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Army To Launch Spy Blimp Over Maryland
FarnsworthG writes: A multi-billion-dollar Army project will soon be able to track nearly everything within 340 miles when an 80-yard-long blimp is hoisted into the air over Maryland. Way to be subtle, guys. From the article: "Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet just off Interstate 95, about 45 miles northeast of Washington, D.C., and about 20 miles from Baltimore. That means they can watch what’s happening from North Carolina to Boston, or an area the size of Texas."
You can't tell me that thing doesn't look like it has a scrotum.
That's over 3500 white elephants!
While you can.
I guess 1984 is no longer fiction
The last we heard it was $10,000.
How is the army allowed to do this on american soil...?
It carries gas.
Ever read Boneshaker?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nothing new, I saw one of these flying over one of the Florida Keys when I was down there a few years ago.
How convenient, right at flight level of commercial jets.
Weird article. On the one hand, it presents the blimps as the "last gasp" of a white elephant, defense contract gone-wrong project. On the other hand it plays up fears about privacy that are probably a bit overblown (the blimps don't have cameras, and even if they are installed, the range drops from a 340 mile radius to "dozens" of miles).
Even so, radar can track hundreds of square miles of traffic, and the real question is what the Army will do with that data.
Hopefully they will let transportation analysts have a look at it? Could be really helpful in infrastructure planning.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Aerostat -- a lighter than air craft that gains its lift through the use of a buoyant gas
Balloon -- an unpowered aerostat, which remains aloft or floats due to its buoyancy
Moored/Tethered Balloon -- a balloon that is restrained by a cable attached to the ground or a vehicle and so cannot float freely
Airship or Dirigible -- a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft which can navigate through the air under its own power
Blimp -- an airship without an internal structural framework or a keel
Rigid Airship -- a type of airship (or dirigible) in which the envelope is supported by an internal framework
Zeppelin -- a type of rigid airship named after the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin
I am sick and tired of people using improper terminology to refer to aerostats. The proper term for the subject of this article is a "moored balloon" or "tethered balloon." All definitions above are from Wikipedia. You're welcome. Now get off my lawn, because a zeppelin will be landing on it shortly.
Technically considered aerostats, since they are tethered to mooring stations, these lighter-than-air vehicles will hover at a height of 10,000 feet
What do you make a 10,000ft tether out of, and what are the dangers? Presumably it's going to limit air traffic in the area, and will the angle and direction of the tether will vary depending on wind strength and direction?
What would happen if the tension provided by the balloon's lift was removed, for whatever reason?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
...for news of this coastal radar surveillance system to find its way onto /.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Blimps like this were used with some success during WWII.
They are excellent at providing a low observablility obstacle capable of ripping the wings off unsuspecting aircraft.
I for one am excited by this important new program that will enable to government to more successfully spy on itself, and see no possibility for mass carnage when an unsuspecting A380 crashing into downtown Baltimore. And besides, in that edge case it will help Boeing sales - an important national agenda item. Played with proper plausible deniability it might even lead to baggage-less, nude flying. This will greatly reduce aircraft gate times, and increase TSA worker morale.
Win-Win-Win. Yeah, I'm liking this plan more and more!
Isn't the army supposed to protect us from foreign threats? This seems like a job for domestic law enforcement.
Nevermind the speculation; what's more interesting is the project logo. It's a freakin' EAGLE shooting LASER BEAMS out of its eyes! :D
The Maryland State Police arrested the Army for filming them - no film at 11.
(I'd list some reference articles (including ones on /.) about how Maryland Police keeps arresting people for filming them, even though it's not unlawful, but, you know - Google)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No one else finds this highly alarming? I don't want to live in a blade runner distopia. I don't care if they've already developed satalites that can observe me from over the fence in my backyard while I'm sunbathing and drinking a margarita, the government doesn't need added aperature for insight into my movements.
I share your outrage and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
There will be no danger of privacy violations because they said so.
No one in those fields has ever lied to the public before.
husband: I wonder what my wife wants for christmas
booming ominous sky voice: SHE WANTS YOU TO DECRYPT YOUR HAAAARD DRIVE.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Soon Big Brother will have these everywhere.
