Northrop’s Huge Army Spy Blimp Floats On | Danger Room | Wired.com

Northrop’s Huge Army Spy Blimp Floats On | Danger Room | Wired.com: "Northrop Grumman’s ginormous experimental spying blimp is progressing rapidly, the company wants you to know. In barely a year, Northrop predicts, it’ll be ready to test in an “operational environment.”

The Army awarded Northrop a $517 million contract in June to develop a trio of unmanned, seven-story, football-field sized mega-blimps called Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles. If successful, the blimp will stay in the air for up to three weeks at a time, using 2500 pounds’ worth of “sensors, antennas, data links and signals intelligence equipment” to capture still and video images of civilians and adversaries below and send the pictures to troops’ bases. It should work with the Army’s standard drone-controlling system, called the Universal Ground Control Station. And it’s a hybrid, lifted into the air by helium and propelled by four diesel engines."