DARPA, Air Force develop hydrogen-powered spy blimp
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Mar 16th 2009 10:02PM
posted Mar 16th 2009 10:02PM
The Air Force has announced that it will do its part for economic stimulus by spending $400 million on a dirigible designed to float 65,000 feet above the Earth, where it will provide constant surveillance of an area (such as the Afghanistan-Pakistan border). ISIS (Integrated Sensor Is the Structure) is being billed as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane, kept aloft by helium and powered by hydrogen fuel cells that are recharged with solar panels. The thing will remain in place for up to ten years providing, as one Air Force scientist gushed, "constant surveillance, uninterrupted." If successful, the Air Force would like to see a whole fleet of these things. DARPA has signed on, agreeing to deliver a prototype by 2014.
Hindenburg 2.0
My thoughts exactly.
doubtful, considering the hindenburg had highly a highly flammable covering or paint (i forget exactly) and was inflated with hydrogen. helium doesnt burn though.
Very misleading title.
Pop.
New World Order, anyone?
What it could focus on....
A Girl
War
Cool dude smoking
..and colorful pants?
beware
Actually, the "cool dude smoking" is Andrew Dice Clay, which means this spy blimp would only be useful if it had Hellfire missiles.
A very cool idea until Superman or the space shuttle smashes into one.
@iamanidiot240
I think you mean thermite.
Truly, truly outrageous
hmmm. even at 65,000 ft. you could still SEE it. not to mention its radar signature.
nowhere does this article say how big the blimp is. at 30000 feet a 747 (231 feet long) looks tiny. if this blimp is at more than double that height and considerably smaller, i doubt that you will spot it in the sky.
go ahead though, prove me wrong with your eagle-eye vision
correction: it will be 150 feet. so its smaller than a jumbo-jet, and more than double the height. good luck shooting it down, let alone seeing it
Correction: the prototype will be 150ft the actual blimp will be 450ft.
Am I reading the picture incorrectly or are you blind, peter?
It clearly says the prototype is 150 ft. and the finished model 450 ft. ...
Why is our tax money going towards this? Blimps???? I tough we should be moving ahead in technology, not backwards. And who cares if you can/can't see it. A radar system could. One SAM could take this baby out.
DARPA, stick to UAVs and Satellites and small robotic insect death machines.
aaaaannd this created 2 jobs
Technically it created three jobs. Someone had to make the graphic.
4 jobs.... for the guy that will try to shoot it down.
2 jobs? by republicans standards that's a steal for only 400 million.
lol j/ks im not even American dont particularly like either parties, 400 million for this? r u guys fucking serious? How about you use the economic stimulus appropriately and not in something that will make you jobs now and then sit in a airfield in the future... Honestly, Pakistan will blow this thing out of the sky... let alone your big competitors Iran and Russia.
because thats the point of a stimulus dipshit. create more demand through government intervention (ie more jobs create more demand which creates more jobs and demand etc etc)
@lowdef try reading through my whole post next time dipwhore. Wow
oh fc it your too stupid to read through it again ill take out the appropriate sentence.
"not in something that will make you jobs now and then sit in an airfield in the future"
Blimp's are pretty much useless these days when they have produced this what next? a lighter faster version? should have done something with Jet Fighters, seeing as Russia's SU-37 will blow anything US made out of the sky.
oh ye, i said it bitch.
seriously, they expect one of those to stay in the air for 10 years? if i saw that over my air space i would shoot it down in an instant
I don't think many nations besides the one deploying this have the capability to shoot it down at that altitude.
Yea? YOUR AIRSPACE?
how did you buy it?
And if you did shoot it you wold have 10 black SUV's and 10 black choppers haul your ass away and you would never be seen again.
Terrorist.
Is that like China's right to the south china sea?
russia, china and the states have all managed to shoot down targets in space in the last 20 years so i'm sure some countries could still manage
iamanidiot is one of those people who likes to brag about his zombie holocaust-preparedness.
@iGoon
Well you see, airspace is the space above a country. So if Russia shoots it down over their country, that's fine.
Also, it'd think it be really hard to fit Russia in an SUV or a helicopter.
AT&T Get a few of these, strap some repeaters, and get rid of your spotty coverage!
