The article states the balloons are often used in "intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and acting as communications relays and also serve roles in augmenting navigational systems."
If you'd read and understood the article, and/or watched the video I linked to, you would know these balloons contain advanced sensors of all kinds. With 6 or 7 balloons in the right location, those advanced sensors are able to scan the entire continental United States as well as southern Canada and northern Mexico.
What exactly are you unable to wrap your head around here? And you realize this is simply information sharing about balloons Monkey Werx tracks, right?
A claim was made that the balloons are a part of "cast iron coverage." Of what? What is being tracked?
The "coverage" part of "cast iron coverage" refers to a coverage area, which was defined as "the lower 48, southern Canada and northern Mexico."
The adjective "cast iron" refers to how solid and redundant that coverage is. In other words, because these balloons are "linked to satellite networks, ground stations and airborne assets," it's very hard to stop the download of any information acquired by these balloons.
What is being tracked? Anything the people operating the balloons want to as long as the capability exists. Vehicle and people movement could be easily tracked, as an example.
From the article -
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.
The cameras on these balloons are able to take photos with a quality of five centimeters per pixel, which means they can take a picture of your smart phone screen from 60,000 feet in the air.
Here's the original comment you linked to-
The article states the balloons are often used in "intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions and acting as communications relays and also serve roles in augmenting navigational systems."
If you'd read and understood the article, and/or watched the video I linked to, you would know these balloons contain advanced sensors of all kinds. With 6 or 7 balloons in the right location, those advanced sensors are able to scan the entire continental United States as well as southern Canada and northern Mexico.
What exactly are you unable to wrap your head around here? And you realize this is simply information sharing about balloons Monkey Werx tracks, right?
The "coverage" part of "cast iron coverage" refers to a coverage area, which was defined as "the lower 48, southern Canada and northern Mexico."
The adjective "cast iron" refers to how solid and redundant that coverage is. In other words, because these balloons are "linked to satellite networks, ground stations and airborne assets," it's very hard to stop the download of any information acquired by these balloons.
What is being tracked? Anything the people operating the balloons want to as long as the capability exists. Vehicle and people movement could be easily tracked, as an example.
From the article -
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.
The cameras on these balloons are able to take photos with a quality of five centimeters per pixel, which means they can take a picture of your smart phone screen from 60,000 feet in the air.