Message posted by loopbacktest4echo on May 07, 2009 at 10:26:50 PST:
Good points. I have read that there are blimps being designed and tested for use in Over the Horizon RADAR, signals intelligence, and communications. These blimps would be able to stay on station for years at a time. I don't think these would be black projects though. The covert insertion blimp I had read about would be a heavy lift capacity vertical take off and landing blimp. Below is a recent news release regarding a DARPA RADAR blimp: Lockheed and partner Raytheon Co. were awarded the contract for the Integrated Sensor Is Structure program, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said in a separate news release. The companies will develop the scale model of a radar that would be about 6,000 square meters (7,176 square yards) in size and embedded in a blimp 6 miles above the earth, the statement said. The so-called ISIS radar could track small missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles as far as 600 kilometers (373 miles) away, the statement said. Lockheed beat Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp. for the contract, Jan Walker, a spokeswoman for the research agency, said in an interview. Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed and Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon received $100 million initially and will get the remainder in phases to finish the project by March 2013, Walker said.
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s largest defense contractor, received a $399.9 million order from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop an airborne radar blimp, the Pentagon said on its Web site.
In Reply to: Re: observation blimp posted by bird_dog_one on May 07, 2009 at 8:36:42 PST:
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