After spending nearly $300 million to rapidly develop a sensor-laden state-of-the-art hybrid airship, the Army plans to sell its Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle — and the original maker can’t, or won’t, buy it back:
Hybrid Air Vehicles, a U.K.-based company that designed and — with Northrop Grumman — built the massive hybrid airship, very much wanted to buy back the LEMV to continue developing it and exploring potential civilian uses. In fact, the company offered to take sole responsibility for the aircraft and its continued development, and to grant the U.S. military access to the innovative technology, these officials said.
However, when the Army in April offered to sell the hybrid airship back to HAV for $44 million — a price calculated from federal acquisition regulations requiring renumeration for material costs — the sum was more than the company could immediately muster, HAV business development director Hardy Giesler told InsideDefense.com.
HAV countered by proposing a down payment of more than $10 million, followed by installment payments. That offer, however, was deemed by “high risk” and “unacceptable to the government,” according to John Cummings, spokesman for Army Space and Missile Defense Command, which managed the LEMV acquisition effort.
On May 29, at the direction of the Army, government officials at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, NJ, began deflating the massive LEMV — which was made from 99,000 yards of 13 different materials, stitched together through 11 miles’ worth of seams — in preparation for an informal sale this summer, in accordance with the Defense Contract Management Agency’s plant clearance disposal process, according to Cummings.
The move was a setback not only for HAV, which may still attempt to acquire the aircraft and its components, but also for military officials who believe that hybrid airships offer a range of promising combat capabilities. Just weeks after the Army acknowledged terminating LEMV as part of its fiscal year 2014 budget plan, the Defense Department’s top uniformed logistician voiced strong support for a LEMV-like capability.
“Hybrid airships represent a transformational capability, bridging the longstanding cap between high-speed, lower-capacity aircraft, and low-speed, high-capacity sealift,” Air Force Gen. William Fraser, head of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7. “We encourage development of commercial technologies that my lead to enhanced mobility capabilities in the future.”
Everybody who endorsed this idea should have been fired, impeached, or demoted. Back of the envelope calculation shows that helium is limited, and non-renewable resource. Using hydrogen just ends up being colorful even in peacetime. Oh the humanity!
I’m willing to give modern hydrogen-filled airships a chance — unmanned hydrogen-filled airships, flying over enemy territory.