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Zeppelins on Patrol?
Our Man In Redmond writes "Everything old is new again: The Seattle Post-Inteligencer is reporting that NORAD is considering deploying zeppelins along the west coast and Canadian border to keep an eye out for terrorists. Larger than jumbo jets, easier to repair/upgrade than satellites, this may be an idea whose time has come. Again."
The result of one of these flying into a building would be similar to me bouncing a marshmallow off of your forehead.
It might catch you off guard at first, then piss you off as the shock and abject fright wore off, but no real harm would come to your forehead. The fate of the marshmallow wouldn't be the same, however, and this is to be expected.
High altitude balloons are hardly likely to trouble an Arab terrorist coming in on the American Airlines redeye service. Let alone the domestic terrorist who lives in Florida and mails you Anthrax.
Nope, they are useful for three things: observation, communication relay and radar. Now either someone is trying to hop on the 'terrorism' funding bandwagon, or someone is attempting to hide a technology that effect civil liberties under the same cover.
My personal guess is both. Someone has finally worked out that cruise missiles are easy to knock up and a threat to US cities - hence the need for good look down 24hour radar coverage. At the same time, an observation platform that could hover over a city, watching everyone, but not seen by anyone, has certain advantages.
Neither really does much to prevent the average terrorist - but its a nice way to sell your system.
This will be of no use against any terrorist. Even if terrorists did attempt to cross the border outside of official channels (rather than use fake IDs, sailing a boat into a harbour, or simply live in the states themselves, they would be less than .1% of the total number of people trying to skip across the US-Canadian border or any other border. The rest would be boardertown locals, drug smugglers (we all know how effective the war on drugs has been, right?), and immigrants. Already, they try to and fail at stopping two of these groups from crossing the boarder, and in Mexico they even get flashy night-vision kit and a wall. It dosen't work. This won't either - more information just means you know more of what's going on. It dosen't mean you can be everywhere at once. The Zepplins will stand out of TV, however.
All you need now is a few supervillains and a well-meaning, but deeply troubled borderline psychopath in a batsuit and all of the West Coast's cities will officially be entered in the Gotham City look-alike contest.
(Yeah, so only about five people will get this joke, but all five of them are going to get a good laugh out of it.)
Iron oxide, mixed with powdered aluminium.
Read that again: Iron oxide, mixed with powdered aluminium.
Not got it yet? Basically, that's what thermite is. Go and Google for thermite, or thermite reaction, and see what turns up...
I watched a documentary about it a couple of years back, in which a recent investigation turned up fabric samples from around the time the Hindenburg was built. They had been tested for fire resistance, and were clearly labelled something along the lines of "Don't use this stuff, it's worse than no fireproofing".
That was because the Hindenburg was painted with rocket fuel. The same stuff that powers the shuttles SRB's.
Twice as big as a jumbo jet and soaring twice as high, they may soon be deployed to guard Canada and the United States, scanning for intruders on the Pacific Northwest's long coastline and international border.
To guard against attacks? How is this going to prevent a determined person from putting a truck bomb in front of a federal building, or preventing someone from flying another plane into a building after coming up with yet another ingenious way of taking control of the plane.
When was the last time the US had a missile coming from across the oceans to strike them? NORAD detects just about everything airborne, so they'll know if they're under attack. However this will do nothing to stop someone sitting at the end of a busy airport with a shoulder launched SAM and take out a couple planes.
This is just another ridiculous idea to give the American people a false sense of security. Now don't get me wrong. There may be some merit in these ideas, but I just don't see them. Can someone please enlighten me?
Here in Germany, we have two companies building Airships - both for different purposes. One of them is about to file for bankrupcy - just within the next couple of days. While Zeppelin seems to be doing quite well offering flights to the public and building highgly priced Zeppelin Z1, Cargolifter stopped developing their product, the C160 Airship - which was supposed to carry 160 tons of payload - just yesterday. If there is a need for a hangar in the US... there is one spare in Germany pretty soon i guess.
Here are two links to these companies and to an article about cargolifter:
Zeppelin Germany
Cargolifter Germany
Yahoo on Cargolifter
I think the sabotage idea was discounted in favour of static arcing across to ungrounded panels. Whatever caused the fire, painting the aircraft with thermite in an oil-based paint probably wasn't a great idea.
Cruise missiles are not much more than big RC airplanes with a payload. The German "buzz bombs" were a good example - a simple gyro and altimeter, a bomb, and enough fuel to make it over to London.
Think of this with commodity hardware.
The nav system is not too difficult - something to take the input and correct the course and altitude. A GPS with a COM port and a Palm Pilot makes this really easy (though mine are too clunky to actually put into anything that does not float).
Power plant - don't think jet, think rotax. Since you are not looking for FAA certification, you would be surprised what you can stuff on an airframe. VW bug engines are used in a number of homebuilt projects.
Payload. No clue, but I'm sure someone could manage.
Anyhow, it is probably a mute issue. Cruse missiles are intended to execute an attack from a "safe distance" to prevent retaliation and also obscure where you are attacking from. Way too much harpoon in college... If the terrorist keep up with there current track record, they will just have someone drive/fly the payload in person. Those cruise missiles often have another name - kamikaze.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Quite simply, it would watch for people who are crossing the boarder at non-designated boarder crossings. The boarder between Canada and the US, from what I recall, is highly unguarded, and allows for basically anyone to pass over with no real effort. Furthermore, I believe any Canadian can waltz through legitimate checkpoints whenever they want, as long as they're not carring prohibited materials.
Thus, anyone who intentionally avoids those checkpoints may be assumed to be transporting prohibited materials or prohibited people from Canada into the US. Legitimate people who wished to visit the US would cross through the boarder crossing, the 'terrorists' would skip those checkpoints, and these blimps would be better suited to spot such activity from high above for long periods of time.
This operates under the assumption that Canadian customs processes aren't secure enough for the US, and thus we need to double check their work. For example, Canadians may freely come and go to Cuba, while members of the US may not. Thus, it stands to reason, that it'd be easier for a Cuban terrorist to enter Canada, and then sneak across the boarder to the US with his vile intentions.
Of course, this does very little to stop new terrorist attacks, however the US political mindset right now seems to be 'any minor improvement should be done.' Flying blimps across the boarder decreases the chance of terrorists by a fraction of a fraction of a percent? Do it. Running around declaring people you don't like an Axis of Evil and invading them might stop the family of a suicide bomber from getting some money, go for it. I guess they thing every minor amount will eventually add up.
The article said that these things would only have a structure for supporting cargo, which, I'm guessing would be hanging about where a blimp's gondola is, so I guess the original assumption about the marshmallow might be true. (I have no idea why the author of he article kept referring to them as dirigibles...)
I'm pretty sure that if you plowed any sort of non-rigid blimp into any sort of skyscraper, the blimp would do a minimum of damage before being punctured - though if it managed to break some windows first, the occupants of the building might be running around talking in squeaky voices from inhaling al that helium, which would make for some very confused 911 operators I'm sure...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
If I remember from that National Geographic documentary, the doping compound used on the Hindenberg was a combination of powdered aluminum and nitrocellulose. Which is the EXACT formula used on solid rocket fuel.
Small wonder why when the airship burned there was almost no fabric cover left from the fire.
A secret 1938 report inside the Zeppelin company confirmed that the doping compound was extremely flammable.