On the border between airspace, where planes circulate under the control of national authorities, and exoatmospheric space, where satellites orbit, another battlefield interests the world's armies.
The "very high altitude", defined between 20 km and 100 km, is the domain of hypersonic missiles that bounce off the layers of the atmosphere, drones and stratospheric aircraft, such as the American spy plane U-2, or even surveillance balloons, like the one of Chinese origin identified Friday above American territory.
Difficult to control, to monitor, and almost unregulated, since the regulation of air traffic stops 20 km above the ground, this other field of competition worries the staffs.
"We are perhaps in the construction phase of a capacity",
explains a French military source.
“The detect-identify-intercept triptych is still relevant,”
they say.
But it poses new challenges.
It is…
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