$2.7B blimp system raising questions
House panel leaders seek records after runaway military airship wreaks havoc
The spectacle of a giant military blimp wreaking havoc across two Mid-Atlantic states last week has prompted congressional leaders to question the worth of a long troubled missile-defense program called the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, congressional leaders wrote that the breakaway event “raises questions about the value and reliability of JLENS,” a system of radar-equipped blimps designed to detect enemy missiles, drones or other low-flying threats.
The letter noted that in April, the system had “failed to detect” a rotary-wing aircraft that flew through Washington’s highly restricted airspace before landing on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. The craft was flown by a Florida postal worker seeking to dramatize his demands for campaign finance change.
The letter, sent Thursday, was signed by the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland.
They asked Carter and Foxx to provide extensive records to “help the committee understand whether JLENS is a worthwhile investment of taxpayer dollars.”
The letter requests all Defense Department contracts related to the blimp-based system, as well as “documents referring or relating to the reliability of JLENS, including … reliability improvement plans, developmental test results, deployment test results, electronic environmental effects testing results, and information assurance test results.”
On Wednesday, a 243-footlong blimp broke loose from its mooring at the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and rode the winds over parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania for four hours, dragging a 6,700-foot cable that knocked down power lines and left thousands of people without electricity. Two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled to track the airship before it came to rest on the outskirts of Moreland Township, Pa., more than 120 miles from its base.
Since its inception in 1998, the system has cost taxpayers more than $2.7 billion — yet it has never fulfilled its intended mission.
A Los Angeles Times investigation published in September found that in test exercises, the system had struggled to track flying objects and to distinguish friendly aircraft from threatening ones.
Among other problems, software glitches have hobbled its ability to communicate with the nation’s air-defense networks.
At the blimps’ maximum altitude of 10,000 feet, the radar they carry can see 340 miles in any direction, far beyond the limits that the curvature of the Earth imposes on land- or sea-based radar.
The blimps are designed to operate in pairs. One searches widely for threats. The other is supposed to focus narrowly on airborne objects and transmit “fire control” data on location, speed and trajectory.
If the missile-defense system were working as intended, U.S. fighter jets or groundbased rockets would use the fire-control data to intercept and destroy an intruder.
The 7,000-pound airships are anchored to the ground by high-strength, 11/8-inch-thick Kevlar tethers. A ground crew of about 130 is needed to operate a pair of blimps around-the-clock.
A 2012 report by the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation office faulted the system in four “critical performance areas” and rated its reliability as “poor.” A year later, in its most recent assessment, the agency again cited serious deficiencies and reported “low system reliability.”
Despite the problems, Raytheon Co., the prime contractor, and other backers of the missile-defense system have marshaled support in Congress and in the military to keep taxpayer money flowing to the program.
Army leaders tried to kill the system in 2010, the Times reported in September, but Raytheon mobilized its congressional lobbyists. Within the Pentagon, Marine Corps Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went to the program’s defense, arguing that it held promise for enhancing the nation’s air defenses.
At Cartwright’s urging, money was found in 2011 for a trial run of the technology — officially, an “operational exercise” — in the skies above Washington.
Cartwright retired the same year — and joined Raytheon’s board of directors five months later. As of the end of 2014, Raytheon had paid him more than $828,000 in cash and stock for serving as a director, Securities and Exchange Commission records show.
Two of the blimps have been based at Aberdeen Proving Ground to carry out the operational exercise.
Philip E. Coyle III, a former director of operational testing and evaluation for the Pentagon, said the latest setback demands strict scrutiny of the program.
“This is yet another incident with JLENS that calls for the Congress to examine the effectiveness of the system,” Coyle said in an interview.
Questions surround what caused the blimp, also called an aerostat, to break loose and drift such a long distance. A retired military officer who oversaw the program said that “a properly functioning deflation device should have brought the aerostat to a low-speed impact within a few miles” of its base in Maryland.