On Tuesday, southcentral Alaskans may have noticed an unusual sight in the sky: a large white and silver balloon, carrying an unidentified payload.
It wasn’t a repeat of 2023, when an unmanned Chinese balloon flew across much of the United States. This week’s balloon was part of an U.S. military exercise taking place in Alaska.
The exercise is being organized by U.S. Northern Command, which covers North America, and NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a unified Canadian-American group.
Maj. Jhanelle Haag, director of public affairs for the Alaskan Command and the Alaskan NORAD region, said the balloon was part of Arctic Edge 2025, taking place this month at sites across the state.
The exercise, pointed toward Russia, includes activities in Nome, Kotzebue, Cold Bay and other sites near the U.S.-Russian maritime border.
Some of the training includes practice in how to track and intercept incoming cruise missiles, according to information published by U.S. Northern Command, which covers North America.
This week’s balloon launch was from a South Dakota firm called Aerostar.
Russ Van Der Werff, vice president of stratospheric solutions for Aerostar, said in an interview his firm has been in the Alaska area several times, both for commercial flights and testing, “but you know, it never fails — we’re down here in South Dakota, and we fly lots of these every year, and we still get, about every two years, a news story from the local folks going, what is this? It catches the attention.”
Van Der Werff said Aerostar makes a variety of products, including high altitude balloons like the one tested this week in Alaska.
The company’s balloons are designed for missions that require eyes in the sky, but ones that can fly longer and higher than drones or manned aircraft.
Launching a satellite can be expensive and take time, he said, but a balloon can be brought into place quickly.
Balloons move at the orders of the wind, but Aerostar’s balloons are designed to change altitude, using outside air as ballast, which can change its altitude and stability. If the wind isn’t blowing the right way at a certain altitude, the balloon can rise or fall to a place where the wind is blowing the correct direction.
This spring, Aerostar tested a balloon that flew for 336 consecutive days over South Dakota, the longest flight ever by a controlled vehicle.
“We build a variety of different products, but within the high-altitude balloon space, we do equipment for commercial use, whether that’s disaster response, communication, environmental monitoring, scientific work, a lot of stuff with NASA, and then also the defense-related work, like we’re talking about here,” he said.
Neither Van Der Werff or military officials were willing to discuss details about what this week’s balloon was carrying, but typically, the company’s balloons are used for communication and “remote sensing,” putting cameras or other sensors above a particular target.
“It’s not all defense and those kinds of things,” he said, explaining that some balloons have been used to provide long-term aerial coverage of wildfires, and that the same balloon can track the spread of flames and provide a cellphone signal in remote areas.
“That’s a good example of how … a communications and sensing platform regionally positioned and persistently stationed in one location over multiple months can really connect, protect and save lives,” he said.
This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.