by David Axe
May 22, 2012
from
Wired Website
The U.S. Army's
massive Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle.
Illustration: Northrop
Grumman
TAMPA, Florida
Sure, it took an extra year or so, but Northrop
Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant
surveillance airship it’s building for the U.S. Army.
The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle
(LEMV)
- a football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp fitted with sensors and
data-links - should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first or
second week of June.
K.C. Brown, Jr., Northrop’s
director of Army programs, crows:
”We’re about to fly the thing!”
It’s fair to say Northrop and the Army are
crossing their collective fingers for the flight to actually take place, and
smoothly.
Giant airships promise huge benefits - namely,
low cost and long flight times - but it’s proved incredibly hard to build
and equip the massive blimps with military-grade sensors and communications…
and fill them with helium.
The Air Force’s highly computerized (and potentially missile-armed) Blue
Devil 2 airship recently ran into integration problems, forcing the flying
branch to
cancel a planned test run in Afghanistan. (Although the service
had never been too hot on airships in the first place.)
The Navy meanwhile grounded its much smaller
MZ-3A research blimp for a lack of work until the Army paid to take it over.
The LEMV seemed to be losing air, too, as
Northrop and the Army repeatedly delayed its first flight and planned combat
deployment originally slated for the end of 2011.
As recently as last month Northrop and the Army declined to comment on the
airship’s new flight schedule. Northrop VP Brad Metzger’s boast from last
summer that the $500-million LEMV prototype would “redefine persistent
surveillance” seemed hollow.
But at a special forces industry conference here in Tampa, Northrop’s Brown
surprised Danger Room with a hard date range:
LEMV will lift off between June 6 and 10, he
says.
After a brief trial around Lakehurst, the
300-foot-long airship will motor south to Florida to be mated up with a
custom-designed gondola containing the blimp’s cameras and radios.
If the gondola fits as planned and all the gear functions, the pilotless
LEMV will cross the Atlantic in “early winter,” bound for “a theater” for a
front-line demonstration, Brown says. We’re sure the “theater” in question
is Afghanistan. If war commanders like what they see in their new giant spy
blimp, the Army could order up more copies, Brown says.
Never mind airworthiness and sensor integration:
The biggest danger, according to Brown, is
the weather. Airships are “subject to buffeting by winds and by
thunderstorms.”
Operators have to plan carefully to keep their
airships away from storms.
Despite airships’ checkered past, Northrop is optimistic the LEMV will
survive the elements and its combat debut. The company is already looking
beyond the initial Afghanistan trial. The LEMV can do more than hover and
spy. It’s also
a potentially useful cargo carrier. The current model can
carry 20 tons of supplies.
A scaled-up version could carry hundreds of tons
- and at a fraction of the cost of fixed-wing airplanes.
Noting Pakistan’s continuing blockade of roads into Afghanistan, Brown
proposes that the LEMV could help the Army remove its weapons and gear from
from the landlocked country as U.S. troops withdraw.
“It presents an attractive alternative.”
Yes, if the giant airship actually flies in June
- and works as advertised.