From securing national borders to watching the open ocean, our lighter-than-air platforms hold sensors on station where nothing else can stay. Four missions, one platform family.
Land borders are vast, remote and impossible to watch continuously with ground assets alone. A tethered aerostat lifts a radar to altitude and holds it there — detecting low, slow-flying aircraft and surface targets across hundreds of kilometers, around the clock, in all weather.
Our 420K and 275K systems are the backbone of the CBP Tethered Aerostat Radar System, providing low-level radar surveillance along the U.S.–Mexico border, the Florida coast and the northern Caribbean — supporting counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and air sovereignty missions without interruption.
The ocean is vast, featureless and unforgiving to monitor. Satellites have revisit gaps. Patrol aircraft go home to refuel. An aerostat does neither — it holds a radar over the water and keeps reporting.
With integrated L-88 radar, EO/IR payloads and fiber-optic tether data links, our platforms deliver low-latency situational awareness over open water, littoral zones and port approaches. The 660K reaches detection ranges out to 200 nautical miles — and Skyship Services has sustained the Florida Straits surveillance mission for more than four decades without a break.
Cruise missiles and low-flying threats exploit the same weakness: the radar horizon. Ground-based sensors cannot see below it. Elevating the sensor is the oldest answer to that problem and still the most cost-effective — and an aerostat elevates it without a single flight hour.
In December 2025 Skyship Services was awarded a contract under the Missile Defense Agency's SHIELD IDIQ — Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense — a vehicle designed for the rapid delivery of innovative capability to the warfighter. Persistent elevated sensing is a natural layer in that architecture.
The same company, the same certified aircraft — a different mission. Our commercial division flies custom-wrapped airships for the world's most visible brand campaigns: Capital One, Netflix, Subway, T-Mobile, Discovery.
We'll tell you which platform holds it, how long, and what it takes to sustain.
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