LEMV Surveillance Airship Taking Shape

Six months after contract award, elements of Northrop Grumman’s long-endurance multi-intelligence vehicle (LEMV) hybrid airship are coming together.

The persistent-surveillance LEMV is designed to have an endurance when operating unmanned for 21 days at 20,000 ft. carrying a 2,500-lb. payload of sensors and communications equipment.

The critical design review was completed at the end of November, final assembly is to begin in February and first flight is planned for the end of July 2011.

“It’s a fast-moving train,” says Alan Metzger, LEMV program manager. Northrop won the $517 million U.S. Army demonstration contract in July. The first airship should be ready for deployment to Afghanistan at the end of 2011 for a military assessment.

Envelope fabricator ILC Dover has begun seaming together components using fabric supplied by Warwick Mills, Metzger says. These will be delivered beginning in February to the final-assembly site, where the airship will be assembled, inflated and checked for leaks.

The U.K.’s Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), which is leading the vehicle’s design, has begun construction of the Group A equipment that will be integrated with the completed envelope. This includes mission and fuel modules, engines and hard structures.

HAV will begin assembly of the Group A equipment in mid-January, with integration of the air vehicle planned to begin in the U.S. in early May.

Prime contractor Northrop, meanwhile, has set up several LEMV test facilities at its Melbourne, Fla., plant. These include development environments for the air-vehicle control and sensor data processing, exploitation and dissemination systems.

A payload testbed has been constructed that mimics the “Murphy bay” infrastructure in the airship, Metzger says. Full-motion video, radar and communications-intelligence payloads provided off the shelf by the Army have been delivered to Melbourne.

Development of the autonomous control software is underway at Northrop’s unmanned systems operation in California. The LEMV will be operated using the Army’s One System ground-control station, developed by team member AAI.

A One System station at the launch and recovery site will operate the vehicle throughout its mission, Metzger says, while payload data will be processed and disseminated via the Army’s DCGS-A distributed common ground system.

After development flight tests of the first LEMV at the final-assembly site, conducted with a safety pilot on board, the airship is to be ferried to Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., in November 2011 for unmanned, long-endurance test flights.

Northrop has responded to requests for information on heavy-lift airships from U.S. Transportation Command and the Army. Metzger says LEMV is designed so the mission and fuel modules can be removed and replaced with cargo modules.