Flash Gordon Left Me The Keys

Blimp makers rise to military's next task
Companies vie to build unmanned airship that flies higher, longer

The hulking airship hangar at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Akron campus hasn't been used for its intended purpose in more than 40 years.

But if the company wins a concept design competition, its legendary Airdock could be back in the business of assembling lighter-than-air vehicles within the next few years.

The Missile Defense Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics and Surveillance Systems a $2 million contract to design an unmanned solar-powered blimp that could maneuver well above the jetstream for at least 30 days, which would allow it to serve as a platform for cameras, radar and communications equipment.

The agency has awarded similar contracts to defense giant Boeing Co. and to Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp. in Tarzana, Calif. Aeros is working with Northrop Grumman Corp., which purchased Lyndhurst-based TRW Inc. late last year.

The Missile Defense Agency expects to narrow the field by September to one or two candidates and to select one team in June 2004 to build and demonstrate a prototype by 2006.

Airships once were widely used by the military for aerial surveillance, but they were largely rendered obsolete by satellites and large ground-based radar. Plus, the blimps, which were manned, could only go so high and were grounded in bad weather. Blimps today are mostly used as floating billboards and to provide aerial views of sporting events.

Several technological advances have led the military to believe that high-altitude blimps can be useful, said a senior Missile Defense Agency official who declined to be named. That belief is fostered by growing confidence in unmanned aerial vehicles such as the Predator and Global Hawk that carry sensors and provide intelligence to battlefield commanders.

The high-altitude blimp could carry the same kind of sensors, only larger, and stay in the air much longer. The Missile Defense Agency envisions sending up cameras that could detect a rocket plume at takeoff or a warhead in flight. The U.S. Army thinks the blimp could be a communications relay, while North American Aerospace Defense Command hopes blimps can be used for air defense.

If selected to build its design, Lockheed would assemble its prototype in the Airdock, which is nearly 1,175 feet long and large enough to house the biggest of the ore freighters that ply the Great Lakes.

"I think it has the potential to be something substantial," said Ron Browning, Lockheed's director of business development for surveillance systems.

He declined to offer many specifics about the Lockheed Martin effort so as not to tip off the competition. For example, he wouldn't say how many of the 550 Lockheed Martin employees in Akron are assigned to the project.

The Akron campus of Lockheed Martin, formerly part of Goodyear Aerospace, has a legacy of developing lighter-than-air technology. Two massive dirigibles, which differ from blimps because they have internal skeletons, were built in the Airdock for the U.S. Navy in the 1930s. The last blimp was built there in 1960.

Loral Corp. bought Goodyear Aerospace in 1987, then sold it to Lockheed Martin in 1996.

The Akron operation still contributes to the development of airships. It built the envelope for the latest Goodyear blimp, owned by Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the former parent of Goodyear Aerospace. It also designed several aerostats - tethered balloons - that hover up to 15,000 feet above the southern border of the United States, providing surveillance for the U.S. Air Force. Lockheed Martin designed and built radars installed on the aerostats, too.

An aircraft brake company uses the Airdock hangar for storage and manufacturing now. Rubber sheathing covers much of the original corrugated metal skin.

Browning said he expects stiff competition for the production job. Boeing builds airplanes, rockets and satellites and is a major defense contractor. Aeros is a much younger company, only 9 years old, but it is owned by Igor Pasternak, who was involved with lighter-than-air technology before immigrating to the United States from Ukraine when the Soviet Union was collapsing, said Fred Edworthy, vice president for programs at Aeros.

Aeros, which has 32 employees, has built 12 free-flying blimps, including four certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, and 15 tethered aerostats, Edworthy said.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit defense analysis group in suburban Washington, called the high-altitude airship a "fun little program" that has potential, especially as a replacement for aerostats.

"I mean, the Hindenburg not withstanding, I continue to be a big fan of balloons," he said.

Where are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
In the American hunt for Iraq's banned weapons, drums of suspicious chemicals turn out to be crop pesticide; a cache of white powder is found to be explosives.

More than six weeks into the Iraq campaign, there has been a string of false alarms but no discovery of what the Bush administration said was its main justification for going to war - chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.

"As someone who supported the war, ... I wish they'd hurry up and find something," said John Pike, an analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.

But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says "I'm not frustrated at all" by the lack of evidence so far.

A military official involved with the search teams said last week they are under "intense pressure from Washington to come up with something." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the teams are overwhelmed with work and looking forward to promised reinforcements.

"Clearly the administration has got to deliver the goods," said Charles Pena with the Washington-based Cato Institute.

And the United States will, President Bush and Cabinet officers insist.

"We'll find them, and it's just going to be a matter of time to do so," the president said Saturday.

"I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there, and the evidence will be forthcoming," Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

But after scores of fruitless searches, other administration officials privately have stopped promising that. Some now say that instead of finding weapons stockpiles, they might find nothing more than documents and other evidence that the program once existed and was either destroyed or abandoned.

