Eyes in the sky

Firms develop superblimps for defense and telecom uses

June 25, 2004 BY KEVIN COUGHLIN Star-Ledger Staff

Dirigibles have had their ups and downs.

The Super Bowl hardly would rate the name without spectacular views of the football game from a famous blimp. Hitler's Hindenburg, on the other hand, still looms among the great disasters of the 20th century.

So it remains to be seen if the High Altitude Airship gets off the ground.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology hopes so. The Newark school is the science arm of Auxilia, a commercial venture seeking customers for a breed of mammoth airships with roots in the "Star Wars" space shield pitched by President Reagan.

"It's futuristic, yet very retro," says Donald Sebastian, NJIT's vice president for research and development. Expected to span nearly two football fields, these are "Snoopy blimps on steroids," he says.

Lockheed Martin aims to fly a prototype by 2006, to prove a point to the Pentagon. Namely, that a behemoth 25 times bigger than the Goodyear Blimp can hover 12 miles high, above most wind and weather, for a full month.

Unmanned.

Dangling a two-ton payload.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency and Department of Homeland Security, backers of the $92 million project, think mega-blimps someday might scan for incoming missiles or suspicious cargo ships. Defense contractors cite advances in lightweight materials, solar panels and batteries as reasons the project should fly. Eventually, they say, fuel cells may power such blimps for year-long missions.

Auxilia's partners believe these leviathons of the stratosphere could double as telecom platforms. High-flying blimps might coordinate emergency communications, tracking first responders below. They could relay data for corporations and stock markets during power outages. For poor countries, blimps might enable cheap mobile phone networks. At home, they might beam broadband Internet across 80-mile swaths.

NJIT has applied for federal grants to develop special polymers for the blimp's skin, and for sensors to relay information to airships.

The school is honing technology for detecting explosives and biological agents, based on unique "colors" they reflect. NJIT physicist John Federici envisions marine cargo containers fitted with detectors, which in turn could relay readings to blimps and satellites.

Auxilia's homeland-security aspirations are reflected by its name: "Auxilia" refers to noncitizen troops who beefed up the Roman legions of antiquity.

Incorporated last December in New York State, Auxilia counts several defense contractors among its partners. They include Science Applications International, Gensym, CACI International and EYP Mission Critical Facilities. Much of Auxilia's work so far involves computer simulations, to show prospective customers what a superblimp can do.

"Unlike a satellite, an airship can be put up and taken down as technologies are changed and improved," says Auxilia Chief Executive Donald DeVito, in Albany, N.Y. Like most people in the project, the investment banker caught the blimp bug after meeting "General Abe."

That's retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, director of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative from 1984 to 1989. Tens of billions of dollars were spent on a space shield -- dubbed "Star Wars," and never deployed -- for shooting down Soviet missiles.

"He's a great man," DeVito says of Abrahamson, a fighter pilot in the Vietnam War who oversaw early space shuttle missions for NASA and served as Oracle chairman in the 1990s.

The general helped win the Cold War, DeVito says, by tilting the balance of power from the Soviet Union with Star Wars. The Missile Defense Agency gave Abrahamson its Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Award last year.

But the general's critics wonder if his blimp dreams are so much hot air.

"His work on Star Wars was ridiculous, filled with false claims. Every other day they had a false claim," says Ted Postol, a national security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Abrahamson got his engineering degree.

In 1998, Abrahamson formed a company called StratCom International to tout blimps for telecom. The focus shifted to homeland defense after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. StratCom is working with Lockheed Martin on the prototype; they hope for final authorization from the Missile Defense Agency by September.

They have some competition. Techsphere Systems International of Ohio has teamed with the Georgia Institute of Technology and 21st Century Airships on their own high-altitude surveillance blimp.

Abrahamson learned of NJIT's polymer research through a mutual contractor, Metal Storm. The Australian company is helping the school craft a child-proof "smart gun," while doing preliminary designs of weapons systems for the High Altitude Airship.

Last month, Abrahamson spoke at NJIT's commencement ceremony. He maintains the need for missile defense is greater than ever.

"At least 26 countries are building rockets of different kinds, or modifying rockets," Abrahamson says. If al Qaeda or drug runners acquire warheads, he says, America's ability to retaliate won't matter. "Russia was deterred. They won't be."

Lockheed Martin says it just wants to get a prototype aloft. Weapons, surveillance systems and telecom are secondary, though "we would certainly take seriously any proposal that Auxilia comes forward with," says spokesman Cary Dell.

Lockheed has a long history with lighter-than-air travel, through its acquisition of the former Goodyear Aerospace.

Goodyear blimps seldom fly higher than 5,000 feet. The new airship's huge size is needed to manage the expansion of helium as it rises into the ultra-thin air at 65,000 feet, with heavy payload in tow. Helium is safer than hydrogen, which blazed in the Hindenburg crash at Lakehurst in 1937.

The prototype may measure 500 by 160 feet -- impressive, though still about 300 feet shorter than the Hindenburg -- with an estimated cruising speed of about 30 knots. Its four propellers are intended to keep it stationary against gusts of 120 mph, according to NJIT's Sebastian. Solar panels will charge batteries for night operation. From its perch, the airship should see about 350 miles in any direction.

While the blimp should float well above reach of shoulder-fired missiles, Auxilia's DeVito says nobody wants to tempt terrorists.

"We're not talking about deploying this in hostile air space," he says.

Kevin Coughlin covers technology. He can be reached at kcoughlin@starledger.com or (973) 392-1763.

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