JLENS: Co-ordinating Cruise Missile Defense - And More
Apr 19, 2011 14:32 EDT
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Budgets 2008-2012; Next milestones; Radar light-up at altitude; Salt Lake City surveillance; New meaning to “crash program”; Program cost breach. (April 15/11)
Experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom showed that even conventional cruise missiles could have important tactical uses in the hands of a determined enemy. Meanwhile, the proliferation of cruise missiles and associated components, combined with a falling technology curve for biological, chemical, or even nuclear agents, is creating longer-term hazards on a whole new scale. Intelligence agencies and analysts believe that the threat of U.S. cities coming under cruise missile attack from ships off the coast is real, sophisticated and evolving.
Aerial sensors are the best defense against low-flying cruise missiles, because they offer far better detection and tracking range than ground-based systems. The bad news is that keeping planes in the air all the time is very expensive, and so are the aircraft themselves. As cruise missile defense becomes a more prominent political issue, the primary challenge becomes the development of a reliable, affordable, long-flying, look-down platform. One that can detect, track and identify incoming missiles, then support over-the-horizon engagements in a timely manner. The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) certainly looked like that system, but the Pentagon has decided to end it…
- The JLENS System: This is Not Your Grandpa’s Barrage Balloon
- JLENS Program [updated]
- JLENS: Contracts & Key Events [updated]
- Additional Readings & Sources
The JLENS System: This is Not Your Grandpa’s Barrage Balloon
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In Air Defense Artillery Magazine, Major Thomas J. Atkins sums up the JLENS system:
“The JLENS system consists of four main components: the aerostats, the radars, the mooring station and the processing station. The aerostats are unmanned, tethered, non-rigid aerodynamic structures filled with a helium/air mix. The aerostats are 77 yards long (three-fourths of a football field) and almost as wide as a football field. The aerostats must be large enough to lift the heavy radars that provide the system’s extended range. The radars are optimized for their separate, specific functions, but weigh several tons each. The surveillance radar searches very long distances to find small radar cross-section tracks before they can threaten friendly assets. The fire control radar looks out at shorter ranges than the surveillance radar, but provides highly accurate data to help identify and classify tracks while providing fire control quality data to a variety of interceptors. The two aerostats are connected to the ground via tethers through which power and data is transmitted. The tethers enables the aerostats to operate at altitudes of up to 15,000 feet and contain power lines, fiber-optic data lines and Kevlar-strengthened strands surrounded by an insulated protective sleeve. The tethers connect to mobile mooring stations that anchor the aerostats to the ground and control their deployment and retrieval. The mooring stations are connected to ground-mounted power plants and processing stations. The processing stations are the brains of the whole system. Each processing station contains an operator workstation, a flight-director control station, weather-monitoring equipment and a computer that controls radar functions and processes radar data.”
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When integrated with Co-operative Engagement Capability, JLENS can even serve as the linchpin of combined air defense frameworks with significant anti-air and missile defense capabilities. An elevated sensor such as JLENS can support ground based air defense units, such as Patriot, Aegis/Standard Missile and SLAMRAAM (ground-based AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles). In the All Service Combat Identification and Evaluation Team (ASCIET) ‘99 exercise, a 15m aerostat was deployed with a Cooperative Engagement Capability relay on a mobile mooring station. This relay allowed the Army’s Patriot air defense system and the Navy’s AEGIS weapon system to exchange radar data. The JLENS is thus a critical enabler of the Joint Theater Air and Missile Defense (JTAMD) system of systems.
Development of missile options like the long-range infrared-guided NCADE missile, which can be mounted on long-endurance platforms like MQ-9 Reaper UAVs and possibly even added to the JLENS system, would add another potential dimension to the platform.
Additional equipment could offer commanders extensive communications relay capabilities, or even area surveillance of the ground. The JLENS program reportedly deployed a smaller 15 meter aerostat to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. In late November 2003, the Army announced its intention to redeploy the Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) force protection aerostat from Afghanistan to Iraq. RAID, adapted out of JLENS via the Army Rapid Equipping Force, is now its own program, involving both flying aerostats, and more popular fixed tower configurations like GBOSS.
The JLENS Program
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JLENS is currently managed as part of the Cruise Missile Defense Systems Project Office at Redstone Arsenal, AL. As of January 2007, Raytheon Company defined and finalized a $1.4 billion contract modification from the U.S. Army for full-scale JLENS system development and demonstration. “This award marks the end of months of detailed work to define just how the JLENS government/ industry team will design, build, test, train, and field the system,” said the Army’s Program Manager, Lt. Col. Jeffrey K. Souder.
Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems is responsible for the fire control radar and processing station; and work on the program will be performed at Raytheon sites located in Massachusetts, California, Texas and Maryland. TCOM LP, based in Maryland, will develop the 71M aerostat and associated ground equipment.
