PARIS :French companies are fine-tuning plans for stratospheric spy balloons and airships as competition heats up in the no man’s land between the atmosphere and outer space, tipped as the next potential zone of tensions between world powers.
Stratobus, owned by Thales Alenia Space, and Hemeria, a small firm created in 2019 to prevent sensitive technology leaving France during a wider merger, are the latest companies to focus on a belt known as Very High Altitude.
The growing importance of near-space captured global attention in 2023 when the United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon. Beijing insisted it served scientific purposes and strayed into U.S. airspace accidentally.
“It’s a space that’s not occupied. We have to be there and if we aren’t, others will be,” Stratobus head Yannick Combet said.
FRENCH COMPANIES TESTING HIGH-ALTITUDE VESSELS
The Stratobus airship is designed to re-establish communications after a disaster or sit with observation cameras above an area of sudden interest, like a hostage-taking.
“Notre-Dame (cathedral) would fit inside the balloon,” which is 142 metres long, Combet told the AJPAE media association. Thales is building test models and aims to be ready for use by 2031.
Hemeria’s smaller Balman balloon is designed to get into position quickly and can manoeuvre by changing altitude to exploit wind currents.
A second test flight is planned in coming weeks, with limited operations starting in 2027.
“We want to be reactive and capable of launching in a few hours… Today the minimum preparation time for such a balloon is two months,” said project manager Alexandre Hulin.
In June, France unveiled a new strategy calling for the ability to operate at Very High Altitudes between 20 km and 100 km (12.4 and 62 miles) and intercept opponents.
Weeks later, Paris said fighters had downed two balloons flying more than 20 km above the ground as a demonstration.
REGULATORY GREY ZONE
Officials say such vehicles can intervene over great distances and then stay over the same spot for months, complementing constantly-moving satellites.
However, they operate in a legal grey zone left over from the earliest days of air power and only now getting attention.
After World War One introduced aerial bombing, Paris peace negotiators granted every nation sovereignty over its airspace, abandoning efforts to make the skies as open as the high seas.
The right of each country to control its airspace was confirmed towards the end of World War Two.
Space evolved on opposite lines. A 1967 treaty declared outer space “free for exploration and use” but negotiators failed to establish an outer limit for the tapering atmosphere.
Now, the fuzzy boundary between Earth and space is emerging as a new front of competition.
“The more technology improves, the more we will fly higher and faster… and the more satellites will orbit lower,” Brigadier-General Alexis Rougier, France’s top official for Very High Altitudes, said last week.
“So a zone that was little used in the past will be used more and more,” he told the National Assembly defence committee.
