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US Pentagon Plans For a Spy Blimp
nloop writes "The Pentagon is intending to develop a new spy ship — a dirigible. At 65,000 feet it would provide a 10 year, solar power based, unblinkingly intricate and continuous view of the surface via radar surveillance. Because of its altitude it would be safe from surface-to-air missiles and most aircraft. A 1/3-scale prototype, now being designed, is 'known as ISIS, for Integrated Sensor Is the Structure, because the radar system will be built into the structure of the ship. ... 'If successful, the dirigible... could pave the way for a fleet of spy airships, military officials said.'"
More information via http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/air-force-signs.html
The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S. military a better understanding of an adversary's movements, habits and tactics, officials said. And the ability to constantly monitor small movements in a wide area -- the Afghanistan- Pakistan border, for example -- would dramatically improve military intelligence..... The giant airship's military value would come from its radar system. Giant antenna would allow the military to see farther and with more detail than it can now.
Sounds pretty useful to me. Not against countries with advanced weapons but probably Afghanistan. Think of it as a Protoss Observer. Not invincible but godly useful for recon.
However, by then the developers will have had the money and moved on to other projects, which is the usual way military R&D works (cynicism borne of experience).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"At 65,000 feet ..... it would be safe from surface-to-air missiles and most aircraft."
Francis Gary Powers was shot down in his U-2 by an S-75 Dvina missile on May 1, 1960. The operating altitude for his mission was 70,000 feet. How is 65,000 safe 50 years after 70,000 isn't?
It's obviously not. On 13 September 1985 an F-15 launched an ASM-135 ASAT anti-satellite weapon from 38,000 feet and took down the Solwind satellite orbiting at an altitude of 345 miles (1,821,600 feet). The ASM-135 was built from off-the-shelf (ie. already developed, tested and in production) hardware. One can assume the shelf 25 years later to be much better stocked, and any launch platforms to be much more capable, such as the recent development of Mach 1+ missile launch capability.
With or without the "surface-to-air" in the summary replaced with "hand held" as in the original, TFA is ludicrous.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The summary was a little misleading on how/where these would be deployed. The dirigibles would be used for covering large areas from a safe distance. They would not be deployed in a active air war where major military opponents had AA defenses against high altitude targets. Think Iraq, Afghanistan, and similar places. The threats are real but generally limited to small arms and shoulder fired missiles. 65,000 feet is plenty safe against these threats.
As I understand it, this U2 was 'shot' down by an unarmed, manned, Soviet interceptor not a SAM.
From wikipedia:
"In 1996, Soviet pilot Captain Igor Mentyukov revealed that, at 65,000 feet (19,812 meters) altitude, under orders to ram the intruder, he had managed to catch the U-2 in the slipstream of his unarmed Sukhoi Su-9, causing the U-2 to flip over and break its wings. The salvo of rockets had indeed scored a hit, downing a pursuing MiG-19, not the U-2. Mentyukov said that if a rocket had hit the U-2, its pilot would not have lived.[19][20]
Though the normal Su-9 service ceiling was 55,000 feet (16,760 meters), Mentyukov's aircraft had been modified to achieve higher altitudes, having its weapons removed. With no weapons, the only attack option open to him was ramming."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-2_Crisis_of_1960
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Aye. However, they didn't have missiles that were fast enough to catch the plane. It's my understanding that some pretty impressive photos were taken from the BB that show it leaving incoming missiles in the dust.
God help us all in the UK. We have little hope.
The U.S. is unfortunately catching up with you.
Nope...at 65000 feet the ambient pressure is 0.09 of what it is at sea level. All three gases will expand by the same ratio, so the densities become 0.0081 g/l (hydrogen), 0.016 (helium) and 0.144 (air). The buoyancy ratio between hydrogen and helium then becomes (0.144-0.0081)/(0.144-0.016) = 1.06, so hydrogen is down to a 6% advantage.
rj
Indeed. The SR-71, at Mach 3 and cruising at 80,000 feet, was hit by shrapnel from an attempted shoot down at least once.
A very slow-moving or stationary dirigible at 65,000 feet isn't safe by any possible definition of the word. (Well, I suppose an air force consisting solely of Cessna 172's with gunners sporting .22 hunting rilfes wouldn't pose much of a threat; but that's about it.)
It *MAY* be safe from insurgencies like in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan, though.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Helium is extremely rare and expensive. Hydrogen is inexhaustible and (relatively) very, very cheap.
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Try not to bash the high-tech weaponry being developed by the US military.
For one, other "cold war relics" like the stealth bombers have been used extensively and extremely effective in modern wars.
Secondly, and this is really the more important issue... maintaining vast military superiority over all potential challengers is what has provided the relative levels of peace that most of the world has experienced since the end of WWII.
It's not anti-insurgency weapons that keep hostile nations like North Korea and Iran in line, and it's certainly not nukes (because they know the US would be hard pressed to use them in any but the most dire situations, and even then, may cause more collateral damage than enemy damage). Knowing that you are at odds with countries that can annihilate you 6 ways from Sunday in mere moments, without any real effort, is an extremely strong diplomatic tool.
Of course, you only need to look at the start of the trend to see the reasons behind it... WWII started specifically because allied nations had not been pushing to advance their military technology, while Germany had. This gave the tiny nation an overwhelming capability to relatively easily take over nearly all of Europe, Africa, and much of Asia, if not for poor decisions, both political and militarily.
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