Current and former missile-defense officials are lamenting the presumed demise of the Army’s high-flying surveillance blimp.
The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor, shoehorned into the acronym JLENS, is a Raytheon [RTN]-built aerostat designed to carry sophisticated sensors aloft to an altitude that allows it to see beyond the curvature of the earth. The program was envisioned as a long-endurance detection system for incoming cruise missiles.
“JLENS was on a path to be very successful before a minor mechanical malfunction” turned public and congressional favor against the program, South Carolina National Guard Col. Donnie Wilson, an operations officer with the 263rd Army Air and Missile Defense Command (MDC), said Wednesday.
Photo: Raytheon
“If JLENS was put back on schedule to complete its test, I think it would be the major game changer for the [Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS)],” Wilson said. “It at least would provide proper theater coverage.”
JLENS currently is deployed to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., to conduct homeland defense of Washington, D.C., and its surrounding area. The company has built two of the unmanned, helium-filled aerostats, each of which is equipped with a long range, 360-degree radar. One aerostat is meant to conduct surveillance, while the other provides fire control data to other systems.
One of those two blimps broke free in October and dragged its 6,700 foot tether for 100 miles into Pennsylvania while F-16 fighters monitored its slow-motion progress. The three-hour episode knocked out power to thousands of homes in Pennsylvania and was widely covered on traditional news and parodied on social media.
As a result, the Army launched an investigation into the incident, and Congress in the 2016 appropriations bill cut $30 million from the $40.6 million program.
The service projected a $6.7 million request for 2018, when its three-year operational deployment is scheduled to end.
The lack of funding essentially keeps the tether cut permanently, though many in the Army’s missile-defense community still see aerostats as the most promising, efficient and affordable way to provide wide-area missile detection and defense. Any technology with wings and an engine is cost prohibitive to keep persistently aloft to perform that mission. Manned aircraft loiter times are limited further and ground-based sensors are unable to effectively detect cruise missiles at standoff ranges because they cannot see beyond the horizon, said retired Maj. Gen. Francis Mahon, former director for strategy, policy and plans at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
“When you see what it could see, the data it could provide and how it extended engagement footprints…wow, that’s a strategic capability,” Mahon said. “The only way to get after cruise missiles is to get over the earth’s curvature and you can’t do that with a terrestrial-based sensor; and you can’t put that sensor on a fixed-wing platform because you don’t have enough dollars to keep that thing in the sky.”