Hybrid Air Vehicles in the U.K. began reassembling the former Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle, the airship it bought back from the U.S. Department of Defense in 2013 following the project's cancellation. HAV had originally worked on designing and building LEMV on a team led by Northrop Grumman. After purchasing the airship, the company received a £2.5 million ($4 million) grant from the U.K. government's Technology Strategy Board to work on further engineering development of a heavy-lift variant of the craft. The new version, named HAV 304, is being built from LEMV's components and will have an empty payload module. For its first few months of flight the HAV 304 will be considered a civil craft, pending a government decision on whether to approve that designation. U.K. Civil Aviation Authority flight trials are expected to end in April. Scheduled flights include one to North America in October 2015, to demonstrate the airship's commercial potential, and other flights to destinations of military interest.
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