Surveillance Balloons: An Indian Perspective
By
Udit Agrawal,
GM-Operations, DSI
W ith the ever growing threat of
terrorism the needs for a more
economic method of surveillance to
constantly monitor large areas of
concern keeps on growing.
Conventional surveillance systems,
both wired and wireless, become
uneconomical when the subject area is
a large open land mass where an
overall broad perspective view is
important. It is in such domains of
surveillance that aerial surveillance
becomes both necessary and
economical. This article evaluates the
feasibility of using Aerostats or
tethered balloons as platforms for
carrying surveillance cameras and
their usefulness for both military and
civil operations in an Indian
perspective.
Aerostats, also sometimes referred to as captive
balloons are tethered Lighter-than-Air (LTA)
platforms filled with either Helium or Hydrogen
which helps them stay aloft in air due to
buoyancy. Their relative cheapness and ease of
maintenance makes them an attractive option to
be considered as a platform for carrying
surveillance camera payloads high-up in the air
to obtain a broader perspective view of the target
area.
A more common term known to us is the
“airships” which are also LTA vehicles with the
difference that they are not tethered, and are
therefore controlled either manually or remotely
and propelled forward by different means. In
other words, Airships are simply the LTA
replacement for heavier-than-air (HTA) vehicles
like airplanes and helicopters. The third kind of
LTA platforms is the Hybrid Airships which are
mainly airships with a lifting body so that extra
aerodynamic lift is generated as the airship
propels itself through air.
Need for Aerostats in the present
scenario
As the threat of terrorism grows, a common
prevailing need of surveillance is to monitor
large areas of concern in the civil sector with a
general overall perspective rather than acquiring
pin-point detail. Consider the case of an
exhibition being held at Pragati Maidan Grounds
in New Delhi. Take for example the International
Trade Fair currently being held in Delhi, where
around 30 lakh people visited the 14 day long
fair. Now monitoring all these people solely
through surveillance cameras mounted on poles
and exhibition walls, becomes a very tedious an
uneconomical task. The relative efficiency still
remains low. The Delhi Police is using around
850 armed personnel along with 4 companies of
paramilitary forces, all aided by 50 CCTV
cameras installed at critical areas. Though this is
a fairly tight security installation, the level of
situational awareness remains low. For example,
if we have to track a trouble-maker running away
from a scene, owing to the large crowd of people,
the task is fairly difficult. The task however
becomes relatively easy if we have a broader
perspective view of the area using an aerially
mounted camera. Again, if for some reason, a
stampede occurs, situational awareness gained
through a broader perspective helps
tremendously by letting us know the areas where
people are running to, allowing the security
forces to know the specific points where they
should mobilize the security personnel to stop
the stampede.
The major advantage of aerial surveillance is to
provide a broad perspective view of the area
from air, which leads to increased situational
awareness and hence faster and more efficient
surveillance. The concept of broader perspective
becomes obvious in some situations like border
and coastal surveillance. The Indo-Pak border is
one of the longest high-tension border in the
world. The border stretching 3323km is
constantly under vigil and major sectors like the
Jammu sector in Kashmir and Gujarat sector
have already been fenced. However, despite the
fencing, the infiltration still continues. Any
attempt to have a round-the-clock constant video
surveillance through cameras mounted on poles
is unfeasible because of elaborate wiring and
network requirements. On the other hand,
cameras mounted on aerostats can cover a much
larger area making the whole idea feasible.
Aerostats can also be used as platforms for
terrestrial radars, which will constantly map the
surface and detect infiltration. Such Radars
mounted on tethered aerostats are already in use
along the southern US border along Mexico and
Caribbean. The program known as TARS
(Tethered Aerostat Radar System) is one of the
most successful LTA programs around the world
successfully and efficiently tracking cross-border
migration and drug traffickers.
Another military use of aerostats is during battles,
where an aerostat system can provide increased
situational awareness and battlefield knowledge
allowing them to properly plan their moves with
respect to their enemy. Such a system needs to
be cheap and take less time for deployment.
Some current examples are the REAP (Rapid
Elevated Aerostat Platform) used by US army in
Iraq and the RAID (Rapid Aerostat Initial
Development) used in Afghanistan. These
aerostats carry sensor suits and cameras
(day/night vision) that help enhance the mission
effectiveness by providing the army with
knowledge of enemy troop’s location and
strategy.
Besides surveillance, aerostats also provide a
very effective platform for telecommunication
antennas as well as broadband access points. The
elevated position of antennas can significantly
enhance their range and decrease the cost of
establishing a communications network. TCOM
LP (USA) already manufactures a series of
aerostats ranging from 15m to 71m sizes for
Telecommunication purposes for both the US
government and the US Navy.
Balloons and Aerial Surveillance: a
brief History
Long before fixed-wing heavier than air (HTA)
vehicles entered the world of aviation, balloons
were being used to get a view of the earth from
the sky. Since World War-I, when we still
struggled to make an airplane that could cross
the Atlantic, the German Hindenburg were flying
from Germany all the way to USA carrying
passengers. Aerostats like the French Caquot
balloons and German Drachen balloons) were
used in World War-I, as aerial observation posts,
which by most can be called as the first attempt
examples of Aerial Surveillance.
The use of balloons for various aerial
applications was fairly common in the early