Great place to put Cheney and Bush; inside a hot air balloon for 10 years.
wow... get over it, any Hoover / Curtis cracks while you're living in the past?
Two war criminals one blimp!
Imagine how much you could make streaming that video. Who do you think would eat the other first?
OH THE HUMANITY!
beat me to it.
OH THE HUGE MANATEE!
OH THE HUGE MAN TITTY
Thats what she said
man that mom of yours.. she's somethin
Good job Air Force, but where are the rest of the branches?
The Navy should at least do their part with creating jobs and focus on building-penguin shaped submarines.
DICE MAN!!! HOW YOU DOIN?
I'm quite disturbed that only one Engadget reader recognizes the Dice. The kids nowadays probably haven't even heard of Falco!
Amadaeus Amadaeus Amadaeus
Why the hell would we need to spy on DICE?!?!?!?
Dr. Zeus, Dr. Zeus, Dr. Zeus!
That is one half assed illustration of built in radar
It's a stealth radar, duh.
I'm sure this'll never be used by the gov against its own citizens, the very ones who worked hard to pay for this with their tax dollars.
It's for the greater good, really.
WAR IS PEACE
If it wasn't March 16, I would say "April Fools".
Virtually every nation on earth we care about looking at has an air force that could take this out. Most of them have access to SAM's. The Soviets took down the U2 traveling at MACH 3 at 65000 feet back in the early 60's.
We already look down on the US from space with resolution high enough to see a zit on your face, Hello Google Earth!!!
Frankly, I don't get it.....
I think Google Earth uses planes for the more detailed imagery and satellites for the higher-up imagery.
This will be used to police the "peaceful" borders of the Confederate United Magistrate, which are several countries split out of the former U.S.A.
Firstly, they are dirt cheap compared to a satellite, second, whatever detail you can see from space you can see even more from 65k feet, especially if you have a fleet of them and map everything in 3D. Thirdly, there are a ton of places these could be useful where there is very little risk of being shot down : Iraq, Afghanistan, US-Mexico border, South America, Africa. ...
The U2 was (is) sub-sonic, your thinking of the SR71 (none of these were ever shot down).
Somehow I accidently slipped from reality to some sort of urban blog site for sub 50 IQ thirteenyearolds. I do not usually read such messages but trolled through to see if even 1 of your commentators could acctually see the benefits of such a low cost large area survielance system. No one? Must be people from the "land of the free".
I feel I must explain to "coachgeorge" that a U2 could not hit Mach 1 in a dive far less Mach 3.
For the benefit of your unread masses the USSR scrambled over 200 fighters and had their entire anti aircraft system activelly trying to shoot down a U2 for over 3 years.
Gary Powers was sacrificed to allow the West to judge USSR AA capability, why else did the U2's do a regular run over the same route?
To think of 1 role for this system which would pay for itself in the first year would be to put 4 or 5 over the Indian Ocean, have a single warship responsible for cover and end piracy from Somalia. The warship role could be rotated through the maritime nations with 1 navies ship being responsible for 3 months. This would save multiple times the cost of the whole project per year.
Do you really think you can mount a SAM system to reach 65000ft on a fishing boat?
An Aegis type cruiser would have a difficult job shooting it down!
Pleeeeeese try to be realistic.
I have no axe to grind, think all US polticians are almost as bad as all our politicians, but I feel angry at this urban US anti americanism. It is no longer hip to be a rebel.
That stupidity should have ended in 1968 at the Sorborne, LSE and Grovsnor Square.
It wont replace the AWACS the amount of power required by the radar would far outstrip the solar panels/hydrogen fuel cells ability to feed the radar for more than just bursts. I promise I know better on this subject.... Oh and those ranges in the images are the unclassified range so take that for what its worth.
At 450' long, they could put a small reactor on it to power the radar. Use the power cells for the engines.
Oh yea, I still don't get it..................
i'm not saying that with other methods something similar couldn't be done but the method that they are describing here wouldn't and i doubt the reactor would work something about the nuclear material floating around in the sky would put people off. There are way to do it just this wouldn't be as good as the platforms it is trying to replace. Just like the globalhawk is unmanned and works great but if you need high quality images you still send a U2 out there it does many things well but nothing great such is the case with too many things these days.... Sorry I'll stop ranting not.