"Politically, this could be a big problem," said Paul Keer of the Arms Control Association, a Washington disarmament group. "If it turns out they ... exaggerated, people will say we attacked without justification - some are starting to say that now."

Before the war, administration officials did not just say Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they also said they knew where some of them were.

In an unsuccessful bid for U.N. approval for the war, Powell showed the Security Council satellite photos and intelligence he said indicated weapons were being moved, and he named sites where he said chemical weapons were held.

"The intelligence community still stands behind that information. I do," he said Sunday.

U.S.-led teams of military and civilian experts have reported finding nothing conclusive, however, after visiting most of some 100 sites that prewar American intelligence agencies said were the most probable hiding places. Hundreds more sites remain.

Expected intelligence from senior captured Iraqis who might have been most knowledgeable about the government's secrets is not materializing. One by one, they are insisting under interrogation that the government had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons programs in recent years, U.S. officials say.

Pentagon officials said just days before the war that they had intelligence that chemical weapons had been distributed to some Iraqi military units. None has been found.

Hopes now may lie in greatly expanding the search effort. Advance teams for a group of some 1,000 experts, including former U.N. weapons inspectors and experts in intelligence, computers, demolition and such have started to arrive in the region to set up a larger program for analyzing intelligence, interrogating prisoners and scouring suspicious sites.

The new group will take control of the roughly 200 experts who have been searching so far, bringing additional expertise to the task. But officials say it is likely to be a couple of months before they are all assembled in Iraq.

Arguing for patience, Loren Thompson of the Washington-based Lexington Institute noted that U.N. inspections struggled with Iraq for a dozen years and could not find all they were looking for.

"I don't think the expectation was that this stuff would be sticking out like a sore thumb," he said. "I think eventually they'll find the weapons, but the important point is that the government that would have thought to use them against us is gone."

Some critics maintain that is not the point at all. They say the question always has been not whether Saddam had weapons, but whether those weapons were a big enough threat to the United States to justify war.

"If the Iraqis did not use them ... to defend an invasion of their own country, when were they ever going to use them, and how were they a threat to the United States?" asked Cato Institute's Pena. "That's the question that has to be asked and is being glossed over."

Aerospace experts: Delta IV work here too important to be stopped
A government probe into Boeing Co.'s rocket program probably won't affect work at Boeing's Decatur plant, because the Alabama-made Delta IV is still the only American rocket that can lift heavy payloads into space, industry experts said Monday.

The Delta IV - built by Boeing in Decatur - is deemed a national security asset needed to place Air Force spy satellites into space. That makes it a vital commodity the government is not likely to do without, said Charles Vick, a senior analyst and space expert with GlobalSecurity.org.

"I don't see much, if anything, coming out of an investigation," Vick said. "The government might change things when this program is recompeted, but other than that, what can they do?"

The Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program, initiated in 1994 to lower the cost of launching military payloads, is scheduled to be rebid after 2006.

The Air Force and the Department of Justice have launched separate investigations into allegations that Boeing, while developing its Delta IV rocket, used technology and plans stolen from its chief competitor, Lockheed Martin Corp. Boeing officials have confirmed they are cooperating with an investigation, but have declined further comment.

John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said many times investigations into major defense contractors result "in nothing more than a slap on the wrist," and in some case a few people might face fines or jail time. Major program changes generally don't sprout out of investigations.

"It's unlikely anything would happen to Delta IV program as a whole," Pike said. "Individuals would get fired or go to jail, but that normally doesn't have impact on entire work force."

Boeing built the $450 million rocket plant in Decatur to produce the booster segments of the Delta IV. To reduce costs, Boeing also has recently moved manufacturing of key Delta II parts to Decatur. About 500 people currently work at the Decatur plant.

Launch industry watchers say Boeing's Delta program is critical not only to the Air Force, but to NASA's launch of unmanned probes and as a potential launch vehicle for NASA's planned Orbital Space Plane. That means the government is unlikely to force Boeing shutter the Delta plant in Decatur any time soon, Vick said.

Vick said the Air Force relies solely on the Delta IV heavy-lift rocket to place spy satellites into orbit. There are eight major military payloads set to be launched by Delta rockets over the next two years, and Boeing has the contract for 22 of the Air Force's 29 launches over the next five years.

The Delta IV is also the only American rocket that could take crew members to the International Space Station.

"The Delta IV is extremely critical to NASA and the Air Force because it is the only launch vehicle that can be used for programs that are critical and, in some cases, behind," schedule, Vick said.

The Delta IV-Orbital Space Plane combination is seen as a reliable and cheaper way to ferry crew and small amounts of cargo to the space station. A Delta IV launch is estimated to cost between $80 to $150 million. A single space shuttle ride to the station costs more than $500 million.