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Blimps To Help Protect Washington DC From Air Attack
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Reuters reports that a pair of bulbous, helium-filled 'aerostats', each 243 feet long, will be moored to the ground and fly as high as 10,000 feet, as part of a high-tech shield designed to protect the Washington D.C. area from an air attack like the one that took place on September 11, 2001. One of the aerostats carries a powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles. The other carries a radar used for targeting. Operating for up to 30 days at a time, JLENS is meant to give the military more time to detect and react to threats (PDF), including cruise missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, compared with ground-based radar and is also designed to defend against tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving vehicles that could be used for attacks, including boats, cars and trucks. 'We're trying to determine how the surveillance radar information from the JLENS platforms can be integrated with existing systems in the National Capital Region,' says Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Washington is currently guarded by an air-defense system that includes Federal Aviation Administration radars and Department of Homeland Security helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on alert at Reagan National Airport to intercept slow, low-flying aircraft."
As I understand it, we need to conserve helium. If these things are unmanned, could we not use hydrogen?
Yes, a giant ball of gas catching fire when fired upon and crashing into DC will sure help protect it.
You do realize that they tend to use Helium now-a-days, right? And helium is fire retardant.
I'd list a bunch of "Archer" quotes from one of my favorite episodes, but I'm too lazy to look them up.
The designers should give the blimps a dark steampunk look so that visitors to DC can pretend like they are in a euro-WWII-alternate-timeline story.
Gentleman, we have politicians in Washington DC. Lots of them. A near endless supply of hot air. What more could you ask for?!
Life is not for the lazy.
Just put a big dome over the whole place, and don't let anyone out. They can all pretend they're running the world, and the rest of us can finally be left alone to run out lives.
1984 appears to be rocketing right along as movie-turned-reality. instead of addressing foreign policy mistakes we've taken to bubblewrapping and tripwiring the nation until americans stop worrying about it and learn to love the terror
the good news i guess is DC is going to start looking a lot more like bladerunner, and if we're lucky it will mean eventually, just maybe, i can order chinese from a blimp chop suey shop like corbin dallas. :)
although im not entirely looking forward to the Judge Dredd approach to criminal justice, i am admittedly kind of excited to see the voice-activated guns and flying motorcycles
Good people go to bed earlier.
They state as fact the blimps will be deployed, but they're still "trying to determine" how they can be integrated into the air defense system? Isn't that kinda backwards?
But what are they going to fill it w/?
Congress is still going forward w/ plans to close the Federal Helium Reserve:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443545504577567102314948314.html
http://www.aapg.org/explorer/2012/12dec/helium1212.cfm
and has intentionally been pricing helium low, so as to allow it to be used in party balloons instead of MRI units, &c.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Yeah, because the 9/11 attacks were all about not having radar visibility of the aircraft, uh huh. Sure.
They were perfectly visible by radar.
So this is a hidden agenda (technology that will not be mentioned by them) or a complete BS example of making Americans feel comfortable, like nothing will ever happen again because they're being watched out for.
So rather than do the sane thing to reduce attacks (which saves money both in the short and long run!) which is to fix our foreign policy to one of free trade and friendship rather than secret assassinations, embargoes, invasions and occupation that we currently have. We instead decide to spend even more money on useless counter-measures.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nice of Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnel to pitch in.
You do realize that they tend to use Helium now-a-days, right? And helium is fire retardant.
I'd list a bunch of "Archer" quotes from one of my favorite episodes, but I'm too lazy to look them up.
Welcome aboard the Excelsior!
Yes what a wonderful use for the limited amount of Helium on this planet. Let's put it in baloons to protect ourselves from imaginary threats.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
.
San Diego Union Tribune article about an unmanned Army blimp brought down in Pa. woods A remote-controlled, unmanned reconnaissance blimp launched from Ohio by defense contractor Lockheed Martin was brought down Wednesday in a controlled descent in the woods of southwestern Pennsylvania after it was unable to climb to the desired altitude. The HALE-D blimp was designed to float above the jet stream at 60,000 feet and can be used for reconnaissance, intelligence and other purposes often accomplished by satellites, but at lower cost. The blimp was being tested as a communications relay device as part of a contract Lockheed Martin has with the Army
And another one, found by searching for military and blimps, also found in gizmag and wired, is a dedicated blimp site article about the army preparing and training for using a huge/mammoth spy blimp, an LEMV = US Army's massive Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle:
The Air Force's highly computerized (and potentially missile-armed) Blue Devil 2 airship recently ran into integration problems, forcing the flying branch to cancel a planned test run in Afghanistan. (Although the service had never been too hot on airships in the first place.) The Navy meanwhile grounded its much smaller MZ-3A research blimp for a lack of work until the Army paid to take it over. The LEMV seemed to be losing air, too, as Northrop and the Army repeatedly delayed its first flight and planned combat deployment originally slated for the end of 2011.also http://www.gizmag.com/lemv-first-flight/22675/ ...
