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."

Comments

Fly

[Konster]

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.

Nothing to do with "Terror"

[sane?]

Come off it, just how is this supposed to fight terrorism ?

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.

Gotham City

[DarkZero]

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.)

This is utterly ridiculous.

[swaic]

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?

Re:This is utterly ridiculous.

[joshki]

These are supposed to replace the NATO planes that have been flying AWACS missions over the US since september 11th. They are obviously not going to stop a truck bomb -- but they do give us "eyes and ears" in the sky to look for those jetliners that are off course and heading towards a tall building. Fighters can't see very far -- they need an "eye in the sky" to direct them, and that's what these things would be doing. My guess is that they're a whole lot cheaper to operate than the NATO AWACS aircraft that have been up since September 11th -- also they're much more sustainable -- they can stay up a lot longer without refueling...

Re:This is utterly ridiculous.

[inKubus]

False sense of security? Sorry, that was for the first 6 months. Now it's captialization on the IGNORANCE of the American people. It's amazing that most people are really dumb enough to accept this as being "anti-terrorism".

In reality, this is just stupid. Then again, the American people will never get a chance to decide because we don't really decide anyway.

Television decides for us, tells us what to think about the matter, and then we just shrug and go to work.

I think there needs to be a citizen's veto system:

Basically, it would be a website ("secure") with a database/list of EVERY U.S. government program. You can run a search, you can browse by category. Next to each program is a check box.. If you, the citizen, feel as though a program is a useless shill and waste of money, you simply click the check box, and submit your veto.

Seriously, if we do not allow our "democratic" system (which is over 226 years old) to evolve up to our current communication capabilities, we are all going to be lost.

Of course, even though something like this would be EASY to implement, congress would never give Americans that much power.

Why? Because they like their jobs, which pretty much consist of accepting money from big business to make laws favorable to said big business. As if they are working for US. This is all mental masturbation. We work for them. We go to our shitty jobs day in and day out, hoping that maybe tomorrow will be better. And we want to do something to change the world but we CAN'T because we are POWERLESS. I thought this was a democracy, but it isn't. It's a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, and the representatives don't represent the average joe; they are rich fucks with fathers and grand-uncles who "served" in congress years before them.

We are the ones who build this great nation, yet they just fuck around with it and spy on us to make sure we aren't trying to "take away their power" or are "terrorists." Guess what guys, nobody cares.

Anyway, got off on a rant there, but I was just thinking about an idea I've had for quite sometime, actually since the rise of the WWW in the early 90's: Why not CHANGE the system and make democracy a little more DIRECT?

Certainly it is within our abilities with our current communcations infrastructure to implement a simple CITIZEN's VETO system, which would allow we, the people, to institute checks and balances on the mainly corrupt government.

And after that, we could change the entire system over to direct democracy. Personally, I have plenty of time on my hands; I could vote on each new bill in 5 minutes each night (after reading it and doing a little research). That would put the power back towards the people, and stop the idiots in Congress and the Sennate from making decisions about stuff which (as we see a lot) they really have no clue about.

Let's face it, they are a bunch of old fuckers. Like your grandparents, they cannot use a PC worth a shit and they can hardly program a VCR. Sure, they can clean a gun, but frankly, these old fucks are on the way out.

The next generation in congress will be the boomers, as all these 70-90 year olds die off, and we need to have a system in place so we, their kids, can keep them in check.

It's a new world, folks. But it can be two ways: Their world, or OUR world.

Why the FUCK are we still living in the 1700's when we have had 2 industrial revolutions and a space age?!

More later.

More like a nerf

[wirefarm]

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

Re:Larger than a Jumbo?

[MtViewGuy]

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.