World Surveillance Group Inc (fka WSGI)

[pokestake]

Is this Lockheed's project???

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2533582&C=america

MDA Budget Blueprint Alters KEI, Terminates High-Altitude Airship

By JOHN T. BENNETT


The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has sent Congress an $8.9 billion spending request for 2008 that changes the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program and terminates the High-Altitude Airship effort.
That would be some $300 million less than appropriated in 2007.
Budget documents provided by the agency also show MDA intends to seek $9.4 billion for 2009. That also was the total amount of the 2008 request until White House budget officials in recent months instructed MDA to trim its spending blueprint by $500 million “because there were higher-priority things in the department,” the official told reporters.
The $8.9 billion MDA request is part of a larger $648.7 billion Pentagon-wide 2008 spending request that was delivered to Capitol Hill Feb. 5.
Among the changes to accommodate the $500 million reduction were:
• Deleting the warhead part of the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, turning it into a “booster-only program.” The change comes with the caveat that the program could be shifted back to an interceptor development effort should the Airborne Laser effort fail in coming years, the official said.
• Putting the kibosh on the High-Altitude Airship effort, which envisioned an unmanned lighter-than-air platform that could operate at altitudes higher than the Earth’s jet stream to provide a persistent method of gathering surveillance and weather data. It also would have been able to pass telecommunications signals between military platforms.
• Delaying by two years a follow-on program to the Space Tracking and Surveillance System effort. The agency’s plan for the successor effort was to launch the first satellite in 2013; under the 2008 budget plan, that launch would occur in “2015 or 2016,” the official said.
The 2008 request also trims the number of missile “kill vehicles” being developed by the agency, the official said. Gone is the vehicle portion of the KEI effort and the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle; still under development are the Multiple Kill Vehicle and the Block 2A missile programs.
“We came to the conclusion that we could not afford four kill vehicle programs,” the official said. In a related change spelled out in the agency’s budget plan, the vehicles produced under the two remaining efforts would be “modular,” meaning they would be built with “common components,” according to the agency official.