Army plots "mass experiment" of intel-gathering balloons in Indo-Pacific

The latest: "We're going to demonstrate what it would look like to put hundreds of capabilities up, nearly simultaneous," Andrew Evans, formerly the head of the Army ISR Task Force and now at the strategy-and-transformation directorate inside the deputy chief of staff for intelligence shop, told Axios.

How it works: It's a numbers game.

• "Historically, we were floating one or two or maybe three high-altitude balloons," Evans said. That was the wrong approach.
• "We believe there's some significant value in operationalizing the stratosphere, if you start pairing it with ... scale and volume."

The intrigue: The experiment is catching the attention of North American Aerospace Defense Command, which in recent weeks detected and tracked Russian aircraft off Alaska.

Flashback: The Army in early April announced a 10-year contract to sustain and upgrade its aerostat arsenal. The deal's worth as much as $4.2 billion.

• "Balloons are one of the very first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities used in air warfare," Brandon Pollachek, a spokesperson for the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, told Axios at the time.

Go deeper: Aventra emerges as the "Harbor Freight of guided munitions"