So...
Not a front-line piece of kit then?
A new US military radar system, suspended beneath a tethered "aerostat" balloon so as to see beyond the horizon, made its first flight yesterday. The JLENS blimp-scanner is intended to finger such things as enemy cruise missiles or unmanned aircraft. The US military - particularly the Army, as opposed to the Air Force …
This appears similar or identical to the TARS (Tethered Aerostat Radar System) that has been in use along the southern US border since 1981, primarily for drug traffic interdiction:
http://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/tars.htm
To answer the question about weather, TARS uptime averages about 65%--two days out of three. Winds are a problem, obviously.
Although there's an FAA-declared "no-fly" zone around each aerostat, clearly marked on the charts, there have been a couple of incidents over the years of idiots in light aircraft (Cessnas and what have you) flying into the cables. No balloons were lost--those are STRONG cables!--but the aircraft and occupants didn't survive.
Andy Baird
...thought that lot got wiped away earlier this year. surely the biggest threat is a little further north in the disputed Kashmir region?
I can image every city in the fatherland^W land of the free being protected by these menacing guardian angels... it wouldnt take much for them to launch own attacks onto their own cities