Col. Blimp Comes to America
The Army has a blimp. It cost half a billion dollars. It flies at 20,000 feet and can stay aloft for three weeks.
This is a revival of the Army Air Corps.
Problem: It can be deflated in-flight by a drone.
There are now videos of the floating target.
These huge blimps are called LEMVs, short for long-endurance multi-intelligence vehicles.
Spies with gas.
One of them took a test flight over New Jersey. It was just over Lakehurst.
What great public relations! That was where the Hindenburg burned and crashed.
In a press release calculated to put the public to sleep, we read:
“The first flight primary objective was to perform a safe launch and recovery with a secondary objective to verify the flight control system operation. Additional first flight objectives included airworthiness testing and demonstration, and system level performance verification.”“All objectives were met during the first flight.”
Translation: “It didn’t crash.”
The blimp is longer than a football field.
It can be flown by remote control.
It can spy on an entire city from a fixed overhead location.
Why?
Previously, the Pentagon invested nearly $200 million on the Blue Devil Block 2, a similar surveillance drone developed by researchers at Virginia’s Mav6, that never made it as far as their newest LEMV did. Despite plans to put the Blue Devil over Afghanistan — where they hoped it could scan 36 miles at a time from the sky — the Pentagon cancelled the program after growing costs and ongoing problems made the price tag for maintenance alone quadruple.
If at first you don’t succeed, spend, spend again.
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Published on August 10, 2012. The original is here.
The project was canceled in 2013. The Army sold it back to the builder for 1% of its price.
In 2016, it was reborn. The Army did not want it.
On 17 August 2016, the first test flight took place at the aircraft's home base, Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire, England, and lasted 30 minutes. During the final approach to its mooring mast at the end of its second test flight on 24 August 2016, the airship's mooring rope became entangled in wires and the nose hit the ground, damaging the cockpit. The crew were unharmed.The Airlander 10 was repaired and fitted with inflatable "feet" designed to be deployable in 15 seconds, to protect the cockpit in an emergency landing. It resumed flight testing on 10 May 2017. On 13 June 2017, during its fourth test flight, the Airlander reached an altitude of 3,500 feet (1,070 m).
On 18 November 2017, the airship broke free from its moorings in a high wind, automatically pulling a safety rip panel so that it deflated and fell to the ground. Nobody was on board but two people received minor injuries.
Next year, it is scheduled to go into production as a commercial vehicle in England.
I think I'll pass.