在美军高空气球在欧洲、太平洋和中东部署的实验规模扩大之后，一名导弹防御官员周三表示，随着该军种寻求充分利用这一能力，所有选项都在考虑之列。
On the heels of an experimentation ramp-up that has seen the U.S. Army’s high-altitude balloons deployed to Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East, a missile defense official said Wednesday that all options were on the table as the service seeks to make the most of the capability.
美国陆军空间与导弹防御司令部转型整合局——空间优势（TID-SS）局长约瑟夫·Mroszczyk上校周三在美国陆军协会年会上的记者简报会上表示，他正在推动建立“一个平流层系统家族”，其中包括各种尺寸的高空气球。
Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, director of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Transformation Integration Directorate – Space Superiority (TID-SS), said in a briefing with reporters Wednesday at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting that he was pushing for “a family of stratospheric systems” that included high-altitude balloons of all sizes.
“这使我们能够提供类似太空的能力，真正利用通常被认为是航空层和太空领域之间的过渡点，”Mroszczyk说。
“What that enables us to do is provide space-like capabilities, really exploiting a transition point between what is normally considered the aerial layer and the space domain,” Mroszczyk said.
“这种作战空间使得在某个区域能够实现一定的持续性和广泛覆盖，在此区域你可以通过有效载荷提供类似太空的能力，同时还能利用平流层提供的深度进入优势……能够顺风而行，利用已经在推动你前往目标地点的风流，从而既能获得发射效应，也能获得其他类型的有效载荷，用于感知、通信以及扩展你的发射效应组合。”Mroszczyk表示，虽然使用气球作为发射平台——正如乌克兰据称所做的那样——可能比用于感知带来更大的一系列挑战，但他强调没有任何选项被排除在外。
“That operational space allows some persistence and broad coverage in an area where you can deliver space-like capabilities in terms of payloads, but then also take advantage of the deep access that you get from the stratosphere … being able to go and take advantage of winds that are pushing you where you want to go already, to be able to get either launched effects or other types of payloads for sensing and communication and extension of your launched effects portfolio.”While using balloons as shooters, as Ukraine has reportedly done, likely presents a bigger set of challenges than using them for sensing, Mroszczyk said nothing was off the table.
“我不会说我们会回避可能包含动能性质的机遇和选择，”他说。“但目前，我们正在对各种不同载荷进行全方位的实验。”平流层是地球大气层中位于对流层之上的层。陆军使用该术语来指代地球上方约6万至10万英尺，即11至19英里的范围。周三，Mroszczyk引用了“空间近岸”这一术语来描述这一带，参考了海军用于描述靠近海岸线的浅水区的表述。
“I wouldn’t say that we’re going to hold back from opportunities and options that would include something that could be kinetic in nature,” he said. “But right now, we’re doing experiments across the board with all types of different payloads.”The stratosphere is the layer of Earth’s atmosphere above the lowest layer, the troposphere. The Army uses the term to refer to the stretch from about 60,000 to 100,000 feet, or 11 to 19 miles above Earth. On Wednesday, Mroszczyk invoked the term “space littorals” to describe the band, referencing the Navy’s language for the shallow waters nearest the coast.
高空气球并非新兴的军事概念。众所周知，一只中国气球在2023年漂入了美国领空，引发了国家安全警报，并导致发现了若干之前未被探测到的入侵事件。
High-altitude balloons are not a new military concept. Famously, a Chinese balloon drifted into U.S. airspace in 2023, raising national security alarms and leading to the discovery of several previous incursions that had gone undetected.
2019年，陆军大学出版社的一篇文章赞扬了军用气球在太空作战日益受到关注时的潜力。
A 2019 Army University Press article extolled the potential of military balloons as space operations came to the forefront.
“直觉上，如此高度的气球可以执行诸如情报、监视和侦察、通信、导弹预警以及精确导航和定时等任务，”陆军上校安东尼·廷格尔写道。“随着太空领域日益充满风险，气球能够在上方能力不足时提供韧性和冗余。”不过，陆军目前对气球及其潜力的兴趣是前所未有的。
“Intuitively, balloons at such heights could perform missions such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, communications, missile warning, and precision navigation and timing,” Lt. Col. Anthony Tingle wrote. “As the space domain becomes increasingly precarious, balloons offer resilience and redundancy against overhead capability shortfalls.”The Army’s current interest in the balloons and their potential is unprecedented, though.
在周三的简报会上，美国陆军太空和导弹防御司令部司令、陆军中将约翰·拉弗蒂表示，这些系统已被部署到欧洲、太平洋和摩洛哥进行测试和演示。
In the briefing on Wednesday, the commander of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, said the systems had been deployed for testing and demonstration to Europe, the Pacific and Morocco.
《突防新闻》进一步报道了本周气球在中东的存在，援引官员的话称，在原计划在太平洋进行更大规模演示被取消后，少量由几十架无人机组成的小型编队被部署到该地区进行测试。
Breaking Defense reported further about the balloons’ presence in the Middle East this week, citing officials who said small swarms of a few dozen drones were deployed in the region for testing after a plan to do a much larger demonstration in the Pacific was scrapped.
陆军第3多域特遣队司令、上校韦德·格尔曼（Wade Germann）本周早些时候接受《军事时报》采访时表示，他的部队正在积极研发气球的新作战概念。
The commander of the Army’s 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force, Col. Wade Germann, told Military Times earlier this week that his unit was actively developing new operating concepts for the balloons.
“我们采用一种称为星座方法的形式，即将几架高端、高性能、真正独特的气球放置在高空，每架气球搭载不同的有效载荷和系统，”格尔曼说。“随后，我们将在另一个场景中进行工作，届时我们将研究廉价、可大量消耗、快速部署的气球——也就是说，可以一次性放飞数百架，从而在敌方制造多重困境。”格尔曼表示，陆军正与工业界合作，以开发最有用的能力，不仅确定合适的有效载荷，还要确定合适的升力气体和发射方法。
“We work them in a format called constellation approach, where we’ll put a couple of the high, high-end, really exclusive ones up there with different payloads and systems on them,” Germann said. “And then we’ll work in a different venue where we’ll look at cheap, very expendable, rapidly employable, in that you can put up hundreds at a time and create multiple dilemmas for the enemy on.”Germann said the Army was working with industry to develop the most useful capabilities and determine not only the right payloads, but the right lifting gas and launch methodology.
“这就是我们与野外合作伙伴协作的方式，以获取实时反馈并推动这些项目落地，”他说。
“That’s the way that we’re working with our partners out in the field to gain that real-time feedback and make these things happen,” he said.
莫罗斯奇克（Mroszczyk）表示，在未来一年内，陆军计划开展多次气球实验，旨在确定“利用平流层”的最佳方式。拉弗蒂（Rafferty）表示，看到气球实际行动后，他成为了其潜力的“大力支持者”。
Over the course of the coming year, Mroszczyk said, the Army planned to conduct multiple balloon experiments aimed at determining the best ways to “exploit the stratosphere.”Rafferty said seeing the balloons in action had turned him into a “huge believer” in their potential.
“每次在太平洋或欧洲进行演示时，气球数量都在增加，获得的支持也越来越多，”他说。“因此，我认为我们对明年充满期待，期待我们将如何推进该计划。”
“Every time they are demonstrated in the Pacific or in Europe, there are more and more; they gain more and more support,” he said. “So we’re, I think, really excited about this next year, about what we’re going to do to further the program.”