Government Orders Spy Blimp

[Justin Time]

GOVERNMENT ORDERS SPY BLIMP
Friday, June 16, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com

The government has hired defense subcontractor Lockheed Martin to design and develop an enormous blimp that will be used to spy on Americans, according to the Athens News. Government agencies such as the NSA are anticipating that as early as 2009 the blimp will be operational and begin supporting new ways of monitoring everything that happens in the country.

A prototype of the blimp is already being developed at a cost of $40 million. The spy ship, called the High Altitude Airship, will be seventeen times larger than the Goodyear Blimp and hover 12 miles above the ground. Although it is very large it will be invisible to both the naked eye and ground radar because of its distance from the earth. Fuel economic and self sufficient, it will be powered by solar energy and will be able to fly for years at a time.

The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command has already conducted a study to determine some of the uses of the spy ship. It has the capability of monitoring an area 600 miles in diameter at a time with surveillance equipment, such as high-resolution cameras. The government has ordered 11 of them – enough to monitor every parcel of land in the U.S.

staff reports - Free-Market News Network

http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=15095

 

[cuate]

OhmyGosh

Beam me in, Scotty! I have no secrets worth looking into on the internet, on the phone, cellphone, from black unmarked helicopters or this huge "spy blimp".
Look and listen all you want, do not, I repeat, do not ever pull any of that Ruby Ridge or Waco ever again on an American Citizen, ya hear?

 

[Heist]

Simple solution. Use a two story tall electromagnet accelerator to launch a Barrett rifle up 11 miles into the air..

 

[Wildalaska]

I wrapping my head in tinfoil as I right this, Im immune from the Darth Vader Blimp!

WildcrinklecrinkleAlaska

 

[IZinterrogator]

According to my math, that's 282,743 square miles to watch with what, three cameras? Big deal. A waste of government funds that will be cancelled when it pointed out how useless the system will be.

 

[ffxmike]

I wrapping my head in tinfoil as I right this, Im immune from the Darth Vader Blimp!

Well, if vader is involved, we need simply find a thermal exhaust port. they'll leave it unprotected, if history serves as any guide.

Seriously, though, what could this possibly offer the govt that satellites don't already offer?

 

[dev_null]

Seriously, though, what could this possibly offer the govt that satellites don't already offer?

Well, if they use hot air instead of helium or hydrogen, they can refill indefinitely from DC.

 

[tegemu]

I am not at all surprised that the gov't is buying a new blimp for surveillance, they have been using them for years for Customs and Drug interdiction. However the blatant paranoia about spying on all the American People is worthy of some mental health care.

 

[BillCA]

+1 dev_null!

What do blimps offer that satellites don't? Let's see...

1. Easier to reposition
2. Longer loiter time in a specific area
3. More mobility. Meaning it's harder to predict when one will be "overhead".
4. Easier & cheaper to upgrade recon packages.
5. Lower cost to launch
6. Lower TCO (total cost of ownership)

Of course, with them flying around 60,000 feet, they'll be out of the way of commercial air traffic except when they transition from ground to operational altitudes.

One of the problems with spy sats is that their trajectories and flight paths can be determined and countermeasures taken (e.g. moving things indoors covering with IR/Radar distorting tarps) when the sats are due to fly over.

This is one reason the U-2 and SR-71 platforms were well liked by prior administrations -- high resolution recon almost anywhere over night. I think one of the guys at Beale AFB's SR-71 squadron had "FED-R" (Fed Recon) printed on his helmet. "When you absoulutely, positively need it overnight".