Army taking wide-open approach to high-altitude platforms: SMDC chief

WASHINGTON — The Army is throwing its doors wide open to possible applications and types of future high-altitude platforms — exploring balloons, drones and super-lightweight aircraft for missions from deep sensing to long range communications, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, head of Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), said today.

“I’ve always been a fan of balloons that can provide over the horizon support in a missile defense perspective. Some of you were able to remember the JLENS program, that was actually a really good capability that could provide over the horizon detection and fire control data to our systems,” Gainey told the Hudson Institute.

“Well, if you look at platforms and space capabilities, and it’s really not so much the platform, but it’s the package that you can put on the platform to allow the commanders to extend their mission command capabilities, to extend their over horizon visualization, and so doing it with a low cost balloon that you can proliferate is is exciting,” he added.

JLENS, short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor system, was an unmanned, helium-filled airship and capable of carrying a 7,000-pound radar to 10,000 feet. The program was canceled in 2017, two years after a JLENS aerostat escaped its tethers and floated for nearly 100 miles through Maryland and Pennsylvania, dangling cords that knocked out power lines for thousands of residents before drifting into some trees. But in recent months, Army officials have indicated renewed interest in the JLENS-like systems.

Andrew Evans, director of the Army ISR Task Force, speaking at the Farnborough Air Show on July 22 explained that the service has a program executive office for “persistent surveillance, tethered” solutions [read: balloons] for multi-domain ops.

“[W]e learned a ton in the global war on terrorism years about the value of tethered systems [for] force protection,” he said. “How do you take those lessons and apply them to something like use in the South China Sea, for example, where range is measured in the matter of 1,000s of miles, and not like five kilometers. So, we have teams of people looking at that to see what makes the most sense. We think there’s value in tethered systems of some sort, probably in the world of force protection. We’re just not sure where that will go exactly.”

Evans added that at the moment the Army is just “studying the problem” in order “to figure out what’s the best use of resources and the best application the system.”

However, Gainey stressed that SMDC, as the Army’s “proponent” for high-altitude platforms, is not just looking at balloons. The service is also exploring a wide range of platforms for a handful of key missions that require over-the-horizon operations.

“It may not be a balloon in the future, because when I say high-altitude platforms, it can be a drone type capability, fixed-wing type capability that can loiter for an extended time. So we’re keeping an open aperture as we work with industry to find out what’s the best capability out there,” he said.

According to an SMDC fact sheet on high-altitude platforms [PDF], the Army is looking for a wide range of capabilities to suit both its own needs and help support multi-domain operations across the joint force. In particular, the service has been exploring stratospheric craft to undertake intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions for the past couple of years.

“System platforms could carry all manner of technologies to include communications; imaging; assured positioning, navigation and timing; and other critical Army capabilities. Potential platforms include balloons, solar aircraft, and airships that could surge mission support, augment existing capabilities globally, and reconstitute lost assets in the air and space domains,” the fact sheet explains.

Gainey noted that as part of its exploratory efforts the Army is partnering with US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) to demonstrate new high-altitude capabilities found to have potential.

SMDC is working closely with “USASOC to test out what’s the right capability to actually eventually field as a program of record — or maybe not as a program of record; just field it and dispose of it and find something new and keep moving forward in a new paradigm of acquisition,” he said.

Gainey’s comments regarding a planned program of record are in contrast to earlier statements by a senior Army official. Brig. Gen. Ed Barker, the Army’s program executive officer for intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors, in December told reporters that the service would launch a new program of record in fiscal 2025 to develop a high-altitude platform for deep sensing — beginning with a planned set of requests for information (RFIs) to industry.

Last March, the Army issued an RFI under its High-Altitude Platform-Deep Sensing (HAP-DS) experimentation and demonstration project to survey available radar, electronic intelligence, and communications intelligence sensors small enough to be carried by high-altitude craft.

HAP-DS is the first “phase” of the service’s High-Altitude Extended-Range Long-Endurance Intelligence Observation System (HELIOS) development program, the RFI explained, which “will provide multiple sensing capabilities” for a “survivable” sensor suite to be carried on “different sized stratospheric platforms” for use in multi-domain operations. The HELIOS system suite is being designed to “allow stand-off operations to detect, locate, identify, and track critical targets for the ground commander,” the RFI added.

And on July 1, the service issued a follow-up HAP-DS RFI specifically asking vendors about tiny intelligence-gathering sensors, weighing no more than 15 lbs, that could be carried by high-altitude balloons and giving interested companies until July 22 to respond.

High-altitude platforms, however, are only one part of the Army’s broader, multi-pronged effort to equip troops with long-range sensors with an eye on a future fight with China, called the Multi-Domain Sensing System (MDSS).

MDSS, according to the boilerplate for both HAP-DS RFIs, is “a family of capabilities intended to address Army deep sensing requirements by providing airborne sensors that support Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), including Large Scale Ground Combat Operations (LSGCO), and fill sensing gaps for Indicators and Warnings, Long-Range Precision Fire (LRPF) targeting and Situational Understanding.

“MDSS requirements focus on six capability areas: Platforms; Sensors; Integrated Intelligence, Fires, Electronic Warfare, Cyber and Mission Command; Processing, Exploitations, and Dissemination (PED); Data Transport; and Cyber and Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) Resiliency,” the boilerplate explained.