Pentagon to launch high-altitude surveillance balloons from South Dakota
Balloons to drift across Midwest, including Minnesota, ending its mission in Illinois
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By Sarah Mearhoff, Forum News Service
The Pentagon is launching 25 high-altitude, wide-area surveillance balloons from rural South Dakota as part of a test program commissioned by a government agency to track drug trafficking.
The Guardian on Friday, Aug. 2, first reported the test surveillance program, as evidenced by documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Per the documents, the balloons will be launched from Baltic, approximately 20 miles north of the state's largest city of Sioux Falls. The Guardian reports that the balloons will drift 250 miles over five other Midwestern states, including Minnesota, before concluding in Illinois.
According to The Guardian, the test is being commissioned by the U.S. Southern Command, also known as Southcom, as part of an effort to track drug trafficking. Southcom oversees intelligence and security operations, as well as disaster response in the Caribbean and Central and South America.
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The Sierra Nevada Corporation, a Nevada-based aerospace company which supplies Southcom with aircrafts, filed the documents for the test with the FCC. According to Sierra Nevada's filing, the test surveillance program is intended to "provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats."
The balloons will fly at a maximum altitude of 65,000 feet, well above that of a commercial airplane. According to The Guardian, the balloons' radars are able to track individual vehicles' traffic day or night, rain or shine. The FCC documents show that the program is authorized from July 12 through Sept. 1.
This isn't Southcom and Sierra Nevada's first go at a airborne surveillance program. Southcom's commander Admiral Craig Faller testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee in February that a surveillance program conducted via light aircraft over Mexico, Colombia, Panama and the Caribbean sea last year.
Faller said, “While improving efficiency, we still only successfully interdicted about six percent of known drug movements (in 2018).”
South Dakota U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican who sits on the Senate Armed Services committee, was present at that February 7 hearing, per a video recording and stenographic transcript published by the committee.
This is a developing story.
This story was originally published by the Forum News Service.
