Pentagon has suspended the JLENS aerostat program indefinitely after one of the radar carrying blimp got detached and flew uncontrolled ...
Pentagon has suspended the JLENS aerostat program indefinitely after one of the radar carrying blimp got detached and flew uncontrolled over parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania during trials.
The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) Fire Control System (FCS) aerostat detached from its mooring station at G-Field on Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, on October 28, and eventually grounded in a wooded area in northeast Pennsylvania.
The blimp soared by dragging a 6,700-foot-long mooring cable, that clipped power lines and disrupted civil aviation in the region.
The trial part of a three year long evaluation, has been suspend pending investigation by US Army.
The JLENS is a system of two aerostats (blimps), or tethered airships, that float 10,000 feet in the air. Each, nearly as long as a football field, will carry powerful radars capable of detecting, tracking and targeting missiles and rockets up to 340 miles away.
The nearly 250-foot JLENS aerostats will both carry radar systems to detect cruise missiles, strobe lights to alert nearby aircraft of their whereabouts, and backup batteries to ensure operations in the event the ground power station fails.
The system stays aloft for 30 days at a time, coming down only for maintenance or severe weather. The system is less expensive than it would be to get the same capability via manned missions with an E-3 Sentry with the Airborne Warning and Control System, referred to as AWACS, or an E-2 Hawkeye with an airborne early-warning system.
During the evaluation period the Army hoped to show it can be successfully integrated into existing North American Aerospace Defense Command systems designed to protect airspace over the East Coast of the United States -- an area that includes New York City, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
In the event that a cruise missile were to enter the area observed by the two aerostats, information gleaned from their systems would be fed into existing NORAD Eastern Air Defense Sectors systems and that information could in turn be used to bring down the cruise missile using aircraft launched munitions, ground-based air defense systems, or even an Aegis Combat System.
A 2012 report by the Pentagon’s operational testing office found the $2.7 billion JLENS deficient in four critical parameters and rated its reliability poor.
