US Army seeks high-altitude ISR balloons with Starlink/MPU5 networking in Pacific

The US Army is pursuing COTS/mod-COTS high-altitude balloons (up to ~90k–120k ft class) with modular EO/IR and electronic sensing/SIGINT payloads, plus payload buses integrating Starlink and MPU5 radios. The novelty is the push to operationalize a persistent, balloon-based ISR and communications/EM-sensing networked layer (and potentially EW/strike support) as part of a regional kill-chain architecture in INDOPACOM.