France, Italy and Germany to officially pursue the development of their three major national high-altitude warfare projects within a new pan-European “EuroHAPS” program. 11 EU countries will be involved.

12 comments

1. The EuroHAPS program will be coordinated by Thales Alenia Space and will consist of three complementary stratospheric demonstrators:

   – the French project: a reduced-scale **Stratobus** by Thales Alenia Space (a solar-powered airship designed for long-endurance missions and offering large payload capacity)

   – the Italian one: the **Hybrid High Altitude Airship** by CIRA (capable of generating extra lift with a wing airfoil)

   – and the German one: the **Autonomous Stratospheric Balloon System** by ESG and TAO (which consists of a series of three altitude-controllable balloons).

   Thales Alenia Space will coordinate a European consortium of 21 partners + 18 subcontractors, from 11 EU countries. The 21 partner companies are listed in [this EU document](https://defence-industry-space.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-07/Factsheet_EDF21_EuroHAPS.pdf).

2. More weapons of war? Makes me sad and worried :/

3. What does pan-European mean?

4. I hope my grandkids will see them fielded…

5. A blimp? OK…

6. Oh another joint military project with Germany. I wonder how long until they cancel that one.

7. Germany has to cover how to get their space Zeppelins from the Dark Side of the Moon back to Earth. /j

8. I am happy that we have a common project, but I am not totally convinced by those… I don’t know, stratospheric platforms ?

9. I looked at the photo and saw Katsuyu from NARUTO.

10. Europe: was tired of conflict, didn’t invest anything in military, wanted to forget that violence actually existed

    Russia: GENOCIDE MURDER MAYHEN GOGOGO*

    EUROPE: wtf, we must arm ourselves, time to buckle up and be ready for bad guys

    Russia: wHy WoUlD tHe WeSt InCReASe ThEIr PrESeNcE aT oUr BoRdeRs

    *Starts to randomly murder hundreds of thousands of innocent people for no reason

11. Ion cannon ready.

12. KIROV REPORTING