US$10 million skin for DARPA's remarkable ISIS stratospheric airship

Lockheed Martin has received a US$10 million contract to further develop advanced material technology and next-generation hull material for DARPA's Integrated Sensor Is Structure (ISIS) program. The ISIS program will develop the core technologies necessary to integrate an extremely capable sensor package directly into the structure of stratospheric airships, which operate at approximately 70,000 feet. The planned capabilities of the ISIS project are straight out of a sci fi film – ISIS will provide a dynamic, detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield: friendly, neutral or enemy – a big picture map showing everything moving for hundreds of kilometers.

"The Lockheed Martin team was chosen to develop this innovative material based on the strength of its scientific and manufacturing expertise," said DARPA program manager Tim Clark. "Once successfully demonstrated, the DARPA material will dramatically reduce the weight and size of airships while improving operational longevity and payload capacity."

During a presentation at the DARPATech 2004 Symposium, DARPA’s Dr Larry Corey described ISIS thus: “To illustrate the near-magical surveillance capability ISIS will provide, let’s consider an example from the fictional Harry Potter books. Harry and his fellow students are often sneaking around the grounds of Hogwart’s School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Of course, they run the risk of being caught by teachers who are always on patrol. Fortunately Harry discovers a magical map of the school grounds.

“This fantastic map dynamically shows the position and identity of every person on the school grounds. With map in hand, Harry can move freely around the grounds with no danger of detection. Today, Harry’s map is fictional, but imagine if we could give a real version of this map to our Special Operations forces.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if the battlefield commander also had a big picture map showing everything moving for hundreds of kilometers, and the air defense commander had a map of everything moving in the air?”

With 75 years of experience with tethered and unmanned airships, Lockheed Martin will focus on the ISIS program's critical strength-to-weight and life-expectancy metrics plus other key material performance requirements - such as shape, hull radius, thermal/environmental effects and reliability - during the material development and demonstration. "With Lockheed Martin's substantial investment and legacy in airship materials development, we have already begun the process of creating a unique, highly-engineered, flexible composite hull material," said David Filicky, Lockheed Martin's ISIS advanced materials program manager. "This fabric requires significant materials development and large-scale, low -anomaly manufacturing process advancements over current state-of-the-art airship hull material. This contract allows us to advance our innovative fabrication process while addressing the ISIS flight environment requirements."

A leader in airship and aerostat development, fabrication, systems integration and operations, Lockheed Martin has developed more than 300 airships and thousands of aerostats. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the Missile Defense Agency's High Altitude Airship, a stratospheric airship prototype, which will provide persistent surveillance along with other critical capabilities. The company also has provided tethered aerostat surveillance systems to both the U.S. Army for deployment in Iraq and to the U.S. Air Force to support air sovereignty and counter-drug operations along the southern U.S. border. In order to offer ease of access to the breadth and vision of DARPA’s ISIS Project for Gizmag readers, the following is an extract from Dr Larry Corey’s DARPATech 2004 presentation which can be accessed here in full:

“What if all of this information could be sent on wideband communications links directly to the users on the battlefield? We are just beginning our ISIS program that will enable our forces to have this surveillance capability at all times without needing to carry their own sensors to the battlefield. ISIS will provide a dynamic, detailed, real-time picture of all movement on or above the battlefield: friendly, neutral or enemy. With ISIS, battlefield commanders can guard against friendly fire, coordinate forces, get lost vehicles back on track, and know the current location of POWs.” “Air defense commanders can observe all activity within hundreds of kilometers. The tracking accuracy will be so good that they will not need any other radar systems to complete engagement of hostile targets. ISIS is a sensor integrated into an unmanned stratospheric airship. The stationary platform gives ISIS the stability to see slow moving targets such as dismounted troops. The seventy thousand foot altitude allows ISIS to persistently track targets at very long ranges.

“From a single base in the U.S., ISIS units can deploy anywhere in the world without any need for local support personnel or infrastructure. Each unit will stay on station for one year. ISIS will use wideband communications links to get tailored information directly to users on the ground and in the air. This real-time data allows each soldier to respond effectively to the changing battlefield situation.

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