This will get abused. This will get expanded in scope. This will be used by the spy agencies to do massive, warrantless surveillance. The government will claim they're allowed to monitor everything because terrorists, kiddie fiddlers, and copyright. Despite what they say, I assume this has as much capability as they can cram into it.
This is just more crap in the ever growing ubiquitous surveillance state, and yet more ways they'll find to make sure Big Brother has his boot firmly on our necks.
*sigh* There isn't enough tinfoil in the world for this to be spun in a way that isn't terrifying.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
http://dailysignal.com/2011/08/22/the-club-k-a-deadly-%E2%80%9Cpandora%E2%80%99s-box%E2%80%9D-of-cruise-missiles/
this is why
They are, this is why they are doing it
http://dailysignal.com/2011/08/22/the-club-k-a-deadly-%E2%80%9Cpandora%E2%80%99s-box%E2%80%9D-of-cruise-missiles/
Simple, the liability of a criminal gaining access and using it to do harm would make such items highly undesirable due to prohibitive insurance costs. However, for governments, there is no liability and, in fact, the tech is likely expected to perform criminal activity.
Please please please paint it like a big red eye. Then dangle a black "tower" from it.
I turned down an offer as __________ b/c they had an opening at tsa...
only thing I can come up w/is med school cadaver but somehow lying nude on a table getting chopped up into pieces by complete strangers seems a bit more dignified/respectable (plus the cadaver actually serves a useful purpose to society at large).
How long until someone flies a sharp tipped drone right into it?
MH370 might be interested.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It's the Raytheon JLENS system. It has some impressive spying capabilities and object tracking ability. They have held up fairly well without being shot down in a warzone, how will they fare on American soil?
Nothing to see.
Data needed to compute the life expectancy of this aerostat:
- What kind of riffle is needed for a bullet to reach this high and how many persons arond that area own such a riffle ?
- What is the gas flow trough a bullet hole caused by the above riffle ?
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.50 cal browning (tracer?)
I utterly agree with you, this is why they are building it. so you have to come up with an alternative before you get rid of it. This is pretty shitty but i dont see a way around it
http://dailysignal.com/2011/08/22/the-club-k-a-deadly-%E2%80%9Cpandora%E2%80%99s-box%E2%80%9D-of-cruise-missiles/
Do *not* stare directly at the Freedom Blimps, as you will be targeted by the Freedom Drones.
I've replied to a couple of posts. Bottom line is the russians are selling a cruise missile system that looks like a normal shipping container. Hell you could actually ship it legitimately back and forth on random ships and they wouldn't even realise its a weapons platform. This is why they are building this system. There is absolutely zero cruise missile defence in the US other than navy ships that happen to be between the cruise missiles and its targets.
http://dailysignal.com/2011/08/22/the-club-k-a-deadly-%E2%80%9Cpandora%E2%80%99s-box%E2%80%9D-of-cruise-missiles/
Will it have lasers? And will they call it Skyholm?
I know the Army's getting tired of losing to Navy every year, but launching a spy blimp on the Naval Academy is just getting ridiculous...
Have gnu, will travel.
Satellites can see more (top down not angled view) and stream video to a ground station for viewing at a later date.
Watch demo of civilian tech here: http://www.skyboximaging.com/
Interesting no?
As for inclement weather, the balloon would be possibly more useful but it's so limited, that's a debatable point.
Imagine what the military has, so this balloon is little more than a joke.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This is an military proving ground. It is used to test new equipment including radars and targeting equipment. These tests include endurance tests to see how long the aerostat can be kept aloft. The fact that it can see long distances is a good thing in a battle area. I bet they tested JSTARS somewhere over the US. JSTARS has most of the capability of the aerostat if at shorter ranges. Where would you have them test prototypes? They can't test a military surveillance device because it might see too much?
It bears responsibility for helping turn the '80s into the "Cocaine Decade" in the U.S. because it became much more difficult to import the the heavy and bulky drug marijuana into the U.S. through Florida...
BS... THC is more psychoactive, by weight, than cocaine. By this logic, why didn't hash win out, or for that matter, heroin, or synthetic opiates active in the lower microgram range? People love coke, simple as that.
...you'd know that there is very little chance of the thing working.
