Pentagon Funds a $400M Blimp ProjectMay 01, 2009
The Pentagon has long had high hopes for a giant dirigible that can glide 65,000 feet above Earth and peer down for 10 full years, providing detailed radar images of activity below. This week, Lockheed Martin received a $400 million order from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to design a stratospheric airship, according to a Bloomberg article. A DARPA spokesperson told Bloomberg that Lockheed beat out Northrop Grumman for the contract. Lockheed and Raytheon, meantime, were awarded a contract for a radar system dubbed the Integrated Sensor IS Structure that can track people, missiles and vehicles as far as 373 miles away. The project is expected to be completed by 2013. |
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