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U.S. Plans: Pentagon Might Combine Airship, Mirror System, Lasers The U.S. Defense Department might combine two of its missile defense efforts — the Aerospace Relay Mirror System and the High Altitude Airship — to increase the range of military laser systems, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported this week (see GSN, July 23). The Missile Defense Agency is scheduled to begin flight tests of the airship in 2006, and officials want to conduct experiments that combine both systems around that time. The airship is primarily being developed to track missiles, but it could be teamed with the mirror relay system to allow ground-based lasers to track targets that are out of direct view, according to Jane’s. The mirror system would be attached to the airship with cables and would sit 50 meters below the aircraft, according to Donald Washburn, who manages strategic relay mirror programs for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico (Michael Sirak, Jane’s Defense Weekly, July 30).
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