and http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/massive-spy-blimp : Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight
There wass also an auxilliary naval air field north of La Jolla in Del Mar that also was used for blimps: http://www.militarymuseum.org/NAAFDelMar.html
I'm sick and tired of elected officials thinking of themselves as a valuable commodity. They're just citizens. No better, no worse than the rest of us. They need to send a message to the "terrorists." This message should be something to the effect, "You can hurt me, kill me, do whatever you want, but know that there are plenty of other people in line to take my place."
I really do believe that the current breed of politician would make the founders of the U.S.A. sick.
Helium is also in short supply and absolutely non-renewable, hydrogen would be a big improvement.
But +1 for the hot air suggestion :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That was my first thought too, but these operate in a completly different way. Barrage ballons were themselves the anti-air defence, carrying strong cables to ensnare low-flying attackers. These blimps are just radar platforms. Their advantage is just price: It's cheaper to keep a blimp inflated than to keep a radar-helicopter in the air.
What about the aliens?!?!? Are these blimps going to save our government from the aliens' attack that could come any moment?!?! Everyone knows Independence Day was a documentary sent back from the future to warn us!
/sarcasm
I think that their imagined threat of terrorist airplane attacks is about as likely to happen.
fly as high as 10,000 feet
powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles.
There's a simple aviation rule of thumb (aka its probably less than 10% inaccurate) that 10Kft = 100nm to the horizon.
So they're admitting its a OTH radar. That seems odd, why make a shitty lightweight OTH when you could make a really good one on the ground. In the air would be a good spot for a stereotypical skin painting surveillance radar, however.
I'm suspecting there's some specsmanship going on here were an infinite number of imperial to metric re-conversions and PR rounding up 20 times has somehow lead to the "real" range of "around a hundred miles" getting boosted to the somewhat ridiculous 340 miles.
Or they're confusing individual range with total system coverage. You only need about 3 blimps IN A SYSTEM each with 100 mile range to cover about 350 miles along the widest part of the entire system. I have to think about circle packing, maybe 3 perfectly aligned circles 100 nm apart could cover an absolute minimum diameter of 340 miles as a system. Hmm you'd be looking at the intersection point of two circles vs the farthest point of the 3rd circle or some BS, I think?
And or the journalists failed geometry and are confusing range aka radius with diameter or more like circumference. So they F'd up thinking radius is the same as circumference. Yes, literally, a 100 nm diameter radar (aka 50 mile range) can cover a ground footprint aka "radar fence" that would be a circle on the ground that would be 314 point something miles to walk around (not across).
Please no flames that an airborne radar can see an airplane at twice the horizon at the same altitude as the radar because they're both in the air... the specified security theater is to prevent another 9/11, and if the 9/11 planes were at 30Kft cruising along over NYC then 9/11 wouldn't have been much of a disaster (unless we start building 30001 foot tall skyscrapers in the future or something). The next attack will of course be highly successful because it will be different than the last attack. Generals always prepare to fight the last war. I bet the united states is perfectly prepared to defend against massed cavalry charges and musket fire.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Would you say that living in DC could be considered... dangerous?
Would you say it's kind of a zone, that has danger in it?
The free marketeers, excuse me the "privatize the profits, socialize the losses"
Please educate me, how socializing losses is even possible at all in a free market? What you're bashing here is a government-controlled economy.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
We need to get into contact with the guy in charge of the tanks and see if they can swap the Helium with the Hydrogen.
If they were using hydrogen, which they're not, the giant ball of gas that's caught fire isn't going to "fall" on anything, until it turns into water - and I don't mean steam either, I mean liquid, heavier than air, water.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Meh it's playing with words. An aerostat is still a blimp, and a blimp is still a balloon, just as a Cessna and a kite are both aircraft.
If it had a rigid frame it could even be a zeppelin and an aerostat at the same time.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm pretty sure that London had many more than just two during World War II.
