JLENS
NORAD is planning to conduct a three-year long operational exercise with the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., beginning fiscal year 2015. JLENS is a supporting program of the Army and Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense, providing persistent, over-the-horizon radar surveillance and fire control quality data on Army and Joint Networks. It enables protection from a wide variety of threats to include manned and... read more
NORAD is planning to conduct a three-year long operational exercise with the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., beginning fiscal year 2015. JLENS is a supporting program of the Army and Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense, providing persistent, over-the-horizon radar surveillance and fire control quality data on Army and Joint Networks. It enables protection from a wide variety of threats to include manned and unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles, and surface moving targets like swarming boats and tanks. A JLENS system consists of two aerostats: a fire control radar system and a wide-area surveillance radar system. Each radar system employs a separate 74-meter (243 feet long) tethered aerostat, a mobile mooring station, radar and communications payloads, a processing station, and associated ground support equipment. The JLENS aerostat will fly at an altitude of up to 10,000 feet above sea level. This gives it a much longer range than ground-based radar and will provide radar coverage for up to 340 miles, a wide area which includes Washington D.C.
Aberdeen Proving Ground was chosen as the exercise location because it provides coverage over Washington, DC, it controls its FAA approved restricted airspace, which will support the exercise without interfering with the mid-Atlantic coast air traffic corridors and it has sufficient ground area for the two JLENS aerostat sites. The operational exercise is scheduled to last three years. At the end of the exercise, the Army will determine its utility for future use show less
