Tethered balloon is a mature military balloon. It has the characteristics of wide application range, long air time, high cost-effectiveness ratio, strong mobile deployment ability and low support requirements. It is widely used in modern naval, army, air defense and other information warfare conditions, and is an important means of comprehensive information support. It has been widely equipped to various countries' troops and participated in combat missions. In the war in Afghanistan, the US military often used the PTDS "Continuous Threat Detection System" developed by Lockheed Martin Company, which is an important position detection and monitoring system, including a 35-meter-long tethered balloon for monitoring activities around the US military base. It is considered to be one of the most feared American military equipment by the Taliban. Recently, the U.S. Army experimented with tethered balloons as the main detection system of the army detachment in Europe to explore the future distributed combat style. From this point of view, the military application of tethered balloons is in the ascendant and at the forefront of the new military revolution in the world. At the 13th Zhuhai Air Show in 20021,a variety of new tethered balloon products were exhibited, among which JY-400 tethered balloon reconnaissance and monitoring system exhibited by the Ministry of Electric Power of China attracted the most attention.
According to the exhibition board of Electronics Group, JY-400 tethered balloon is an export-oriented tethered balloon reconnaissance and monitoring system developed by the 38th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Co., Ltd. according to the current international market demand. JY-400 uses an elliptical airship-like tethered balloon as an aerial platform, equipped with early warning radar and radar reconnaissance equipment to perform the task. It can improve the early warning ability of low-altitude flying targets and maritime ship targets. It can monitor the electromagnetic spectrum in the surrounding area and improve the intelligence reconnaissance ability of low-altitude and sea radar. It can also carry various types of loads such as communication, photoelectricity, mine detection, communication and interference according to the needs of users, and realize tasks such as communication relay and earth observation and reconnaissance.
Why develop JY-400 tethered balloon reconnaissance and monitoring system? As we know, due to the curvature of the earth, the detection system of ordinary ground and marine weapons and equipment platforms is limited to a low height, and the detection distance is seriously limited by the curvature of the earth, while the flying height of tethered balloons is about 30~40 meters. If the detection system is launched on the tethered balloon, it is equivalent to raising the height of the detection sensor, which can effectively overcome the curvature of the earth and greatly expand the detection distance and field of vision. This is the great value of JY-400 tethered balloon reconnaissance and monitoring system.
Technical characteristics of JY-400 tethered balloon reconnaissance and monitoring system;
First, flexible load configuration combination. By carrying different detection loads, JY-400 system can undertake many different tasks. If equipped with early warning radar, JY-400 can become a long-range early warning system, and take the lead in finding targets such as incoming enemy planes at sea or on land with a longer early warning detection distance to obtain reconnaissance information; If equipped with radar, communication, photoelectric reconnaissance system, it can carry out long-term continuous reconnaissance and monitoring on the surrounding large area; If equipped with a communication system, it can act as a communication relay node; If electronic jamming or spectrum management load is configured, it can conduct electronic reconnaissance and jamming on enemy targets in a large range around, or master the characteristics of electronic spectrum signals of enemy platforms and facilities. It can be said that JY-400 can be used as a "lighthouse" for C4ISR missions.
Second, a wide range of continuous monitoring. Tethered balloons cover a wide area. According to the size of the equipment, the tethered balloon equipment can be arranged at a height of several hundred meters to several thousand meters to perform tasks. For small mobile tethered balloon equipment, communication guarantee and observation coverage of about 20 kilometers can be provided at a height of 300 meters, and large and medium-sized tethered balloon equipment at a height of 4000 meters can monitor areas with a radius of 350 kilometers.
Third, considerable benefit cost. The tethered balloon monitoring system has high cost performance. First of all, the procurement cost is lower than that of the aircraft with the same function, and the space-time ratio is higher than that of the aircraft, which can reduce the procurement volume; Secondly, the daily use cost is low, and fuel and mechanical support are not needed; Finally, it can be reused, and the mission load can be recovered, upgraded, improved or replaced as needed, which can form new combat capabilities at a lower cost.
Fourth, the deployment is simple. The tethered balloon system has simple composition, strong maneuverability and easy deployment. Whether it is fixed deployment or mobile deployment, it can be carried out at any time according to operational needs. The mobile deployment ability of tethered balloon equipment mainly depends on its anchoring platform. For the tethered balloon equipment based on vehicle-mounted and ship-borne mobile, it has the function of vertical take-off and landing without fixed site, has good adaptability to the deployment site, and has low requirements on the number of operators and technical level, and can be quickly transported and deployed to designated areas to perform tasks. From the appearance and structure, JY-400 tethered balloon system can be maneuvered by vehicle or traction.
Fifth, long working hours. Tethered balloons can stay in the air for a long time. Compared with heavier-than-air aircraft, tethered balloons are lifted off by buoyancy, and no energy is needed to overcome the gravity of the system. At the same time, based on unmanned working mode, it takes a long time to perform tasks. Generally speaking, the air stay time of a single deployment of large-scale fixed tethered balloon equipment can reach 30 days, and the air stay time of a single deployment of micro-mobile tethered balloon equipment can also reach more than one week, which is usually several hours for manned aircraft and dozens of hours for unmanned aircraft.
At present, the specific performance and application of JY-400 system have not been announced in detail at the exhibition. From the appearance and structure of the tethered balloon, JY-400 system is quite similar to the tethered balloon system developed by Lockheed Martin Company of the United States, so we briefly introduce its performance so that readers can understand its possible application from the side. Loma Company has developed tethered balloon equipment based on streamlined sphere design.
Among them, the 56K tethered balloon equipment was first applied to the Iraqi battlefield by the US military in 2004, and it was used for the defense of ground troops and important positions near Baghdad by carrying optical loads. Later, 56K tethered balloon equipment was deployed to the ship and used by the US Coast Guard for border monitoring and long-term surveillance of its southeast waters. 74K tethered balloon equipment is used in American PTDS, which provides remote information, surveillance, reconnaissance and communication support, and has been applied to the battlefield in Iraq, with a mission time of over 6,543,800+0000 hours. 420K tethered balloon equipment is the only large tethered balloon in the United States. A tethered balloon radar system (TARS) for monitoring low-altitude aircraft, sea and water targets in the US-Mexico border area is established by using L88 wide-area surveillance radar. Through the application of similar products of Loma Company, I believe you must know something about the possible application scenarios of JY-400 system in the future.