Drones over DC

By C. J. Refsland on August 17, 2013 • ( 2 )

My Comment: This has all kinds of implications, like increased surveillance capabilities on citizens. You decide.

In Washington, it’s not uncommon to see Marine One, the presidential helicopter, commuting from the White House to various points around town. In fact, there are all kinds of machines in the skies above the Beltway — from air force jets and weather balloons to news choppers and passenger planes servicing one of three regional airports. But, even locals may be surprised next year when they look up and see two enormous white blimps hovering above the nation’s capital.

Called aerostats — the technical term for a blimp — the Pentagon has plans to deploy the giant airships over the Baltimore and Washington, DC area in 2014 in order to patrol the skies more effectively than ground-based radar systems and more inexpensively than manned surveillance planes.

A pair of Raytheon JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor) aerostats will be positioned at 10,000 feet with the mission of spotting and tracking incoming airborne and surface threats such as cruise missiles, high-speed attack boats, armed drones, planes, tanks, and trucks. At 238-feet across each, the aerostats provide 360-degree radar surveillance capability and can stay aloft for 30 days at a time.

The underbelly of a JLENS aerostat. The 74 meter-wide airships will act as a 360 degree eye-in-the-sky. (Photo credit: Courtesy Raytheon)

Significantly, during a time of fiscal austerity in Washington, they’re also much cheaper than traditional planes.

“One system provides the war-fighter the same around-the-clock coverage that it would normally take four or five fixed-wing surveillance aircraft to provide,” said David Gulla, a senior vice president at Raytheon.

James Colbert, a defense expert at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), says, “If you want 24/7/365 aerial coverage, keeping planes aloft is fabulously expensive. Fixed wing planes require fuel, maintenance, pilots, and ground crews – aerostats are persistent and low cost. They just sit up there as long as they have helium.”

Read the rest: via The Times of Israel.