Although the intent of them was to provide obstructions to aircraft rather than trying to detect them.
*Cessna and a kite are both fixed wing aircraft. Balloons are aircraft too.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Good thing no plane will ever be hijacked again. They'll either make it to the destination or explode before anyone knows there's a problem.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I was just thinking lately, the only thing missing in the similarities between the US and 1935 Germany is a nice big Zeppelin.
Because those who call themselves that often advocate privatizing government resources.
These folks are as interested in a real free market as much as the Chinese are in actual communism.
A free market without government intervention is of course not possible, for reference I suggest Adam Smith. Monopolies and such are a real pain.
4 words: Too big to fail
This is not at all about making Americans feel comfortable.
It's about keeping their voting bloc in line.
Now I wish I was joking.
No brain, no pain.
I'm not talking about the fact that Helium is in short supply.
But the article explicitly states they'd be using Helium, and the AC states that "OMG Fireball City LOL"
It
Since China has a penchant for surfacing their apparently undetectable submarines right in the middle of our naval battle groups, we have no reason to believe that we can detect the presence of their missile subs, nor do we have any reason to believe they don't have one or more parked off the mid-Atlantic coast.
Why our Nation's capital is still in such a vulnerable position is beyond me. A place like Omaha would be much better suited, since it's deep inland, and about the farthest you can get from the border of the continental US. It makes a sub-launched cruise missile or ICBM an untenable option for attacking the Nation's Capital.
Would you say that living in DC could be considered... dangerous? Would you say it's kind of a zone, that has danger in it?
I hear there's a highway to DC, too.
Former imagery analyst and UAV contractor here.
While I'm not denying that these aerostats are capable of floating high resolution air-search radar, etc, their purpose over in the non-war combat zones of afghanistan and iraq where I lived for 2-3 years was to loft high resolution zoom optics with an EO/IR sensor payload in order to spot shooters and mortar teams within several miles of their ground stations. Essentially it was like having a full-time predator feed orbiting your base, which was really convenient for the aforementioned purposes.
On smaller bases you would have a guyed lattice tower with a camera ball on top, on larger ones, you got an aerostat. The ground station equipment used to view and transport the video feeds was similar/identical to those used for smaller UAV systems.
Again, it's possible these will be used for the stated purpose, but if they are, it'd be the first time I've seen it done. The most advanced surface to air missile systems do not use aerostats; take a look at the Russian S-300 (SA-10/20). It uses a ground-based air search radar and a ground-based target acquisition radar. Of course, this system is designed to be highly mobile, but the terrain around DC isnt so mountainous that a traditional early warning system wouldn't suffice. Even less so a target acquisition or illumination radar, as those two systems usually require LOS to the target. Unless terrorists have learned advanced terrain-following flight profiles and can manage to fly them in a fully fueled passenger aircraft (lol). The extreme precision radars that guide anti-mortar gun systems which can shoot a softball falling at terminal velocity out of the sky are still _ground based_
Believe me, I have every confidence that Washington has managed to find a new lightweight high res radar system to waste money on.
(hint) However, I also advise that it would eliminate a lot of the troublesome FAA and national-security related regulations barring UAV surveillance of the populace if this system is considered a ground-tethered conventional surveillance camera like the ones at wal-mart, rather than a high precision aerial sensor platform, y'know, like it actually is... (/hint)
And please, please, please make the blimp look like a giant shark.
Maybe that's an acronym, something like the Sky High Anti Radar Killer?
No brain, no pain.
If you weren't such douchebags to so many people of the planet... You wouldn't need to worry so hard about 'threats'...
Not being an ass is even free.
So how much money have you spent?
I have to wonder how blimps can prevent the collapse of a building that wasn't hit by a plane.
Perhaps you missed it, but clearly that plane hit that building.
So how can I check whether I'm in an alternative reality when I can't depend on dirigibles in the sky any more?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Yes what a wonderful use for the limited amount of Helium on this planet. Let's put it in baloons to protect ourselves from imaginary threats.
It is not to protect *us*; It is to protect politicians.
If you would get Ron Paul's cock out of your mouth long enough to look at reality.. you'd see that we are not engaged in a war against any country, and have not been since the second Iraq conflict ended.