The ever present bogey man justification. No need to have off shore monitoring of the actual potential threats (which would be massive ass container ships which are easy to track), put everything locally and monitor locally. That should let you know where the real problems are, and it's not really the bogey man.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
10kft yields a radar horizon of about 140 miles. That's an area of about 62,000 square miles. Texas has an area of about 268,000 square miles.
I'm sorry, that isn't an approved measurement. Can someone give it to me in football fields?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
This technology works on spectrums outside the light spectrum, picking up brain waves and passively imaging radio emissions enabling sight through walls and interception of any wired or wireless emission.
Haha, the public never gets it.
myronmaysflashdrive.com
that thing sounds like a tripwire for airliners. hit that tether line, drop 250 passengers in beautiful downtown Baltimore. better have strobe lights all the way down at 20 foot intervals.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
How far you can see depends on how high you are. At 10,000 feet the distance to the horizon is 122 miles, so 380 miles is over 2.5 the distance to the horizon. As for the word ''everything'' - what does that mean ? When they are that far away what they can see will be limited.
I think that someone is trying to bamboozle the senators who will be voting the funding for this.
Texas is a lot bigger than 240 miles across which is the distance that you can see at 10,000 if you define 'see' very loosely. It's pretty hard to resolve much after you have looked through 120 miles of atmosphere.
What I would like to know is how a "Tethered Balloon" costs multi-billion dollars?
Perhaps it *is* a technological marvel, as how else can they conceivably get a balloon made out of pure gold to float?
It sounds more like a line item on a ledger to hide money.
Nothing survives. Not even bacteria.
What, bugging every cell phone, landline and internet connection isn't enough ?
Does anyone remember the surveillence airships from the introduction to Syndicate?
With the protests going on every other day here in Oakland, CA and the authorities apparent need to keep an eye on them with three helicopters in the air, hovering in place, I've been thinking a lot lately about how much fuel they'd save if they got a clue about lighter-than air vehicles.
Sources for Wild West peacefulness please.
Marfa, TX has an aerostat: http://wikimapia.org/1798438/Marfa-Tethered-Aerostat-Radar-Site
I've driven by it many times - when I first encountered it, it seemed kinda neat and led me to learn about the site and aerostats.
Is must be a Stealth Blimp
I've worked in military radar research since 1968. I've rebuilt or scrounged parts out of two of the old TARS aerostats, worked on E-3, TPS-75, and a bunch of other radars, as well as designing and building parts of other experimental radars. Strangely, nobody has complained of the many airborne and ground-based radar tests in the Aberdeen area (and many others) over many years until somebody sees this blimp and terms it a "spy".
A lot of the commenters above got their impression of radar capabilities from sci-fi movies. If Big Brother wants to track your car, they're going to have to use a vehicle to tail you because no radar can pinpoint YOUR car unless you're the only vehicle on the desert.
Assuming an Earth of radius R= 6371km, that means a range to horizon (as seen from the blimp) of :
range^2 = (R+Alt)^2 -R^2 = 2*R*Alt +Alt^2 = 38846 km.sq
So the range is a smidgin under 200 km.
Anyone within 200km of this blimp can take a pot-shot at it. I don't know how much of a gun you would need to hit it, but enough people firing intermittently from ranges of a few miles should be able to perforate it faster than they can patch it. Load a few drones with thermite and crash them into the top surface. It shouldn't last long.
Seeing anything within "340 miles" (~550km) though implies considerable over the horizon capability. [Reads TFA. Heresy, I know.] OK, they're talking about radar surveillance, so 340 miles implies a "ping" emitted around every 4 milliseconds (one constraint) or particular amplifiers/ transmitters paired to give that range. BUT - outside that (approx.) 200km range, they're not going to be seeing anything taller than a person. At 210km, they'll probably only just see a truck on the horizon. Beyond 230km, most (steel-framed) buildings will be "under the radar" ... and further out the radar sees higher above the ground. further, a tower at (say) 200km range will cast a "shadow" hundreds of km long behind it into the sky. Unless the US Army have discovered some marvellous new physics that allows them to bend radar waves in free air. (There is a minor refraction with changes in air pressure/ temperature/ moisture, and some ground interaction effects, that allow for "OTH" capabilities. And those physics results are probably pretty highly classified, to keep foreigners unsure about the capabilities of USian radar. But generally, the geometry wins.)
I'm not saying this is a good thing. But it is a more limited thing than the PR puff implies.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"