The US military has invested billions in blimp-like aircraft to trace militants planting roadside bombs however the spyship experiment is losing altitude due to technical failures and changing priorities.
The lighter-than-air projects were billed as an innovative revival of an old aircraft design to conduct “unblinking” surveillance at the battlefield — at a fragment of the price of fuel-guzzling planes or helicopters.
The Pentagon invested $7 billion in airship programs between 2007 and 2012, however the funding has mostly dried up amid budget cuts and embarrassing setbacks.
Tethered balloons equipped with radar were used routinely for surveillance by US forces during the last decade and are a typical sight floating over American bases in Afghanistan.
But the gigantic money went towards airships, which can be a step up from the “aerostats” held by ropes. The airships fly all alone power almost like the zeppelins of the sector War I era, while carrying more technology on board.
The most ambitious project was the Army’s massive, unmanned airship, the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), which was launched in 2010 with plans to deploy the craft to Afghanistan within 18 months.
The LEMV, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, was alleged to be equipped with sensors that might track enemy mortar rounds, withstand small arms fire with special material and likewise function a cargo ship which can handle as much as 20 a whole lot supplies.
Northrop Vice chairman Brad Metzger promised it will “redefine persistent surveillance.”
After falling not on time, the 300-foot-long (90 meters) airship suddenly met major trouble after its first flight at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey in August 2012.
It turned out to be 12,000 pounds (5,400 kilograms) overweight as a result of issues of its tailfins and other systems, consistent with a report from the federal government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the u. s. Congress.
The weight problem meant that the craft couldn’t stay inside the air for 3 weeks as planned at an altitude of 20,000 feet, but just for four to 5 days.
After the primary test, there has been a post-flight review and engineers came with up “with a protracted list of items that had to be repaired,” said John Cummings, a military spokesman.
Facing daunting technical hurdles, inclusive of a discounted appetite for surveillance in Afghanistan amid a troop drawdown, the military decided to scrap this system after spending an estimated $294 million.
For critics, the program’s short-lived, expensive history looked as if it would embody everything wrong with the Pentagon’s bureaucracy. But officials said the postulate was promising and the outcomes simply weren’t as much as expectations.
“This was a really interesting program. We’re all disappointed it didn’t go the manner we would have liked it to,” Cummings said.
The US Air Force pursued its own helium-filled spyship, the Blue Devil 2, that was alleged to hover over battlefields for days, equipped with state-of-the-art sensors and cameras.
The Blue Devil 2 suffered similar problems because the Army’s project, missing deadlines and failing technical thresholds.
Like the LEMV, the Blue Devil’s tailfins were far too heavy, so heavy actually that the airship couldn’t fly, consistent with the GAO. There also were issues of flight control software.
After spending about $115 million, the Air Force called off the Blue Devil program in June 2012.
Other airships have flunked their flight tests.
The HALE-D, or high-altitude airship demonstrator, crashed on its first flight in July 2011, causing the destruction of its solar cells. In 2010, the solar-powered HiSentinel airship had a propulsion system failure after eight hours of a scheduled 24-hour flight.
A more modest Navy project, the MZ-3A research airship, has survived and is used to check sensors for the army and other government agencies.
The Navy calls it a “flying laboratory” that gives a “slow moving, vibration free” thanks to test out sensors designed for numerous aircraft.
As for the Army’s failed giant airship, the Defense Department tried to sell the LEMV for $44 million. Last month, it settled for a modest $301,000, officials said.
Under the terms of the sale, Cummings said that if the airship’s new owners “fly it again, we might be supplied with data from their flights.”
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