Versatile Blimp

[kuma]

The $150M is what was published as the amount budgeted for the program in the press some years back. The plan was for each High Altitude Airship to cost $50M each. Expensive but really a bargain for something intended to stay aloft for an entire year providing continuous coverage.

The JLENS Block 1 uses 2 tethered balloons. Block 2 will use 2 untethered blimps. Block 3 will combine the surveillance and fire control radar in a single blimp, similar to the HAA w/c is a different program.

[lcm1]

Originally Posted by Pruitt

lcm1,

What he was referring to was not Barrage Balloons, but the US Navy's "Blimps". These were powered aircraft that had a crew and a weapons load. They were used near the US coastlines. Think of them as descendants of the Zeppelins, but using Helium instead of Hydrogen gas. The main problem was they were slow compared to regular aircraft, yet were much faster than ships.

Pruitt

Ah yes, did not know that they were used in WW2 and me being an 'old fart' immediately thought of the barrage balloons!! lcm1

[kuma]

The blimps have passed their first test.


http://www.defencetalk.com/raytheons...pt-test-42136/

Two Raytheon systems, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) and the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System, demonstrated their ability to work together to detect, track and shoot down a test target simulating a hostile cruise missile during an exercise at the Utah Training and Test Range.

[thatguy96]

Just to provide some additional historical and contemporary context, ARPA (now DARPA) investigated the use of aerostats to monitor the DMZ in Vietnam (Silent Joe) and more recently smaller aerostats have been used in Afghanistan to provide localized persistent surveillance for FOBs (Blue Devil).