twentieth century when the fixed-wing HTA
technology was still premature. However, as the
HTA technology developed, the interest in
balloons decreased causing a major stall in
balloon development. This stall lasted up until
the last quarter of the twentieth century when
their relatively cheap cost of operation and easy
deployment compared to the HTA counterparts
revived the interest in balloons.
The interest in aerostats re-developed in the late
1960s when their advantages over HTA vehicles
were realized. Another reason for the sudden
rebirth of interest in balloons is attributed to the
advent of computers. Contrary to what most
people may think, tethered-vehicle flight-
dynamics is much more complex than a regular
aircraft. In a paper written in the early twentieth
century by Bairstow et al, the complete six-
degree of freedom equations for balloon stability
were derived. The resulting equations were so
complex, that they were conceived unsolvable
unless simplified by various assumptions. The
engineers did however solve some simple cases,
and the solutions were presented in the form of
tables, which were anyhow very complicated to
be of any real use. Though, some attempts were
made to solve simplified cases, it was not until
the mid 70s that the first reasonable solutions for
such equations were obtained. In a historic paper
in that time by Delaurier (who also happens to be
the author’s mentor), the stability of tethered
vehicles was revisited with a new and more
logical approach and the problem solved using
the current computational methods available at
that time.
Once the advantages were realized, Aerostats
have been used for various military applications
like border security (TARS), enhancing
battlefield situational awareness, coastal
surveillance, telecommunications, aerial platform
for scientific instrument testing, aerial platform
for weather prediction instruments, terrestrial
mapping and for holding up large-array radio-
telescopes.
An Indian Initiative
Recently, the potential of aerostats in the civil
surveillance markets have been realized, and
several companies across the globe have taken
up initiatives to develop small aerostats for civil
surveillance purposes.
Certain key advantages that aerostats enjoy are:
1. Cheaper
2. Safe
3. Rapid deployment in rural or non-urban
areas allows for quick and inexpensive
establishment of communication
networks.
4. Easy to deploy and maintain.
5. Require minimum crew-training for
handling, making it easier to
incorporate into the already established
surveillance infrastructure.
6. Provides a broad perspective/view of
target area for video surveillance.
7. Aerostats can be used as a platform for
Radars, IR/optical sensors, and other
sensor equipments.
8. Can be used as cheap low-altitude
telecommunications relay platforms for
purposes like broadband
communication and wide area networks
(WAN).
9. Bigger more sophisticated aerostats
flying at an altitude of 15000m can be
used as cheap low-maintenance
geostationary satellites.
The aerostats are being made in USA, Israel and
Europe for application in the civil markets for
surveillance and telecommunication purposes.
All these aerostats however are very expensive
and their designs are not tailored for the Indian
market.
Unlike many countries, India’s extreme and
diversified tropical climate presents many
challenges to aerostat envelope design. The
extremely high May-June temperatures produce
highly turbulent weather at low altitudes, which
makes it essential to evaluate the stability of the
design in high turbulence. Besides, since the
Indian market is very price-conscious which
makes it apparent that cost-reduction becomes
imperative. For example, aerostat winches are
relatively expensive, and their use should be
eliminated wherever possible.
Certain key issues that will have to be kept in
mind while choosing an aerostat for the Indian
market:
 1. Cheap of civil and military surveillance. As India’s
2. Durability of envelope in tropical economy continues to grow, and as long as the
continental weather. threat of terrorism continues to prevail, it is only
3. Durability of envelope against the obvious that we should adopt this new
severe monsoons (extreme humidity). technology sooner. However, an Indian initiative
4. The tropical weather generates strong in this field is definitely required as the Indian
turbulent gusts during noon-time, and climate presents great challenges which can only
so the aerostat should be designed to be met if the design has been optimized for such
withstand such gusts. conditions.
5. Good stability in high-wind conditions
and the ability to not lose altitude in
such winds.
6. The balloon itself should be easy to
manage and replace when required.
7. The electronic equipment should be
weatherproof, and the gimbal system to
mount these electronics should be gyro-
stabilized.
8. It is very essential that the parts should
be easily accessible as unavailability of
spare parts can be a major setback.

In the military scenario, the Indian government

realized the potential of aerostat as a platform
and has sanctioned the purchase of Aerostat
mounted Radar Surveillance systems for the
Indian Air force. Two such Radars have been
placed in Gujarat and Punjab. But the IAF has
expressed the need for at least ten more such
systems.

Besides surveillance, aerostats also provide a

very good platform for mounting
telecommunication and broadband equipment.
Access points enclosed in a weather-proof box
can be hanged from a series of aerostats in a
mesh network topology providing an efficient
and economical city-wide broadband network.
Similarly, Television and radio transmitters can
be mounted on an aerostat and elevated to big
heights providing a cheap and efficient way of
providing these facilities in cities. This saves us
the cost of erecting expensive TV-towers, which
are still not as high as aerostats causing lower
reception. Cellular phone companies can also use
aerostats as platforms for mounting their
transmitting antennas instead of land-based
transmitters. Similarly various other applications
of aerostats can be thought of from
communication’s perspective.

Conclusion
With the current trend, it is apparent that
aerostats will soon become an indispensable part