Tampa Bay Online (TBO.com) June 12, 2002
Radar Blimps Proposed To Get Defense System Up, Running
By TED JACKOVICS
TAMPA - Blimps larger than a football field - carrying radar to detect aircraft, missiles and ships - would soar 13 miles above the Earth under one proposal for improving homeland defense. In another, the Air Force would reopen sites in North Florida and two other states where it operated a different radar-balloon system intended to detect drug smuggling aircraft and other low-level intruders.
The airborne radar initiatives are part of the heightened interest in rethinking North American Aerospace Defense Command resources since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The new radar network would place 10 unpiloted airships at an altitude of 70,000 feet along the periphery of the coastal United States, said U.S. Air Force Maj. Ed Thomas, a spokesman in Colorado Springs, Colo., for NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canadian defense organization.
The blimps would be deployed from Maine through Florida and California to the state of Washington. Canada is exploring the project, although radar in its far northern reaches provides lengthy advance warning of intruders.
The Federal Aviation Administration operates the U.S. radar system and shares data with the military from the FAA's coastal sites.
But its radar reaches only about 200 miles, and low-level surveillance is limited.
The radar on the high-flying airships would range farther - about 325 miles - and correct the low-level deficiencies, Thomas said.
The airships would be solar- powered and kept aloft for more than a year well-above weather systems.
``This would enhance NORAD's radar capability, but it would be an intermediate- term solution,'' Thomas said. ``Space-based radar is the long-term solution, but we are not there yet.''
NORAD has not specified how much the project would cost.
NORAD would like a private contractor to build a two-third scale prototype.
The operational airship could be more than 500 feet long and 150 feet in diameter.
If the concept works, NORAD would immediately seek funding for full-scale operation, possibly as soon as 2005, Thomas said.
Better Surveillance Of The Gulf
Two airships would cover the vast majority of Gulf of Mexico airspace, Thomas said.
That could help solve the problem of a 60,000-square- mile radar gap over the Gulf, which aviation officials say restricts the number of flights in an area where air traffic is becoming busier.
The Gulf of Mexico Work Group did not include a high- altitude radar platform in its FAA proposal last year to fill the radar gap and improve air safety.
But it said the concept is a viable alternative, albeit one whose disadvantage is that it is unproven.
The new system would be more analogous to a low-altitude satellite than a balloon system, Thomas said.
But unlike a satellite, the airship could more easily be moved into positions and retrieved for maintenance and upgrades.
``The military has a history with airship programs, and the Army has been looking at this for [battlefield] cruise missile defense for the past five to six years,'' said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit group in Arlington, Va., that studies defense policy.
The Air Force program likely stands a better chance of being included in next year's budget than in the past, Pike said.
Airplane and cruise missile threats are not new, but they have received little attention since the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s.
Pentagon and defense industry experts have warned - without much luck - that cruise missiles are inexpensive, easy-to-build weapons that terrorists could fire toward the United States from ships or aircraft.
But since Sept. 11, air defense initiatives have drawn greater interest.
Filling The Low-Level Gap
Now the Air Force, which designates units for NORAD operations, has taken another look at a radar-balloon network it operates from seven southern U.S. sites and one in Puerto Rico.
The U.S. Customs Service started the program in 1984, but the Air Force took it over in the early 1990s.
It grounded three balloons in a 1999 budget crunch, leaving a low-level surveillance gap in West Florida and between Houston and New Orleans.
Military and congressional sources have questioned the performance of the ``tethered aerostats,'' helium-filled balloons twice the size of the Goodyear Blimp that fly about 15,000 feet high and are fastened to the ground with a thick cable.
The main problem is they must be brought down during bad weather. But it's been the only low-level surveillance available, beyond random flights by Air Force E-3 Sentry aircraft equipped with long- range radar atop the fuselage.
In March, the Air Force awarded Lockheed-Martin a $79 million contract to upgrade the low-level system.
And the Air Force is thinking about reactivating the three sites it closed, including one in Horseshoe Beach, in Florida's Big Bend region.
``Recommendations are being made at certain levels looking at reemploying those aerostats, but no decisions have been made,'' NORAD's Thomas said. ``It's in flux. I can't go beyond that.''
The Air Force grounded the balloon at its 33-acre Horseshoe Beach site nearly three years before its lease expired. Gulf Coast Supply, a Horseshoe Beach metal roofing and fabricating company that employs 20 people, bought the property from an investment company last year.
``We took over the site on Sept. 11, ironically, and the Air Force came and asked if we could hold off changing things until January because of the events that day,'' said John Sherrill, the company's co- owner.
The Air Force moved out by year's end.
Sherrill hopes the Air Force would find other land if it returns.
``This is a thriving business for the local economy,'' Sherrill said of his supply business. ``But there's lots of vacant land around here.''
LB: FILLING GAPS
The Air Force operates eight tethered balloons originally used by the U.S. Customs Service to detect drug smuggling aircraft flying below conventional radar coverage. It may reopen three sites closed in 1999, including one in North Florida.PURPOSE: Detect aircraft at low altitudes AIRSHIP SIZE: 208 feet long by 65 feet in diameter PAYLOAD: 1,200 pounds of radar ALTITUDE: 15,000 feet POWER: Helium balloon tethered to the ground LOCATIONS: Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Puerto Rico OPERATIONAL: Since 1984
NORAD wants to test an age-old, low-tech airship concept to carry radar that could improve U.S. air defense.PURPOSE: Detect aircraft, missiles at all altitudes Airship SIZE: 500 feet long by 150 feet in diameter PAYLOAD: 4,500 pounds of radar and other electronic gear ALTITUDE: 70,000 feet POWER: Solar LOCATIONS: 10 sites around the coastal United States OPERATIONAL: Beyond 2005
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