The US Army’s initial System Acquisition Report submission in 2005, following approval to proceed into System Development and Demonstration (Milestone B), placed the JLENS program’s total value over its lifetime at $7.15 billion. Recent budgets have included:
FY 2008: $464.9 million, all Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation (RDT&E)
FY 2009: $355.3 million, all RDT&E
FY 2010: $317.1 million all RDT&E
FY 2011 request: $372.5 million, all RDT&E
FY 2012 request: $344.7 million, all RDT&E
Timothy Carey, VP for Integrated Air Defense at Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems division, was excited as he spoke to the Boston Globe in November 2005:
“This is going to be one of our foundational programs over the next 10 to 20 years… As we try to grow the business here in New England, it’s important to have these programs that play out over a long period.”
JLENS development has certainly done so. System testing began in 2010, instead of 2009, but the original target date of 2012 for program completion was pushed back even farther by a combination of testing mishaps (including another vehicle destroying a JLENS) and technical difficulties. The next key decision point was set for Q4 FY 2012, and the 1st Engineering, Manufacturing and Development (EMD) stage Orbit would equip the first unit in Q4 2013 – 15 years after the 1st JLENS contract. The US Army was planning to field 5 Orbits (1 EMD and 4 Procurement) between FY 2013-2017.
In January 2012, however, the FY 2013 budget proposal recommended cancellation for JLENS. With border surveillance a major issue right now, cruise missile defense still a weakness in the medium term, and operating costs likely to be a growing issue, the question is what the Pentagon proposes as a replacement.
JLENS: Contracts & Key Events
Jan 26/12: The FY 2013 budget under Secretary of Defense Panetta contains a raft of program cuts and delays, including the proposed “curtailment” of JLENS, “due to concerns about program cost and operational mobility,” as a program that was “experiencing schedule, cost, or performance issues.”
The phrasing of this statement is ambiguous at all levels. Why “curtailment” and not “terminate”? Disappointment about operational mobility also seem odd, given that the entire system was always meant to be a fixed aerostat that can be shifted with a bit of time and effort, in order to monitor a wide but high-value area. The US Army’s LEMV program is a mobile airship, but it not designed to carry the same level of air and ground radar sensors, or cover the same area. Meanwhile, programs like the High Altitude Airship and ISIS describe future technologies that don’t seem to be even close to fielding. Pentagon release | “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices” [PDF]
July 25/11: Raytheon announces a successful JLENS endurance test at the Utah Training and Test Range near Salt Lake City. While 30 days is a program goal, Raytheon doesn’t say how long the test was for. A subsequent Oct 11/11 release touts a 14-day test.
April 15/11: The Pentagon’s Selected Acquisitions Report ending Dec 30/10 includes JLENS as a program with significant-class cost increases under Nunn-McCurdy legislation:
“Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) – The PAUC increased 17.9 percent and the APUC increased 13.3 percent to the current APB, because the development program was extended six months due to delays in testing resulting from engineering challenges. The increases in unit costs are also attributable to the addition of preplanned product improvements for reliability, safety, affordability, or producibility of the JLENS systems.”
Having your prototype destroyed in a collision is certainly a challenge.
April 14/11: Raytheon announces that the JLENS aerostat aloft at the Utah Test and Training Range has successfully demonstrated tracking targets of opportunity in Salt Lake City, Utah’s air space.
April 13/11: WIRED Danger Room reports:
“Last fall at a South Carolina test facility, inclement weather caused a Skyship 600 airship to come loose from its tether and crash into one of the Army’s forthcoming prized spy balloons. [The JLENS] was destroyed, along with the Skyship. What did the Army do? It upped its funding requests for the JLENS. Inside The Army, which first reported the JLENS-Skyship collision, finds that the Army is asking Congress to add $168 million for the program next year, on top of an original request of $176 million.”
Feb 9/11: Raytheon announces that JLENS’ radar demonstrated its ability to transmit from the aerostat at the Utah Test and Training Range, while deployed to an altitude of 10,000 feet. It all seems like baby steps, but that’s how these things proceed. Especially when dealing with a system that has to carry required power etc. up the aerostat’s tether.
Sept 15/10: Lockheed Martin Corp. in Grand Prairie, TX receives a $7.1 million firm-fixed-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for “PAC-3 Integrated Fire Control.” Lockheed Martin representative confirmed that this contract is “for integration of the [Patriot] PAC-3 Missile Segment with the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor [JLENS].”
Work is to be performed at Grand Prairie, TX; White Sands Missile Range, NM; and Chelmsford, MA, with an estimated completion date of Aug 30/12. One bid was solicited with one received (W31P4Q-10-C-0304; Serial #1936). See also FBO solicitation.
