If everyone puts on their history ‘hats’....about a decade ago, the US military was all hyped up to get surveillance ‘blimps’. A developmental project started up.
I would wager....12 months into the project...someone left the company, and went overseas to provide the characteristics and insider info to a Chinese company.
This is simply recon balloons with some payload capability....probably shooting images, and relaying them to a 5G tower somewhere and being sent quietly back to a server in China.
I bet you’re right about ‘someone’ going over to China with the tech.
After getting the coordinates off Google Earth....
The surveillance blimps were to be simply tethered, high altitude radar platforms along the border, mostly to look for small planes flying in drugs or worse, terrorists.
Not maneuverable in any operational sense.