JLENS: Military multi-intelligence blimps to fly over East Coast US - Video

A new hi-tech, Helium-filled, inflatable, surveillance blimp is scheduled to be flown over the East coast of the US in October 2014.

JLENS, or Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defence Elevated Netted Sensor System is costing $2.7 billion in total (that's around English £1.64 billion).

The new state-of-the-art blimps will patrol the shoreline and give the US administration early warning of any cruiser missiles headed towards the border.

Currently anchored to army property in Maryland, these spy blimps claim to have some of the world's most advanced surveillance equipment on board.

The JLENS system, has been designed to spot missiles carrying explosive warheads and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capabilities, launched from as far away as the Arctic or the Gulf of Mexico.

Deceptive capability
To give you an idea of the capabilities of these blimps and the radar technology they utilise, the floating airships can spot an object from a distance of 340 miles — that's further than the driving distance between London and Newcastle.

Flying in pairs, the blimps will offer "360 degree 24/7 surveillance for 30 days at a time" according to contractors Raytheon.

Each JLENS blimp measures 74m from front to back and hovers at an elevation of 10,000 feet, with two blimps working in tandem, one can watch out for threats while the other coordinates the interception process, should it be needed.

Missile guidance
If the US Army had to respond to an incoming missile, for example, then the blimps can be used to help guide fighter jets and their on-board arsenals towards the target, neutralising the threat much earlier and more quickly than when using conventional tracking and intercept methods.

Similar technology is used to protect American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army has assured the public that there's nothing to worry about, but privacy groups have expressed concern about the potential for the JLENS ships to track the movements of citizens.

"The primary mission... is to track airborne objects," Army officials said. "Its secondary mission is to track surface moving objects such as vehicles or boats. The capability to track surface objects does not extend to individual people."

According to the experts, details such as individual faces or car registration plates cannot be seen by the blimps even with specialised cameras fitted.

Built-in resilience
The blimps are known as aerostats, airships that are essentially lighter than air and which require tethering to the ground.

Even a well-aimed rifle shot would not be enough to bring one of the blimps down: the pressure of the helium inside is very close to the pressure of the outside air, which means rapid deflation is not possible.

"When you need persistent surveillance in a particular area, there is no better solution than the aerostat because it's there all the time,” said Ron Bendlin of TCOM, who have helped manufacture the new series of blimps.

The tethers that tie the blimps down are interesting too: they provide power to the airships and control communications to and from them via fibre optic cabling.

Each line is protected by Kevlar and an insulated sleeve. Most of the functionality of each of the blimps is managed down on the ground from the command centres.

Raytheon rocket onboard camera - Video

Onboard video footage shows a rocket’s flight during the International Rocketry Challenge, held during the Paris Air Show on June 21, 2013, at Le Bourget Airport.

The goal of the challenge was to launch a rocket 750 feet in the air within a 48- to

Credit: Raytheon Company

Raytheon to design DARPA new SEEME Military Imaging Satellites

Raytheon has been awarded a $1.5 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract for phase one of the agency's Space Enabled Effects for Military Engagements (SeeMe) program.

During the next nine months, the company will complete the design for small satellites to enhance warfighter situational awareness in the battlespace.

The SeeMe program will provide useful on-demand imagery information directly to the war-fighter in the field from a low-cost satellite constellation launched on a schedule that conforms to Department of Defense operational tempos.

"Leveraging our state-of-the-art missile assembly lines, we can mass produce these small, lightweight satellites quickly and affordably," said Tom Bussing, Raytheon Missile Systems' vice president of Advanced Missile Systems.

"As the world's only producer of exoatmospheric kill vehicles, we are already developing and building hardware to space standards."

For this contract, Raytheon has teamed with Sierra Nevada Corporation, University of Arizona and SRI International to assist with design work and eventually production.

Next year, in phase two of the SeeMe program, the Raytheon team would build six satellites for ground testing.

"We are pleased to be working with DARPA to solve the challenge of providing warfighters with a tactical space sensor capability at a production rate price," said Bussing.

SUOMI NPP VIIRS: Raytheon's Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite

VIIRS was launched into orbit aboard the Suomi NPP satellite in October 2011.

Raytheon's Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) was the focus of a high-profile panel discussion at this week's annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.

The consensus among the panel's meteorologists: VIIRS is opening up exciting new possibilities for weather and climate monitoring.

