BlimpsDoD ends ambitious blimp program

The Department of Defense has decided to end its Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) project. The LEMV project aimed to design and build a blimp equipped with sophisticated sensors for gathering intelligence in war zones.

The LEMV was 7-story airship about the length of a football field, capabile of flying weeks at a time without refueling.

As the U.S. military began to slow down operations in Afghanistan, plans for the unmanned airship began to lose support. The launch date fell behind schedule, the airship became 12,000 pounds overweight because components, such as tail fins, exceeded weight thresholds, and the program was eventually canceled after one test.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Pentagon spent $297 million on the airship, but last month sold it to the British company that built it for $301,000.

In the early planning stages, the airship was considered revolutionary because of its ability, without being detected, to provide troops on the ground with an uninterrupted view of the war zone. Today the program represents military waste in an environment of federal budget cuts and shutdowns. Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) questioned why it took so long for the program to be terminated. “Maybe those decisions could have been made earlier — at a point when less taxpayer funding had been wasted?” he said this year in a speech to the defense industry. “Critically, why were these programs allowed to continue beyond the point when senior acquisition management and their industry partners knew, or should have known, that their original cost, schedule and performance assumptions were no longer valid?”

Steve Ellis of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense noted in a Times article that not all military programs and acquisitions are successful, but that the sale of the airship is “adding insult to fiscal injury. The contractors are happy. They were paid millions of dollars. Now they have their aircraft back to.”

The Army insists that the technical data and computer software for the airship program will be useful for future programs. “We learned quite a bit from the technology,” said John Cummings, an Army spokesman. “In the end, it was determined not to pursue it.”

The ambitious program was supposed to fly for as long as three weeks at a time, gather intelligence using 2,500 pounds worth of the most advanced cameras, sensors, and other intelligence technology. Operating at an altitude of 20,000 feet, the airship was designed to withstand enemy fire with  its blend of fabrics, including kevlar, which is used in body armor suits.

The Army signed a contract in June 2010 with British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd. and Northrop Grumman Corp. to develop three aircrafts. The Times notes that if the army had proceeded with its plan, the total cost would have been as high as $517 million. The Army believed that expertise of Hybrid Air and Northrop Grumman would make it possible to meet the program’s goal of developing and testing the aircraft within eighteen months.

Coordinating the work of subcontractors from more than eighteen states and at least three countries proved cumbersome, and it ultimately took twenty-six months to design, build, and test the blimp.

In its only flight, in August 2012, the blimp flew about ninety minutes above Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey with a pilot onboard. “We feel that getting a hybrid airship to first flight in such a tight timeline was an accomplishment unto itself,” Timothy Paynter, a Northrop spokesman, told the Times.

The airship was supposed to head to Afghanistan after the test flight, but this never happened. The program was cancelled, along with other military programs, including a $211-million airship built for the Air Force.