First of all, as stated by another...DUH, it's full of helium. Helium is a noble gas, and does not burn. But even if it were filled with hydrogen, AND you hit it with an incendiary round of some sort, I doubt very much that anything would be on fire by the time it landed, from that high up. If you look at the footage of the Hindenburg, you can see that it didn't take terribly long for the hydrogen to burn itself out...now imagine that airship starting its burn 2 miles up instead of less than 100 feet up, and guess how bad the flames would be by the time it landed?
Second of all, fired upon by whom, exactly, and using what? The stats operate at 10,000 feet...that's close to 2 miles. That's further away than any but the very best snipers in the world can shoot, and even then they require exotic hardware like a .50 caliber rifle (of a few types) or the Chey-Tac Intervention system...and they're shooting horizontally, instead of straight up. There's no way to judge crosswinds...which will be of multiple speeds in the intervening distance. And if you shoot from an angle, instead of straight up (because let's face it, the anchor for the stat won't exactly be something you can walk up to...or anywhere near it, and keep in mind how people will come running once they hear the deafening report of a high-power rifle) then the range gets even worse. You're not going to sneak up on it with a plane, obviously, and if you fired at it with a MANPADS (if you can even find one with that range...most cannot hit something that far away) you will miss because it doesn't have a significant heat signature. And if you are a bad guy and have one of the better MANPADS available to you while you're walking around in Washington, DC...why are you shooting at a blimp?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
What is this, 1940??
Zooperman
OMG! We're the other universe!
"Fire retardant" actually means, "burns too slowly to be a hazard under most conditions." Helium is completely inert with respect to everything, and will not even form a stable compound with itself. In a closed container helium will put the fire out. Not so much in an open system as it has a low heat capacity compared to something like water, and it fails to smother like CO2 because it tends to float away. It won't interfere with reactions like PKP because it remains unreactive. But inside a blimp? Nothing will burn.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
I'm pretty sure its a byproduct of nuclear fission.
If it had a rigid frame it could even be a zeppelin and an aerostat at the same time.
I'm sorry but, no.
Because nobody would ever buy a record album by a band named:
"Led Zeppelostat"
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I find this amusing because Reagan National Airport already has one of the most restrictive air traffic patterns in the country. I can see it now, take off to the North and then do a hard bank left to avoid the No Fly Zone and the Washington Monument, then a bank right to avoid the blimp. I can see commercial pilots now having to have simulator sessions to avoid tethered dirigible avoidance. Of course this means that airfare prices will increase by 50% to cover this training.
What they're building are barrage balloons which have been used since before WWII. While mildly effective, I seriously doubt that a well heeled terrorist organization will have their own air force or cruise missiles. Maybe a rogue nation, such as the PRK perhaps but then again I'd think they'd know well in advance of that kind of attack. DC is less than 36 square miles and if all of our strategic national assets are there, then we're in deep S**T. There's lots of bureaucrats of course and Congress and their staff, but could we do without them for awhile? Yeah, I know that's wishful thinking. Does anybody in DC honestly think these Rube Goldberg devices will actually do anything or just be a giant, taxpayer funded, deficit increasing waste of money? Obviously not.
Balloons were sometimes more trouble than they were worth. In 1942 Canadian and American forces began joint operations to protect the sensitive locks and shipping channel at Sault Ste. Marie along their common border among the Great Lakes against possible air attack.[3] During severe storms in August and October 1942 some barrage balloons broke loose, and the trailing cables short-circuited power lines, causing serious disruption to mining and manufacturing. In particular, the metals production vital to the war effort was disrupted.
I'm stocking up on Jiffy Pop now and waiting for the first set of severe thunderstorms to dislodge them and then have the F16s scramble to shoot them down. Some of the debris will be flammable and will land on the South East of DC, causing severe panic and riots. I just can't wait.
As Patton said:
“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.”
Even if they are fronted by balloons.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
^^^ FTFY
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
still...chances are that this thing will crash to the ground and kill some innocents long before it is used to identify and thwart a foreign attack on D.C.
really...what foreign power would even consider attacking the US homeland...let alone D.C? It would mean their annihilation. this money could be better spent on improving D.C. schools.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I see your radar blimps and raise you thousands of mylar kids ballons with foil streamers.
Read about the elements and stop being a moron. Everyone knows Helium gas is not flammable.
Yes, a giant ball of gas catching fire when fired upon and crashing into DC will sure help protect it.
At that altitude it will burn up long before it reaches the ground.
And there's no reason it would burst into flames anyway if it's properly grounded.
No sig today...