Commenting on VIIRS' unique day-night band, which enables the capture of highly detailed imagery in extremely low-light conditions, Steve Miller, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, said: "VIIRS allows us to use the moon as a surrogate for the sun, providing visibility into nighttime weather and atmospheric conditions with incredible detail never before possible. This makes it a very powerful asset for operational forecasting."

VIIRS was launched into orbit aboard the Suomi NPP satellite in October 2011. Suomi NPP, a NASA-NOAA joint mission, is the precursor to a series of spacecraft that will make up the NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System, which is intended to provide critical weather and climate data for the next two decades.

Strabala of the University of Wisconsin enumerated the technological improvements encompassed in VIIRS over legacy systems, including increased scan distance and greater consistency in resolution across each image scan.

As the scientific community continues to learn how to optimize its use of the VIIRS data, Strabala indicated one drawback to the system: "We only have one such instrument on orbit."

Jedlovec, SPoRT project lead at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., cited the critical role the VIIRS day-night band played in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

"The VIIRS night-time imagery was provided to disaster relief agencies and allowed emergency teams to expedite their response to hurricane-ravaged areas," he said.

"This unprecedented night-time perspective was a huge help to relief organizations trying to measure the scope of impact."

Space Debris: Space Fence to be extended

The Raytheon designed Air Force Space Surveillance System, also  known as Space Fence.

The incremental reviews included overall system design and architecture, radar hardware and software configuration items, allocated baseline, logistics, facilities, test, modeling and simulation along with the radar prototype demonstration.

Following the reviews, the contractors worked on risk reduction activities and design maturation.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center here recently put out a request for proposal to move the Space Fence program forward.

Space Fence will be a system of up to two land-based radars, the first site located at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, to track objects entering Earth's orbit.

According to program officials, it will form the foundation of improved space situational awareness by expanding the ability to detect, track, identify and characterize orbiting objects such as commercial and military satellites, smaller objects, maneuvering satellites, break-up events and lower inclination objects.

"Space situational awareness is a continual concern and challenge for U.S. and ally nations," said Ken Francois, Space Fence program manager. 

"The Space Fence program will increase the capability to provide predictability in reducing the chance of a collision or attack."

During a Defense Acquisition Board held in August, some changes were made to the program's acquisition strategy.

"The most significant change is that we are moving to an incremental approach. Increment 1 includes the Space Operations Center and Site 1 facilities construction and radar build," said Francois.

"Increment 2 includes Site 2 and system integration. This approach maximizes our efficient use of resources and will allow us to reduce costs to the Defense Department and the Air Force, ultimately saving money for the taxpayer."

Raytheon’s real-life Iron Man suit in action

It doesn’t have wrist cannons, and it will probably never fly. It isn’t quite ready for battle, nor will it make (most) ladies swoon. But Raytheon’s XOS 2 exoskeleton, the the next refinement of 2008’s XOS robo-suit, lets users easily lift hundreds of pounds with a single hand, and punch harder than a heavyweight boxer. The project, like seemingly every borderline sci-fi contraption in development today, has its roots in a DARPA request.

The agency solicited various designs for a powered exoskeleton all the way back in 2000, and has been funding this design ever since. The basis for the XOS suit was conceived by a company called Sarcos, which was later subsumed into the Raytheon empire.

The suit’s primary purpose is to make heaving lifting easier, which is accomplishes using a powerful hydraulic pumps connected to a sturdy, Mecha-like frame.

The XOS 2 bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor–a sign that the project is maturing, not stagnating. The latest upgrades, according to Dr Fraser Smith, VP of Operations for Raytheon Sarcos, are meant to be subtle:

The first exoskeleton was essentially a proof of concept. It shows that our vision could be translated into reality, that we could augment the wearer’s capabilities without impeding his or her natural range of motion or reflexes. XOS 2 is lighter, faster, and stronger, yet it uses 50% less power. And its enhanced design also means that it’s more resistant to environmental damage.

In real terms, the differences are actually kind of staggering: While the previous suit could make 60 pounds feel like ten; the new one can take that same amount of effort and lift 170. It manages this while using just half the power, though it’s still not truly autonomous, unable operate unless hooked by cable to an external power source.

The suit is evidently easy to use and more comfortable than you might expect of a 150-pound metal body suit. Its test engineer, Rex Jameson, says wearing it “doesn’t feel any different in terms of effort whether you throw a huge payload on the back of the suit or walk around with a single weight in each hand,” Essentially, “I feel like me, only a faster, stronger version of me.”