DARPA’s HAA/ISIS Project Seeks Slow, Soaring Surveillance Superiority
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DARPA’s ISIS program is developing a stratospheric airship with sensor antennas that will include a radar nearly as large as the airship. This would create a battlefield surveillance platform with extreme endurance, and equally extreme resolution for its air and battlefield scans via radar and other carried sensors. This project is associated with Lockheed’s High Altitude Airship program, which is intended to soar at over 65,000 feet for over a month at a time, and could also play a significant role in ballistic missile and cruise missile defense.
Like all DARPA projects, HAA/ISIS is pushing the limits of technology. Critical technology areas requiring further development include low aerial-density advanced airship hull material, bonding systems that will keep the radar attached in a hostile environment, extremely low-power transmit-receive modules for the radars, and novel power systems for long-endurance stratospheric airship operation.
The project is now proceeding into phase 3. Recent updates involve a significant upgrade of the article, merging HAA/ISIS coverage and adding new details regarding a program that could revolutionize the US Air Force, and serve as a future substitute for an array of platforms, from UAVs to high-end options like the E-8 JSTARS and E-3 AWACS…
- HAA/ISIS: Capabilities & Objectives
- HAA: Challenges
- ISIS Radar: Challenges
- HAA: Program
- HAA/ISIS: Contracts and Key Events
- Additional Readings
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