Following a rigorous campaign of obliterating every floating white orb in the sky last year, military officials confirmed their fighter pilots had grown restless and required a fresh fleet of domestic targets.
The United States Air Force announced a $50 million contract on Tuesday with Silicon Valley startup WindBorne, securing a steady domestic supply of advanced AI weather balloons for its fighter squadrons to hunt.
The Pentagon praised the company's proprietary machine learning systems and lightweight atmospheric sensors, noting that the $50,000 technological marvels produce a highly satisfying radar signature just milliseconds before being annihilated by a $400,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.
Following the highly publicized destruction of a Chinese surveillance craft in early 2023, the military spent months scrambling jets to destroy civilian pico-balloons, atmospheric anomalies, and Midwestern ham radio club projects. The aggressive air superiority campaign left a critical gap in the stratosphere, forcing F-22 Raptor pilots to go months without locking onto an unarmed meteorological device.
We realized we were entirely reliant on foreign adversaries and local hobbyists for our high-altitude target practice, which is a massive national security vulnerability.
WindBorne founders originally pitched their fleet of autonomous balloons as a breakthrough in predicting global weather patterns at scale. Defense Department procurement officers reportedly nodded along during the pitch, confirming that the startup's wind-prediction software would indeed be crucial for calculating the exact trajectory of the flaming debris field as it plummets toward Lake Huron.
At press time, NORAD had already scrambled two fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base after a WindBorne engineer accidentally let go of a promotional mylar balloon in the company's parking lot.