Balloon
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Air Traffic Control Time Certified In Pos 1 (yrs) 2
Distraction; Situational Awareness; Troubleshooting; Workload; Communication Breakdown; Confusion
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Air Traffic Control Provided Assistance; Air Traffic Control Separated Traffic
Procedure; Aircraft
Management allowed a scheduled unmanned balloon launch from AMW.  Poor coordination with affected sectors and other adjacent facilities could have resulted in an incident with balloon climbing through the PCA.  Controllers; including myself; working affected sectors had little to no information as to when the balloon launched; its current position; or altitude as it left the surface to climb to 100;000 ft.  The balloon was large; 44 ft in diameter; and had a fairly large payload and had no equipment on board to help with tracking its position or altitude.  Management made attempts to contact the POC of the ballon launch to get updates; however POC failed to answer phone calls.  As the controller working the affected high altitude sectors I had to give numerous aircraft vague position and altitude reports in regards to the balloon.  Although no aircraft had to deviate for the balloon the same scenerio could bring a different result next time.I understand that we have procedures in place to allow unmanned; untranspondered; balloons to enter the PCA; however these events need to have a larger scope of airspace protection.  We were allowing aircraft to traverse an area where we knew the balloon would be and did nothing to try and avoid an incident.  We also need to establish better lines of communication with the groups performing these activities while they are ongoing.  The POC involved in this report had to ability to give us lat/long and altitude reports; however since we were unable to get in contact with him after an initial phone call this information was unretrievable by ATC.
ZMP Controller describes a problem with an unmanned balloon that departs from an airport; since the Controller has no idea where it is to be able to give traffic advisories.