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19th Century Airship Technology for Port Security
fenimor writes "Airships - known today mainly for advertising flyovers at football games - are the core of a new coastal surveillance system in development for the the U.S. Department of Defense. These
stationary platforms 25 times the size of a Goodyear blimp will be equipped with an array of cutting-edge equipment for remote sensing, communications, and risk analysis, providing surveillance coverage over a surface area of 500,000 square miles from an altitude of 70,000 feet."
So now we have even more national security data that we can't monitor in real time. What good is all this info supposed to be if we can't use it to stop a problem before it happens? Technology is great at recording, storing, and retrieving information, but I don't see a database server walking down to the beach to make an arrest. Are the politicians considering an increase in the Coast Guard, Port Authority, and other applicable agencies? If not, all this new technology won't do much good.
Dosn't this seem terribly innefficient? I mean, mantaining these things in the air at all times, to do a job that seems to already be done by survelience satellites, airplanes and ground. And how does this reduce the risk to terrorism?
Also, what if it gets punctured or damaged while at 70,000 feet? Will there be an immediate action plan to send up a replacement? As it's unmanned, I guess this means that every little defect requires a ground-based overhaul?
Personally, I don't see it working at the moment.
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These airships would be a great advance in transportation, cargo, and exploring/inhabiting greater volumes of the Earth's capacity. But how do they protect our ports from some asshole with a stick of dynamite and a scuba tank stowed away a petroleum supertanker? This money and Defense management would be much better spent infiltrating terrorists with spies, cutting their financial, political and media sponsors, and investing in democratizing the tyrannies that pressure the populations from which they recruit. Unless our goal is to keep the Pentagon fat on job corps and science budgets, some state capitalist corporate welfare for defense contractors.
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What keeps some random person who owns a gun from taking one of these down, exactly? Does the impact get distributed in such a way that it will not be hurt by conventional arms? Do keep in mind that being in American, conventional arms is a 50-caliber sniper rifle capable of going straight through body armor (of several people).
If one starts having problems, send up a replacement THEN bring the bad one down.
No problems that wouldn't be issues with any other technique in use (satellite, helicopter, airplane, etc.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
In principle this isn't that new, it's an expansion upon an existing program.
For example, if you check the north Florida (Jacksonville sectional) aviation chart there's an obstacle along the west coast of the state, a border observation balloon at the "bend" between the peninsula of Florida and the pan handle. It has been used for years to monitor the Florida coast against smuggling from the Gulf of Mexico.
What looks different about this program is that the "balloons" will move at a very high altitude. It's unclear to me why stationary stations aren't sufficient for border monitoring, unless you want to monitor activity by all sorts of people in the interior of the country.
It does give them another excuse for UFO debunking though.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Astronomers have occasionally used balloon borne telescopes for getting above most of the atmosphere, as it is much cheaper than a satellite. If there is a mass-produced long duration stratespheric balloon/airship available, it could make this much more viable.
As an aside - the article also discusses "Terahertz imaging." One terahertz corresponds to wavelength of about 0.3 mm or 300 microns - extreme IR, or short sub-millimetre, depending on your point of view.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Radar just tells you where something is, where it's heading right now, and sometimes what it is.
Optics and infared can also tell you how many people are there, what they're doing, sometimes what they're bringing with them.
BIG difference.
They'll be 10-15 miles up. That's not exactly easy to pick out of a very large sky.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
And it never occurred to you that there were HUMANS on board that thing? That don't react well to .30-06 rounds travelling at high velocity?
You *ARE* a redneck.
This story is about a blimp currently in the skies above Washington D.C. What better way to have surveillance over a population than with a very quiet slow moving craft that can carry a large payload. Unmanned flying drones cost too much, travel too fast, don't have the long flight times, and have the payload capacity. Airships (or blimps) give more bang for the buck.
Small correction: The surface radars in question actually use low frequency "radar waves" (no such thing, it's radio waves). Correctly: the system uses HF RF (HF band RF) which is a considerably lower frequency band than most modern radars operate at. At a guess these HF radar systems will suffer from problems of low resolution, making them less suitable for detection of small targets than an S or X band airborne system would.