The U.S. Army has selected Northrop Grumman to build the giant airships it plans to rush to Afghanistan as a new persistent surveillance technology, the Army confirmed today.

The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicles (LEMVs) will be longer than a football field and they will be built to fly for three weeks at a time at an altitude of about 20,000 with a large complement of cameras and communications antennas.

Known as hybrid airships, they will combine the aerodynamic lift of forward movement with lift from a lighter-than-air gas.

Northrop beat Lockheed Martin Skunk Works for the agreement.

Northrop Grumman will manufacture up to three of the airships — pronounced LEM VEES — under the $517 million agreement, the company said June 14. The agreement calls for Northrop to design, develop and test at least one of the airships over the next 18 months, “and then transport the asset to the Middle East for military assessment,” Northrop said.

The selection was confirmed by Army spokesman John Cummings of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Alabama, which will oversee the work.

The Army is calling the deal an agreement, rather than a contract, because the LEMVs will be procured under a provision of U.S. acquisition law, called other transaction authority, which allows the Defense Department to hire companies not normally eligible to join defense manufacturing teams, Cummings said.

Northrop’s main partner, the British company Hybrid Airship Vehicles, would not have been eligible under a traditional contract approach, Cummings said.