April 14/10: The US military launches 2 unmanned 233 foot JLENS aerostats about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City, UT. Several more tests are proposed for Utah later in the year, including over the remote northern portion of the Great Salt Lake and parts of the Snake Valley, which are remote and serve as good stand-ins for environments in Afghanistan.
Summer 2009 flight tests near Elizabeth City, NJ were limited to 3,000 feet, but the Utah tests will go up to 10,000 feet. Associated Press.
April 1/10: The Pentagon releases its April 2010 Selected Acquisitions Report, covering major program changes up to December 2009.
March 30/10: The US GAO audit office delivers its 8th annual “Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs report. With respect to JLENS, it says:
“Although the JLENS design appears stable, the potential for design changes remains until the maturity of JLENS components have been demonstrated. For example, the JLENS program continues to define, develop, and design the mobile mooring station used to anchor the aerostat during operations. Although the mobile station is based on a fixed mooring station design, the program has yet to demonstrate its mobility. The mobile mooring transport vehicle is still being designed and the program office expects the survivability requirements for the vehicle to change. This may require the program to add armor to the vehicle. According to program officials, the combined weight of the mooring station and an up-armored vehicle would exceed the maximum allowed for roads in the United States and in a operational theater.
”....The cost and schedule of the JLENS program could be negatively affected by the Army’s [Integrated Air and Missile Defense] program…. tasked with developing a standard set of interfaces between systems such as JLENS and other sensors, weapons, and… components to provide a common air picture. As part of the IAMD strategy, the Army plans to extend the system development and demonstration phase of the JLENS program by approximately 12 months and delay low-rate initial production until fiscal year 2012.”
March 26/10: Walbridge in Detroit, MI won a $40.7 million firm-fixed-price contract to design & build 3 tactical equipment maintenance facilities (TEMFS) at 3 close but separate sites in Fort Bliss, TX. Supported projects will include a sustainment bridge, a JLENS aerostat battery, and a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile battery.
Each TEMFS will provide a complex with repair and maintenance bays, equipment and parts storage, administrative offices, secure vaults, oil storage buildings, hazardous material storage, and other supporting facilities such as organizational storage buildings. Work is to be performed in Fort Bliss, TX, with an estimated completion date of Dec 30/11. Bids were solicited via World Wide Web, with 4 bids received.
Aug 25/09: Scheduled date for TCOM to fly a fully equipped JLENS 71M aerostat to 3,000 feet, in its first test flight. Source.
June 5/09: Science Applications International Corp. in St. Petersburg, FL wins a $5.6 million firm-fixed-price contract for the fabrication, assembly, and testing of compact solid state Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) antennas. These small, lightweight antennas would support mobile applications of the CEC system, including the Marine Corps Composite Track Network (CTN) and the U.S. Army’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor aerostat (JLENS). The contract includes options which, if exercised, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $18.4 million.
Work will be performed in St. Petersburg, FL and is expected to be complete by June 2010. This contract was competitively procured through full and open competition via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online and Federal Business Opportunities websites, with 2 proposals received by the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, DC (N00024-09-C-5213).
Nov 19/08: Raytheon successfully passes critical design readiness reviews (CDRR) on its final 2 prime items, the surveillance radar (SuR) and the communications and processing group (CPG). These prime items are prerequisite to the overall JLENS Orbit CDR planned for later in 2008.
System testing is still scheduled to begin in 2010, with SDD program completion in 2012. Raytheon release.
March 31/08: Raytheon’s JLENS has successfully completed Orbit preliminary design review (PDR), which reviewed all aspects of JLENS design maturity. The decision clears the program to move ahead with detailed design, and JLENS system testing is scheduled to begin in 2010, with SDD program completion scheduled for 2012.
Each JLENS Orbit consists of 2 systems: a surveillance system and a fire control system, which includes a long-range surveillance radar and a high-performance fire control radar integrated onto a large aerostat. These are connected by cables to the ground-based mobile mooring station and communications processing group. Raytheon release.
March 4-6/08: The US Army reports that a group of Soldiers from Fort Bliss, TX have been brought to Raytheon in Huntsville, AL for early user assessment of the JLENS communication and control station. The 2nd early user assessment is scheduled in October 2008.
Neal Tilghman, a principal human systems engineer at Raytheon Warfighter Protection Center, says the goal is to get user feedback on the design concepts and layout of the JLENS communication and control station: “We’re in the early prototype stage and we want to head off any early issues, design concerns, in the early phase of the program…”
April 11/07: Raytheon announces that JLENS has completed a successful system functional review. The primary objective of the review was to ensure complete allocation of system level requirements to the various subsystems or prime items. The 3-day technical review evaluated system requirements and functions for each of the prime items, including the fire control radar, surveillance radar, processing station, communication system, and aerostat platform. This successful completion allows the program to progress to the preliminary design phase.
