http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5025388/
The cost factor is one reason why the Air Force is interested in the first part of JP Aerospace's plan: The roughly $500,000 cost of building the 175-foot-long (53-meter-long) Ascender airship is far less than the price tag for any piloted airplane or robotic drone, said Maj. Robert Blackington of the U.S. Air Force Space Battlelab project, at Colorado's Schriever Air Force Base.
Image: Ascender
JP Aerospace
An artist's conception shows the Ascender airship lifting off.
"You could probably roll about 40 of these off the line for the price of one Global Hawk," Blackington told MSNBC.com.
But the Pentagon's primary motivation is strategic rather than strictly financial. The altitudes best-suited for the helium-filled Ascender are virgin territory for the military. It could take a payload higher than any spy plane, above the weather and well beyond the reach of virtually any attack from the ground or the air.
"We've exploited [altitudes of] about 60,000 feet and below, and also low Earth orbit and above," Blackington explained. "We in the Battlelab are looking at a ‘near space’ regime. ... The technology allows us to sit in a regime that we can use now."
What would it be used for?
"We're looking at satellite-like capabilities," he said. The Ascender could loiter over, say, a suspected weapons research site and watch for trucks moving in and out — or provide a high-altitude relay for battlefield communications.
"A commander can talk with his troops on the other side of a hill or a mountain range," Blackington said.
Image: High Altitude Airship
Lockheed Martin
The High Altitude Airship, shown in this artist's conception, would measure 500 feet long.
He said the Ascender would complement a much larger military airship being developed as a separate project. Last year, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $40 million contract to work on the High Altitude Airship, a 500-foot-long (152-meter-long) blimp, that could loiter at altitudes above 65,000 feet for as long as a year. Blackington said the HAA — which would be 25 times larger than, say, the Goodyear blimp — would be much more capable than the Ascender, but also much more expensive and somewhat more vulnerable to attack.
It will be at least a couple of years before such airships float over battlefields. The objective for next month's Ascender test is merely to demonstrate that the unmanned airship can safely reach the 100,000-foot level, respond to commands beamed up from the ground to navigate between two points, loiter in position for five minutes, then come down safely.
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