The article may have answered your question if you read it. Kek.
The vehicles appear to be derivatives of Raven Aerostar's Thunderhead balloon system. The Thunderhead balloons are designed to be able to persist over an area of interest in order to carry out a wide variety of tasks. According to the company, common applications include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and acting as communications relays.
Additionally, the balloons can also serve roles in augmenting navigational systems. Raven Aerostar produced a brief video in July of 2020, seen below, explaining the Thunderhead’s capabilities, emphasizing its ability to linger at extremely high altitudes over contested airspace. The company underscored that by networking balloons together, they can provide months of persistent services over a very large area. In the military and intelligence sense, these can include advanced networking capabilities, as well as carrying advanced radar sensors, electronic intelligence gathering systems, electronic warfare packages, optical payloads, and much more. Due to their high altitude, they can remain out of reach of many traditional anti-air countermeasures.
And here's a video if that's too much for you to handle-
u/Condor specified "coverage of the lower 48, southern Canada and northern Mexico" before mentioning "cast iron coverage."
He mentioned the balloons and the article posted their capabilities. So the cast iron coverage is of the continental US, southern Canada, and northern Mexico.
Older article...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40638/what-we-know-about-the-high-tech-balloons-lingering-off-the-coasts-of-the-u-s-recently
Monkey Werx tracks and reports deployment of these as well.
You get 6 or 7 of these babies up in the right areas and you have coverage of the lower 48, southern Canada and northern Mexico.
Linked to sat networks, ground stations and airborne assets (manned and unmanned)... this is cast iron coverage.
The article may have answered your question if you read it. Kek.
The vehicles appear to be derivatives of Raven Aerostar's Thunderhead balloon system. The Thunderhead balloons are designed to be able to persist over an area of interest in order to carry out a wide variety of tasks. According to the company, common applications include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and acting as communications relays.
Additionally, the balloons can also serve roles in augmenting navigational systems. Raven Aerostar produced a brief video in July of 2020, seen below, explaining the Thunderhead’s capabilities, emphasizing its ability to linger at extremely high altitudes over contested airspace. The company underscored that by networking balloons together, they can provide months of persistent services over a very large area. In the military and intelligence sense, these can include advanced networking capabilities, as well as carrying advanced radar sensors, electronic intelligence gathering systems, electronic warfare packages, optical payloads, and much more. Due to their high altitude, they can remain out of reach of many traditional anti-air countermeasures.
And here's a video if that's too much for you to handle-
https://youtu.be/C0xXKrLCDd8
u/Condor specified "coverage of the lower 48, southern Canada and northern Mexico" before mentioning "cast iron coverage."
He mentioned the balloons and the article posted their capabilities. So the cast iron coverage is of the continental US, southern Canada, and northern Mexico.