Defense News:
WASHINGTON — The Army has asked Congress to let it spend another $27.2 million to keep the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) system’s three-year operational exercise on track.
The service argues that it would be cheaper to keep the exercise moving on schedule than it would to delay it an additional year, according to a reprogramming request sent to Congress. If the Army is unable to stay on schedule to finish the effort in fiscal 2017, it would cost an additional $39.5 million, the document notes.
The Raytheon-made JLENS system consists of a fire-control system aerostat and a surveillance aerostat, and was undergoing a three-year operational exercise.
The system is capable of tracking swarming boats and vehicles, and detecting and tracking cruise missile threats. It can “see” all the way from Norfolk, Virginia, into Boston. The exercise was meant to decide JLENS’ fate — whether to keep the system permanently moored in Maryland and whether the Army decides to buy more than just the two systems it now has.
After an embarrassing incident last fall, where one of the aerostats broke free in Maryland and floated into Pennsylvania, dragging its mooring line and causing several power outages before it landed in a field, the fate of the system was in question.
