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ISR blimp would fly for 10 years uninterrupted

A blimp that hovers at 65,000 feet and stays aloft for a decade is what the Air Force hopes within five years will revolutionize its intelligence gathering.

Early estimates put the price at $400 million, according to the service’s chief scientist, Werner J.A. Dahm, who is overseeing the project.

The 450-foot-long airship would be a “potentially game-changing” addition to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities because of its 10-year flight time and a radar unit so massive it wouldn’t fit into any aircraft now in the service’s fleet, Dahm said.

“It would allow us to observe remarkably fine details over very long periods,” he said. “That lets us better understand how an adversary operates, how to anticipate their actions, how to interpret their intent, and many other things that we need today, tomorrow and beyond.”

The radar would track coalition and enemy movements on land, sea and air, advancing the capabilities provided by satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Predator and the Reaper.

UAVs maintain a presence over the battlefield by cycling in and out of orbits; the blimp, too, would have that “unblinking eye” but without the support of launching and landing aircraft that the unending orbits demand, Dahm said.

The Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the military’s research arm, has been developing the aircraft since 2004. Work will start this year on the Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, or ISIS, a scaled-down version designed to fly a year without landing.

To keep the blimp in the air 10 years, scientists and engineers have had to design a hull that can withstand the elements at 65,000 feet, including a temperature of 130 degrees below zero, and produce a power source that can regenerate energy.

“We think we have the solutions to meet those technical challenges, and ISIS will let us try to put them all together into a complete functioning system,” Dahm said.

The hull material now can withstand a low of 150 degrees below zero and retain 85 percent of its fiber strength for 22 years, according to a DARPA presentation. Fuel cells recharged by the sun, instead of batteries, will power the blimp.

Lift will come from helium; the craft would have a sustained airspeed of 60 knots and a sprint speed of 100 knots, DARPA said.

Still, Dahm cautions, more work needs to be done. For example, the researchers still need to ensure the blimp can defend itself. Flying at 65,000 feet, the aircraft won’t be vulnerable to many enemy anti-aircraft systems but will be susceptible to “missiles and other threats,” Dahm said. “We need to assess if the technologies needed to make such systems possible are ready, and we need to learn how to effectively integrate those technologies into practical systems,” he said.

Right now, blimps with cameras are tethered above bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to provide security. The blimp in development, though, won’t be like any the military has ever used, Dahm said.

“We’ve never put a radar this large into a blimp before, and we’ve never tried to keep a blimp aloft continuously for years at these altitudes,” he said. “So, while it is a blimp, what we are doing in this joint DARPA/Air Force effort really is something absolutely revolutionary.”