Where are they going to put broadcasting things around Washington at 10K feet without interfering physically, electrically, and probably other ways? Especially as they wave around in the breeze? Wouldn't it be a lot easier to build a few extra stations around the Beltway or a wider perimeter - or, hey, put them in big trucks that drive around the Beltway all day so they're harder to find . . .
It might not be *completely* inert. It is thought that it could be coerced into reacting with fluorine to produce some very unstable compounds.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Ok, so what is stopping some enterprising person or entity from purchasing huge reserves of helium at these rock bottom prices?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
These balloons are nothing new - they have them on the Texas coast and down the Mexican border, and they've been using them for decades to spot illegal flights coming out of Mexico. Look at any aeronautical chart for these areas and you'll see a circle with the warning "Unmarked balloon on cable up to 15,000 feet" or something similar (sorry, I don't have a Houston sectional to hand to check).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Buy low, sell high!
...that they will accidentally shoot down an airliner.
If you need to go to DC take the train.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
How can a monopoly kill all competition in a fully free market? There are two ways: either they keep prices lower than anyone else can -- and in this case, there's no harm done, or raise them and try to buy out all competition. In which case you can earn money doing nothing but spawning more and more startups. A new startup will either profit selling stuff at inflated prices (same or just a notch below that of the monopoly), or get bought out -- in which case, its creators profit, and more and more folks start jumping at such an easy opportunity.
So what do big companies do? They lobby for barriers for entry, via government interference, in the form of patents, permits or concessions. Or, for a more tricky scheme, a bailout that gets "repaid" -- which wipes out minor financial institutions, as investors get a strong message that their money is not safe with anyone not "too big to fail", while responsible handling of risk is simply not profitable enough to allow competing with the financial mafia.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
How, exactly, is Honey Boo Boo's mom going to stop an air attack?
"Lame" - Galaxar
Ok, so what is stopping some enterprising person or entity from purchasing huge reserves of helium at these rock bottom prices?
The fact that the "helium shortage" is nonsense made up by bloggers that are dumb enough to think they are smarter than the market, but aren't quite dumb enough to put their money where their mouth is. America's proven reserves of helium will meet current demand for centuries. Unproven, but extractable, reserves are probably an order of magnitude higher. We are not running out of helium, at least not in this millennium.
There's been an aerostat in the Florida Keys for, what, decades? A plane ran into the cable in 2007 and crashed. Somebody must not have read the NOTAMs.
I'm just surprised it's taken so long to be added to D.C.'s layers of defense. Much better coverage than ground-based radar, and far less expensive than keeping an AWACS or E-2C in the air all the time.
The airports in the area already have radar coverage. And there are tons of aircraft flying right past DC already on their way to the airport - not 300 miles out, they're more like 3 miles or 15-20 seconds from some targets. Then there's the nearly invisible cable dangling from the sky - wouldn't want to hit that. What is the real purpose of these blimps? Either pork or birds-eye surveillance of the area or both.
Gentleman, we have politicians in Washington DC. Lots of them. A near endless supply of hot air. What more could you ask for?!
Politicians full of hot hydrogen?
Ezekiel 23:20
before the nation's capital got its own pair of truck nuts
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
There are infinite ways to create 'barriers to entry' that do not involve government as all they are are 'issues' created by an already established player to hinder existing and/or new players in the market. Type of product (network infrastructure, mining/resource harvesting), trade secrets (do patents and/or copyrights apply to 'free markets?), etc.. Free Market as an ideal is a goal that will never be fully realized as much as 'Total Control' cannot be realized. We have to live in the grey area between all extremes and as such we need to way the pro's and con's and be ever vigilant as a voting populace to the always evolving ways of certain groups of people to try to corrupt and control for their own benefits vs the people's benefits.
At least it won't just be their own paranoia that's casting a shadow over their lives. And I bet these blimps will in no way have any cameras pointed downwards. No-sireeee-bob!
Doesn't the story go that we aren't extracting the helium from natural gas anymore because there is no financial incentive while the government is selling off the strategic helium reserve?
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Glad to know they are wasting our tax money on their extreme paranoia! 0_o
I hope you're at least not arguing that removing barriers to entry as much as possible, getting rid of patents, disallowing lobbying, stopping all bailouts, etc, wouldn't be a good idea.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Just having the lowest price is not the best thing for the market. There are other values to consider.
Buying out competition is one way, and it can actually be effective in a market with high startup costs. They would of course not buy up your startups until you had sunk all that cost into them.