Jan 11/07: Raytheon Co. in Andover, MA received a $144.3 million increment to a $1.43 billion cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for acquisition of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, System Development and Demonstration Program.
Work will be performed in Andover, MA (47%), El Segundo, CA (28%), Long Beach, CA (6%), Columbia, MD (5%), Elizabeth City, NC (5%), Huntsville, AL (3%), Laurel, MD (2%), Dallas, TX (14%), Austin, TX (1%), Alexandria, VA (1%), and Greenlawn, NY (0.9%), and is expected to be complete by March 31, 2012. This was a sole source contract initiated on Oct. 27, 2005 by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal, AL (DASG60-98-C-0001).
Jan 3/07: Raytheon announces that negotiations have finalized “a contract modification for system development and demonstration of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS).” The contract is described as $1.4 billion in this release.
Nov 15/05: Raytheon announces “a $1.3 billion contract modification from the U.S. Army for system development and demonstration of the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS).”
Oct 20/05: Raytheon announces that JLENS completed a successful system functional review (SFR) in late September 2005. This technical review is the last major milestone for the technology development acquisition phase of the program, and marks the readiness of the program to enter the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase.
The primary objective of the SFR was to ensure complete allocation of system level requirements to the system prime items. The two-day technical review included an overview of the JLENS system and in-depth reviews of each of the prime items, to include the fire control radar, surveillance radar, processing station, communication system, and platform.
During SDD, all hardware, software and logistics support required to deploy the system will be developed and will undergo extensive testing to ensure the system meets its requirements.
June 23/05: Raytheon Co. in Bedford, MA received a $79.5 million modification to a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for JLENS. Work will be performed in Bedford, MA and is expected to be complete by July 31, 2010. This was a sole source contract initiated on Dec. 29, 2004 by the US Defense Space and Missile Command in Huntsville, AL (DASG60-98-C-0001).
June 10/05: FLIR Systems Inc. in Wilsonville, OR received the full delivery order amount of $32.9 million as part of a firm-fixed-price contract for FLIR Star SAFIRE sensors for the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. Work will be performed in Wilsonville, OR and is expected to be complete by March 31, 2006. This was a sole source contract initiated on June 6, 2005 by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, AL (W9113M-05-D-0002).
Note that this contract may actually be associated with the derivative RAID system. A subsequent award of this type made under this contract on Sept 26/06 refers explicitly to “StarSAFIRE Sensors for the Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment System.”
Jan 30/98: H&R Co., a joint venture of Hughes Aircraft Co. and Raytheon Co. located in El Segundo, CA, won an $11.9 million increment as part of an estimated $292 million (if all options are exercised) cost reimbursement, cost-plus-incentive-fee, cost-plus-award-fee, and cost-plus-fixed-fee completion contract for the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) Demonstration Program. Work will be performed in El Segundo, CA (44%); Bedford, MA (44%); Columbia, MD (10%); San Bernardino, CA (1.5%); and various locations in the United States (0.5%), and is expected to be complete by March 30, 2002. There were 3 bids solicited on June 27, 1997, and 3 bids were received by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, AL (DASG60-98-C-0001).
The DefenseLINK release said that: “The program has three primary objectives. The first is mitigation of the risk associated with the execution of the program; the second is design, development, procurement, fabrication, integration, test, demonstration, and maintenance of a system which meets the performance specification; and the third is to provide an operational “leave behind” system for user evaluation and for use in the event of a contingency deployment.”
Additional Readings & Sources
- Air Defense Artillery Magazine (July-August 2005) – PDF of Magazine Issue. See “JLENS,” pp. 12-14. Good background on the JLENS system. Describes the very close call 1st Marine Expeditionary Headquarters had in March 2003 at Camp Commando, Kuwait, via a cruise missile attack that was not detected by defensive systems. The magazine is over 20MB; Google cache still has a web version of this article.
- GlobalSecurity.org – Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor [JLENS]
- USAF Fact Sheet – Tethered Aerostat Radar System. Not JLENS, but has good background re: aerostat construction and internal design.
- DID (Nov 15/07) – Cruise Missile Defense Hits the USA’s Political Radar Screen
- Boston Globe (Nov 15/05) – Raytheon wins $1.3b Army pact.
- Air Defense Artillery Magazine (April-June 2005) – See PDF of Magazine Issue. The smaller RAID derivative is mentioned in a pair of articles covering Iraq and Afghanistan experiences: “1-62 Air Defense Artillery Writes Final Chapter of Its History” (pp. 27-30) and “How ADA Sentinel Teams Helped Restore Democracy to Afghanistan” (pp. 34-35).
- Army Communicator (Fall 2001) – JLENS reintroduces aerostats to the battlefield
