Post by Watchman on Jan 31, 2007 15:42:16 GMT -5
US To Launch "Eye In The Sky" Armada To Track Every American
Is the US launching a blimp to spy on its population?
Charles Arthur
The Guardian
Perhaps, though not yet - those who live in fear of an eye in the sky tracking their every move have until 2009 to dig a bunker and set of underground tunnels to the nearest shops. But yes, the American defence contractor Lockheed Martin has been working for three years on a $40m (£20m) contract awarded by the US Missile Defence Agency to build 11 High-Altitude Airships.
The fun, and the speculation, starts once you delve into the technical details. Each airship will float 12 miles (20km) above the surface (in the low stratosphere), be powered by solar panels and could oversee an area of 600 square miles. Put 11 of them over the US with suitably powerful cameras, and they could keep watch on every square metre of the whole country.
But surely the part of the Pentagon which awarded the contract - the Missile Defense Agency - isn't into surveillance of the American people, but their defence from incoming ballistic missiles? That's what its website at mda.mil says. However, delving more deeply shows that the project's aims include being used as "a mobile, retaskable, high-altitude, geostationary long-endurance platform" whose functions "will span from communications and weather/environmental monitoring to short- and long-range missile warning, surveillance, and target acquisition". ("Target acquisition" is what civilians call "aiming a weapon at something".)
But by the time the lighter-than-air blimps are ready for launch, the US might have more pressing business in space than observing its own people from on high. China this week confirmed that it used one of its own weather satellites for target practice with a missile strike on January 11. For what reason? It wouldn't say. Now that's worrying.
Is the US launching a blimp to spy on its population?
Charles Arthur
The Guardian
Perhaps, though not yet - those who live in fear of an eye in the sky tracking their every move have until 2009 to dig a bunker and set of underground tunnels to the nearest shops. But yes, the American defence contractor Lockheed Martin has been working for three years on a $40m (£20m) contract awarded by the US Missile Defence Agency to build 11 High-Altitude Airships.
The fun, and the speculation, starts once you delve into the technical details. Each airship will float 12 miles (20km) above the surface (in the low stratosphere), be powered by solar panels and could oversee an area of 600 square miles. Put 11 of them over the US with suitably powerful cameras, and they could keep watch on every square metre of the whole country.
But surely the part of the Pentagon which awarded the contract - the Missile Defense Agency - isn't into surveillance of the American people, but their defence from incoming ballistic missiles? That's what its website at mda.mil says. However, delving more deeply shows that the project's aims include being used as "a mobile, retaskable, high-altitude, geostationary long-endurance platform" whose functions "will span from communications and weather/environmental monitoring to short- and long-range missile warning, surveillance, and target acquisition". ("Target acquisition" is what civilians call "aiming a weapon at something".)
But by the time the lighter-than-air blimps are ready for launch, the US might have more pressing business in space than observing its own people from on high. China this week confirmed that it used one of its own weather satellites for target practice with a missile strike on January 11. For what reason? It wouldn't say. Now that's worrying.