RTX May Bag a $4.2 Billion Big-Blimp Bonanza

Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) is 1 of those latter. Also Britain's QinetiQ. Most acquainted of all, though, volition beryllium RTX Corp (NYSE: RTX) and TCOM Holdings, the 2 companies that began gathering Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) aerostats for the Army backmost successful the mid-2010s.

You astir apt retrieve JLENS adjacent if the sanction doesn't rather ringing a bell. In 2015, aerostat made headlines nether the rubric "Raytheon's Wandering Blimp" erstwhile the aerostat broke escaped from its anchor astatine Aberdeen Proving Grounds successful Maryland. The gigantic blimp began floating up and down the Eastern Seaboard, dragging its monolithic tether on the ground, taking down powerfulness lines and mostly wreaking havoc until yet being changeable down by Pennsylvanian policemen equipped with shotguns.

"Pop!"

Suffice it to accidental the Army rapidly enactment JLENS connected the support aft that incident, but astir a decennary later, JLENS resurfaced erstwhile the Polish subject asked Congress to fto it acquisition $1.2 cardinal worthy of aerostats to usage for aerial and rocket defense. RTX, TCOM, and QinetiQ were each named arsenic vendors successful the program. And now, 1 twelvemonth later, present we are again with these names popping backmost up -- this clip successful a U.S. Army contention to merchantability astir 4 times arsenic galore aerostats.

Late past year, I floated the thought (pun intended) that the U.S. subject mightiness privation to revive JLENS arsenic a mode of keeping way of the unusual surge of unidentified flying objects, believed to beryllium hostile surveillance drones, that had been swarming implicit East Coast subject bases and authorities installations for weeks.

Peering down from an altitude of 10,000 feet, JLENS has been described arsenic capable to observe and way "all fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and onshore onslaught cruise missiles," and adjacent "surface moving targets, ample caliber rockets, and tactical ballistic missiles," astir "a 360-degree tract of view" and "up to a scope of 340 miles." That's successful opposition to astir ground-bound radar systems presently utilized by the military, which person occupation detecting drones flying excessively adjacent to the ground, arsenic reported successful a caller 60 Minutes communicative connected the drones crisis.