As stated before, I think the whole article is a joke. Early April Fools!
Give them AI and make a massive network of them in the sky.
SkyNet?
Sounds like a research project designed to waste our tax dollars......A bargain at $400 Million.
FYI, I like to follow some military funded projects.
this is essentially an updated version of the HAA (high Altitude Airship). Which has cancelled in 2007 because of budget problems.
So I guess a whole year and a half later were doing WAAAY better financially as a country...so why not bring on some expensive projects. *sarcasm included*
It's not like this somehow changes the ability of the government to monitor things going on on the ground. It's already possible from satellites and high altitude planes (and has been for decades) and it's not as if its limited to the government either. Anyone can hire a plane to do areal survey imaging or even a private satellite imaging company.
It would be nice if this somehow were able to reduce costs spent on spy satellites. A single satellite can cost billions when you include launch.
The world is bringing Skynet to full fruition, and we are just sitting back doing nothing. It won't be long now....
20 yrs from now when things get rough, look for a robot with Austrian accent..
Not yet, you'll surely die right after he says that he'll be back. Wait another 10 years when they finally hijack one of the T100's and send them to save . . . ah, what's that boy's name again?
LOL
Everyone here is missing the point: this isn't intended to replace spy planes, or satellites. What its intended to do is provide persistent surveillance over a border, say the US/Mexican border, or iraq/iran border (etc.) Something neither satellites nor planes can accomplish. That they will be easy to shoot down is irrelevant, as in final form they should be abundant and cheaper than the missiles required to shoot them down. Plus shooting them down in friendly airspace (the only place they would be employed) would be a very clear declaration of war.
Imagine how much coke and week the feds could bring over from Mexico with these. Thats gotta be what this is for.
Since when is the iraq/iran border or Afghanistan/Pakistan border friendly air space? Regarding being afraid of declaring war, Hello 9/11/2001. The defiance of Sadam H., The defiance of Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. Do you really think they care?
No, this is an April Fools Joke article.
"Very misleading title"
my thougts exactly. this isn't a hydrogen blimp, but a fuel-cell tank powered by a form of hydrogen/oxygen mixture. come on engadget, don't scare me like that
Why would you focus it on Andrew Dice Clay?
You cant blend it, it has no lasers........ what a total bummer. For $400mill it better have a strip poll and a bar full of Cristal.
jughead! no one?
Mmmm! Can't you just TASTE the freedom??
Why is this news? I did a preliminary design for one of these in college back in 2003 when Lockheed-Martin started working on them. The biggest problem we had was the power-to-weight ratio for the solar cells.
This is a waste of money. We already have one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_Blimp
Dude, that article is speculative.
The reports in the article sound just as ridiculous as UFO sightings.
Go look at the Stephenville report. They got the craft on radar and it directly correlates to the eyewitnesses. Game over.
One bullet = loss of $400 million
Am I missing something, or does this seem like a bad idea?
I'm sure they've accounted the cost of landing it every 4th of July into the $400,000,000 budget.
Right?
This thing is so big, it has to park at over 120,000. Hard to shoot with a bullet. Here is the report for non-believers in the big black blimp:
http://www.mufon.com/documents/MUFONStephenvilleRadarReport.pdf
Green lasers anyone?
Can't someone develop better commercial air travel for a change?
This is the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever heard, and you sheep actually believe it and simply make fun of it as a silly idea.
We have these crazy new fangled things called satellites now. They can do all the round the clock surveillance we need, sans a stupid technology that died along with the Hindenburg.
I wonder where this money is really going...
One more stupped expences,one more unused shits,one more fuck'n decisions...
Little million more poor people...
WAKE UP GENTELLMAN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...
Great idea! At 150 ft. and at that height I don't think anyone will know its there! It also depends on the materials used in the craft. Radar might go right through it. Also I don't think 3rd World countries will have enough technology to use to detect it.
The proposal described is not a blimp. It is a rigid air-ship. A blimp is flexible -like a loose baloon. An air-ship (like the Hindenburg) had a light frame, a covering, but independent bags of flotation gas.
For this reason, there were "air-craft carriers' in which planes had "hooks" but no wheels; they would grasp a trapese bar, then be drawn to the interior of the airship. Haviong the machinery inside, implies an airship, not a blimp.