My old company did some of the planning for this $2.7 billion gobbet of military pork that Raytheon and Hughes have foisted on the taxpayers. It was to be distributed to Army units world-wide. Problems like this were, uh, not un-ancticipated. There's also a big net hanging from a cable between the "aerostats" (gasbags) that the FAA wasn't too crazy about having anywhere near any airspace they were responsible for, which is all of it. The intent would have been to use it in an overseas combat theater of operations rather than domestically, but of course you have to train the soldiers who'll "fly" it.
What's that you say? The bad guys will see the big balloons and shoot them down? Not so fast, helium-breath:
JLENS aerostats are filled with 590,000 cubic feet of non-flammable helium. Given its operational altitude, the internal pressure of JLENS is about the same as the exterior pressure, which makes the system difficult to shoot down. Airships can absorb multiple punctures before they lose altitude. When they do, they would come down so slowly that they could be reeled in, easily repaired, and quickly redeployed.
<img src="https://www.t-nation.com/img/photos/2008/08-036-training/image007.jpg" />
IT IS BALLOON!
It could be a |real tragedy.|
|later that day|
Awshit.
<img src="http://facsimilemagazine.com/2011/12/img/blimp.jpg"/>
My old company did some of the planning for this $2.7 billion gobbet of military pork that Raytheon and Hughes have foisted on the taxpayers. It was to be distributed to Army units world-wide. Problems like this were, uh, not un-ancticipated. There's also a big net hanging from a cable between the "aerostats" (gasbags) that the FAA wasn't too crazy about having anywhere near any airspace they were responsible for, which is all of it. The intent would have been to use it in an overseas combat theater of operations rather than domestically, but of course you have to train the soldiers who'll "fly" it.
What's that you say? The bad guys will see the big balloons and shoot them down? Not so fast, helium-breath:
What could possibly go wrong?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS
Roger Livesey as the Blimp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8GgfHyCfWs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdrAdcxFB9c
Or maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pwzZZL-ZJI is more apt?