The real world does not work like your fantasy land, in the fantasy land communism would work just as well. In reality things are a lot more complicated.
Doesn't the story go that we aren't extracting the helium from natural gas anymore because there is no financial incentive while the government is selling off the strategic helium reserve?
... and as soon as the price goes up, the "financial incentive" will return, and we will resume extracting it.
The fact that helium is too cheap and plentiful to even bother collecting is hardly evidence that we are "running out".
If you disagree, and you really think you are smarter than the market, then go invest in helium futures.
In a show of international cooperation, the commanding officer is on loan from England: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Blimp
I assume they lifted that phrase from the Politburo or the Peoples' Central Committee. [shudder]
Oh, I don't disagree, just nice covering the bases when talking about conspiracies.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Fracking *might* have the unintended consequence of liberating co-habitating helium that would otherwise be held. If they're generating millions of gallons of salt and chemical contaminated water, I don't think they'll give a care about wasting helium either.
Selling helium high is like selling orcs to Mordor.
Ezekiel 23:20
Appears none of you faggots know the difference between further and farther. What a bunch of losers.
Better than not knowing how to act like a decent human being. I can fix that one thing in five minutes...tomorrow, you'll still be an asshole :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Washington can be blown away, we'll be fine; It's only a psychological thing, there's no reason to protect it any more so than New York, Los Angeles, or Houston. Hell, not that I'm advocating it, but it would probably be better for the hypothetical enemy to strike D.C. and utterly stir the hornet's nest rather than destroy a valuable military target or more populated area.
For all the money spent in case something happens we could instead arm ourselves to react once a threat is perceived. If the Internet has taught us anything it's that a decentralized network is what you want -- The answer is not to protect your single points of failure, but to eliminate them before the enemy has a chance. The good news is that the population and the military are already decentralized. So too should D.C., and Wall Street be. You can't protect against script kiddies (terrorists) without wasting lots of time in a constant state of fear, making life hard for citizens on the off chance that something might happen where you expect it to.
Seems more like a defense contract hand-out to me. if they were smart, they'd run Fast Food ads on the blimps, recoup some money via advertising and make us look as ridiculous as we are.
I think pilots may object to having blimps tethered to their landing strips...
âoeFixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.â
Well, what do you propose? A mobile capital that moves around the US? Certainly would be interesting.
And then of course the 'black leadership' to claim it's spying on all the 'urban' people.
I doubt Obama will admit that the government is spying on people.
Great, you want to throw away all our helium on the basis of some shitty article from Forbes? Forbes, which routinely publishes climate-denier rhetoric and any other bullshit PR that someone can use to make a little more money?
Most people are smarter than the market, the market is dumb as shit. What the market does well is maximizing short-term gains, and there are a lot of gains to be had in the short-term if we blind ourselves to long term environmental costs, including blowing through our natural resources like helium.
There are far more qualified people making a far more compelling case about the need to conserve helium.
we prefer to be called "weight challenged service-people"
-badford
Since those startups can just refuse being bought out and proceed to sell the goods at inflated prices (still cheaper than the monopoly's), sunk costs are not their problem. Obviously, they would refuse the buyout if it's not going to be profitable. Or if they do something for a principle, for that matter.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
No, they cannot not.
The monopoly will let them sink in billions, then drop the price to the point that no one makes money. At that point they buy the company for less than the investment cost. Netting the monopoly discount hardware.
Reality conflicts with this utopian free market crap in much the same way it does with communism or other things that work only in theory.
The monopoly would have to drop the price for an extended time, which effectively makes them non-abusive one. If they'd sell below costs, they would need to get money for dumping from somewhere -- if we're talking about a multi-billion company, the smaller one has means of exporting to that place.
So there are two cases: either a small company that can easily spring up and dissolve, or a large (but smaller) competitor. Beating the former requires the monopoly to forfeit all profits for a noticeable period of time, the latter can diversify (either geographically or to different products), and thus can't be easily smashed. In the second case, there's no monopoly anymore.
If you have multiple billions, you can be a significant player in any market that has no artificial barriers.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Only long enough to bankrupt the little guy.
Think about markets with high natural barriers like telcos. You can't cheaply make a new one and if the monopoly wants they can undercut you in only your own markets. They fund that by charging more elsewhere. Not all profits, just the ones in markets you compete in.
I am wondering how many kinds of Optical Surveillance are also discritely attached to that thing to spy on americans in DC?