Tethered aerostat systems are the very most important lighter-than-air vehicles in modern military applications. They have a number of advantages, such as wide coverage, long battery life, sustainable monitoring, low cost and so on. Besides, they have a better ability to survive than other aero craft in the sense of attack resistance and wind resistance. Tethered aerostat systems mainly perform uninterrupted ISR, communication relay and radar warning tasks. Some typical tethered balloon systems are also introduced, such as RAID, PGSS, PTDS, REAP, MARTS and JLENS. The stratosphere airships have potential value in military applications, but no countries have so far had mature engineering applications. In the near future, they will be the king of next generation of lighter-than-air craft in military applications.

lighter-than-air  /  tethered aerostat  /  stratosphere airships  /  military applications