different platform, the tethered aerostat, which stays anchored to the ground while it holds equipment aloft. The Defence Blog reported in March that Ukrainian company Aerobavovna had delivered specialized aerostats to Ukrainian forces for surveillance, communications relay and electronic monitoring linked to drone operations.

“To control a drone at long distances and at low altitude, the relay needs to be raised into the sky,” said Aerobavovna CEO Yuriy Vysoven.

Vysoven said another drone can do that job, but its time in the air is limited, while an aerostat can operate around the clock. He expects the market to move toward larger numbers of smaller, cheaper platforms instead of single systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars, because large radar aerostats placed near the front become targets.

The Defender reported in May that the company’s AB12TC aerostat can lift equipment to altitudes of 100 to 700 meters (330 to 2,300 feet) and operate for up to 72 hours in field conditions. According to company data cited in that report, more than 50 aerostat systems have been delivered to units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Special Operations Forces and National Guard. Vysoven said in March that Aerobavovna was preparing its first export sale, to a customer in the European Union.