By Glynn Cosker
Managing Editor, In Homeland Security
It’s likely that not too many Americans have ever heard of JLENS – short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. It’s the government’s giant radar-equipped blimp defense system that cost taxpayers approximately $2.7 billion over the past 17 years, according to a report Thursday in the Los Angeles Times.
The blimps are to serve as an early warning system if the United States were ever attacked by cruise missiles or weaponized drones. However, even with the high price tag, the system has failed to get off the ground (pun intended) and has now become what defense analysts label a ‘zombie’ project, i.e, one that is “costly, ineffectual and seemingly impossible to kill,” according to the LA Times.
It’s a pity, because JILENS was all set to transcend it’s zombie status earlier this year – albeit on a smaller scale – when a troubled U.S. Postal Service worker managed to fly a single-seated, rotary-wing drone-like aircraft over Washington D.C. airspace on April 15 before landing his device on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol – much to the delight of nearby photo snappers, but to the horror of everyone involved in homeland security and national defense.
Indeed, at the time, U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) asked a congressional hearing into the matter just how “a dude in a gyrocopter 100 feet in the air” was able to penetrate the many security measures in place to prevent such a feat. “Whose job is it to detect him?” Chaffetz asked Congress.
It was the zombie blimp JLENS’ job, but the system was “not operational” at the time, so states the LA Times, who further states that Raytheon Co., the Pentagon’s lead contractor for JLENS, has asserted that the system is “proven,” “capable,” “performing well right now” and “ready to deploy today.” That assertion seems highly unlikely.
Indeed, the Los Angeles Times investigation published Thursday found some rather contradictory facts regarding JLENS:
“In tests, JLENS has struggled to track flying objects and to distinguish friendly aircraft from threatening ones. A 2012 report by the Pentagon’s Operational Test and Evaluation office faulted the system in four “critical performance areas” and rated its reliability as “poor.” A year later, in its most recent assessment, the agency again cited serious deficiencies and said JLENS had “low system reliability. The system is designed to provide continuous air-defense surveillance for 30 days at a time, but had not managed to do so as of last month. Software glitches have hobbled its ability to communicate with the nation’s air-defense networks — a critical failing, given that JLENS’ main purpose is to alert U.S. forces to incoming threats.The massive, milk-white blimps can be grounded by bad weather and, if deployed in combat zones, would be especially vulnerable to enemy attack. Even if all those problems could be overcome, it would be prohibitively expensive to deploy enough of the airships to protect the United States along its borders and coasts.”
-LA Times’ investigative report, Monday, Sept. 24, 2015.
The idea of putting money behind a defense project that helps to protect Americans from rogue drones and low-flying aircraft is a good idea – especially when the massive blimps are unmanned and pose little danger to the public. However, the LA Times report pinpoints the use of Raytheon’s lobbyists who continually urged Washington to keep JLENS going, despite obvious setbacks (including an accident during a storm in 2010 in which one of the JLENS blimps was destroyed by an unsecured civilian aircraft) and push back from Army leaders who saw the project as costly and a non-starter in light of more pressing issues, i.e., protected American soldiers from RAM (rockets, artillery, mortar) attacks. Still, the lobbyists won out and the project was constantly pumped with cash – so far, to no avail.
Oddly enough, JLENS It’s not the first time a government-sponsored zombie blimp project went unfulfilled. From 2010, the Army spent more than three years and close to $300 million building a football field-sized blimp labeled the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) to provide surveillance over Afghanistan battlefields. The project went over-budget, costs got too high, and the government ultimately sold the blimp prototype back to the contractor for around $300,000.
Ultimately, it’s easy to see why such an expensive project, with no return on investment, would have the word ‘zombie’ associated with it. Is it time to rein in such expensive endeavors?
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