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Big Brother Blimp

The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) has awarded contracts for the DARPA Integrated Sensor is Structure (ISIS) program. It will develop sensors for the 500 foot long, autonomous High Altitude Airships (HAA) that stay aloft for years at a time, reports Robots.net.

Lockheed received $8.8 million to develop a power system for the stratospheric airship. Northrop Grumman got $15.5 million for power systems and the Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) sensor that will be bonded directly to the hull material of the airship. AESA uses many “active” transmit/receive elements. Passive electronically scanned array (PESA) antennas, by contast, are powered by a single RF source feeding numerous emitting elements. GaAs MMIC chips are the key. Microwave Journal has the latest.

The ISIS platforms are intended to be able to track cruise missle up to 370 miles away and people up to 200 miles away, reports Robots.net. The robot airships would float in geostationary positions at 70,000 feet, safely above the jet stream and severe weather. The UHF and X-Band radar would be bonded to the flexible hull, making the radar’s ‘aperture’ almost as large as the blimp itself, producing far higher resolution.

Helium would provide lift, while a thin film of photovoltaic cells would charge fuel cells. Differential thrust would be provided by electric props. Lockheed Martin has previously been awarded $40 million in 2003 by NORAD, which wants 10 ships to cover the continental borders of the US and another $149 million earlier this year for development of a prototype.

Lockheed’s High Altitude Airship will station-keep high in the stratosphere over over Akron, Ohio this summer. Sky Sentry has sole source contracts with the NRO, Lockheed Martin — Akron and Harris as principal subcontractors.

The evolved antenna, used on NASA’s ST5 satellites were designed on a cluster of eighty PCs. Evolved antennas use artificial evolution – independent of a human engineer.

A computer creates a set of random antenna designs, each with a genetic code dictating its shape. Antenna designs that performed well were “mated” to create new designs, and over many generations, the final design emerged.

The Pentagon has endorsed a plan that could lead to a multibillion-dollar U.S. missile defense in space and strain ties with China, Russia and other countries, says MSN.

The space-based pilot project would involve just one or two ”small-scale” interceptors with no offensive capability, according to Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency. The Bush administration has been spending roughly $10 billion on ballistic missile defense.

The European Commission’s ‘Eye in the sky’ project is similar to the SAIC-designed security blimp used in the Olympic Games, which monitored transportation flows.

GlobeTel Communications, a provider of Internet Protocol telecommunications, is buying substantially all of the assets of Sanswire Technologies. Sanswire planned to launch a national broadband wireless network using High Altitude Airships called “Stratellites“, that when in place, will allow Sanswire to provide high-speed wireless Internet access to subscribers throughout the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.