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Stephen Boyle

Check Out This Giant Spy Blimp Before the Air Force Kills It | Danger Room | Wired.com - 0 views

  • Mav6, whose key executives include a respected retired Air Force general and a former Northrop Grumman program manager, once envisioned building a fleet of Blue Devil 2 airships to fill an important gap in U.S. surveillance capabilities
  • “The Blue Devil airship initiative [is] urgently needed to eliminate combat capability deficiencies that have resulted in combat fatalities,” then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote. His opinion was seconded by the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, or JIEDDO, which explores new technology for finding and disabling improvised bombs in Afghanistan. JIEDDO hoped a long-endurance airship would help spot more Taliban bombers.
  • The Blue Devil 2 effort quickly ran into problems. In November 2010, as the airship began to take shape in the Elizabeth City hangar, the Air Force shook up the program structure. JIEDDO bowed out. The flying branch transferred the Blue Devil 2′s management responsibilities to a secretive Air Force office called Big Safari, which traditionally oversees specialized reconnaissance planes — planes, not airships
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  • Big Safari just “didn’t like” the airship, the Mav6 employee told Danger Room on condition of anonymity: “They tried to terminate it from day one.”
  • What went wrong? Officially, the Air Force balked at the estimated $188-million cost of operating the Blue Devil 2 in Afghanistan for a single year. Mav6′s Deptula disputes the figure, and argues that killing the all-but-complete airship prototype will waste the $211 million already invested. The Blue Devil 2 cancellation is “penny-wise but pound-foolish,” Deptula has said.
  • The employee estimated the Blue Devil 2 was 95 percent complete when the kill order came down.
  • Blue Devil 2′s development schedule slipped a year. The so-called “big Air Force” — the flying branch’s fighter and bomber commanders — proceeded to complain, loudly and publicly. Mav6 actually shot back on its blog, describing the Air Force as a “hostile government customer.”
  • “I have [an] interest in hybrid airships,” Gen. Raymond Johns, Jr., the flying branch’s top airlift officer, told Air Force Magazine, praising airships as representing “about one-third the cost of fixed-wing [planes].” “There may be a huge niche — logistically, operationally — with this hybrid airship construct,” Johns added — perhaps failing to appreciate that his fellow officers just killed a huge airship that was already paid for and almost ready.
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