Following an expanded run of experiments that sent U.S. Army high altitude balloons to Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East, a missile defense official said Wednesday that every option remains available as the service works to get more from the capability.

Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, director of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Transformation Integration Directorate, addressed the effort during a briefing at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting.

Mroszczyk said he was pushing for “a family of stratospheric systems” that would include high altitude balloons of different sizes and carry a range of payloads.

“What that enables us to do is provide space-like capabilities, really exploiting a transition point between what is normally considered the aerial layer and the space domain,” Mroszczyk said.

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That operational zone could offer persistence and broad coverage while delivering payloads associated with sensing, communications and launched effects. The Army also wants to use stratospheric winds that can move balloons toward desired locations.

Using balloons as shooters, as Ukraine has reportedly done, likely presents greater challenges than employing them as sensing platforms. Still, Mroszczyk made clear that potentially kinetic missions have not been ruled out.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re going to hold back from opportunities and options that would include something that could be kinetic in nature,” he said. “But right now, we’re doing experiments across the board with all types of different payloads.”

The stratosphere sits above the troposphere, the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. The Army uses the term for the region extending from roughly 60,000 to 100,000 feet, or 11 to 19 miles above Earth.

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Mroszczyk called that atmospheric band the “space littorals,” borrowing language the Navy uses for shallow waters near a coastline. The phrase reflects the Army’s view of the stratosphere as a transition zone between traditional aerial operations and space.

High altitude military balloons are not a new idea. A Chinese balloon entered U.S. airspace in 2023, setting off national security alarms and leading to the discovery of several earlier incursions that had gone undetected.

A 2019 Army University Press article also promoted balloons as military space operations became more prominent. Lt. Col. Anthony Tingle identified intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communications, missile warning, precision navigation and timing as possible missions.

“As the space domain becomes increasingly precarious, balloons offer resilience and redundancy against overhead capability shortfalls,” Tingle wrote. The Army’s present level of interest in the platforms and their potential, however, is unprecedented.

Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, commander of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said balloon systems have been deployed for testing and demonstrations in Europe, the Pacific and Morocco.

Col. Wade Germann, commander of the Army’s 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force, told Military Times that his unit was actively developing new operating concepts for the balloons. Those concepts include organizing the systems through a constellation approach.

“We work them in a format called constellation approach, where we’ll put a couple of the high, high-end, really exclusive ones up there with different payloads and systems on them,” Germann said.

The Army is also examining cheaper and highly expendable balloons that could be launched in large numbers. Germann said hundreds could be employed at once to create multiple dilemmas for an enemy.

Germann said the Army was working with industry to identify the most useful capabilities. That work includes determining suitable payloads, selecting the right lifting gas and establishing the best launch methodology.

During the coming year, Mroszczyk said, the Army plans to conduct multiple balloon experiments intended to determine the best methods to “exploit the stratosphere.”

Rafferty said watching the balloons operate had made him a “huge believer” in their potential. He also said each demonstration in the Pacific or Europe brings the systems additional support as the Army prepares to advance the program over the next year.

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