
Drone Blimps Hovering Over D.C. to Stop Cruise Missiles - SEJeff
http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/don-t-be-alarmed-by-the-drone-blimps-hovering-over-d-c-they-re-here-to-stop-cruise-missiles-20130726
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mahmud
And after a few years of no threats, they will be re-purposed to "catch
pedophiles".

~~~
ihsw
These ships likely have a unit cost exceeding $50M (considering that they're
drone blimps), however the corresponding jet airliner JSTARS has a unit cost
somewhere north of $250M. They're used as battle management and
command&control tools, and the military branches will very likely want to keep
them out of the hands of civilian LE departments due to all the expensive
equipment on-board.

The unit cost of blimps vs rotorcraft is likely lower, especially regarding
fuel expenditures, and many LE departments have expressed great interest in
all kinds of drone surveillance. I would be surprised if these things _weren
't_ deployed in high-threat scenarios in municipalities.

~~~
revelation
That's wonderful logic except for the fact that the R&D likely cost billions
and we are only buying a handful of these things. In fact, in these army
projects, the number of final units bought is from experience inversely
related to the cost explosion of the project in the R&D department.

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draugadrotten
Titillating. It's like a Hollywood movie. Giant military blimps hovering over
a major US city, silently watching and feeding data to a control center deep
in the ground, with corporate logos on the giant blast doors.

In addition to monitor the sky, will these blimps be able to use their sensors
to monitor enemy combatants and/or civilians on the ground?

~~~
AYBABTME
No reason to believe they couldn't.

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peter-fogg
Call me crazy, but when was the last time we were worried about cruise
missiles over DC? I realize that the US has less-than-perfect relations with
some countries, but the Cold War has been over for quite some time now.

~~~
mapmeld
Also, what's the point of defending only one city from cruise missiles? Unless
the enemy has a specific political target, they can cause a lot of destruction
elsewhere.

~~~
ceol
What's the point in protecting the one US city where hundreds of the most
important political figures gather each and every day?

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weego
Your "enemies" are currently undermining you economically; wars are dirty old
things that have innate outcome risks. Economic domination just keeps on
giving. Infact some of that R&D budget might have directly or indirectly gone
to them.

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incision
This reads as cheap, general purpose surveillance with "cruise missle" as an
apparently effective red herring.

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mtgx
I've just seen this talk on Ted about autonomous killer drones, and what
drones could mean for the future and democracies, especially if they are
automated (for which there are great incentives to happen):

[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_shouldn_t_belong_to_a_robot.html)

~~~
nooneelse
Almost every time I see a really big political event held outside, I wonder if
it will be the one that starts a wave of automated drone assassinations. Then
again, really big events might have a Centurion C-RAM or two secretly parked
nearby.

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ferdo
Is anyone else struck by the irony of Raytheon's PR for these things?

"The aerostats, each nearly as long as a football field, carry powerful radars
that can look deep into enemy territory."

[http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/rtn13_jlenseut/](http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/feature/rtn13_jlenseut/)

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LoganCale
All the balloons shown in the article's image and embedded video are tethered
aerostats rather than drone blimps. If this in fact the same as what's going
to be used, these are already in place along the U.S./Mexico border, and have
been for almost 20 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System)

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northwest
It's scary that such war-time measures are being taken. It's as if serious
aggression was imminent. I think when you need such measures and there's no
war going on or imminent, you're doing something seriously wrong.

~~~
sp332
First, we are actually _at war_.

Second, the capital (especially around the Pentagon) is always covered in
missile defenses, as well as every other kind of defense they can think of.
Also, not all members of the Cabinet ever meet in one place
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designated_survivor)
and lots of other super-defensive stuff goes on all the time.

Third, it looks like this has mostly been a research project so far, and the
D.C. deployment is going to be a way to show it off.

~~~
oijaf888
What country are we in a declared war with?

~~~
ferdo
That's classified, citizen:

[http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-
tha...](http://www.propublica.org/article/who-are-we-at-war-with-thats-
classified)

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rpncreator
Blimps? Why hasn't anyone yet made a Fringe alternate universe reference yet?

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doberpen
Might actually be a nice way to detect stealth aircraft. Look at the ground
from high up, and look for a moving dip in radar returns, where the stealth
aircraft is preventing the radar waves from hitting the ground.

~~~
hga
For that sort of detection threat, they fly high and at night, which they tend
to do anyway since both are safer. ADDED: and I think flying high consumes
less fuel.

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moron4hire
Cruise missiles from whom!?

~~~
claudius
Pesky Canadians.

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deletes
In how many wars is the USA currently officially involved?

~~~
VierScar
As an Australian, I know little, but the War in Iraq, and two global
unwinnable-wars - the War on Drugs and Cyber Warfare.

~~~
eli
The US withdrew all combat troops from Iraq and the War on Drugs isn't really
a war. I guess you could argus we're waging a cyber war with Iran and China.

~~~
D9u
There are still US special operations troops in Iraq.

[http://www.thenation.com/article/170158/us-special-forces-
de...](http://www.thenation.com/article/170158/us-special-forces-deployed-
iraq-again#)

[https://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/09/us-special-forces-
deploy...](https://www.nytexaminer.com/2012/09/us-special-forces-deployed-in-
iraq-again/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/world/middleeast/iraq-
face...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/world/middleeast/iraq-faces-new-
perils-from-syrias-civil-war.html?pagewanted=2)

That's not counting the nearly 5000 private contractors - we used to call them
mercenaries - still in Iraq providing security for various US assets there.

Nor does this consider the USMC contingent guarding the US embassy.

As for the "war on (some) drugs," ask anyone who has had their door kicked in
by mistake by police conducting military style raids, I'm sure the victims of
such will draw parallels between the currently accepted police actions and
military raids in Afghanistan.

As for "cyberwar," the very fact that global communications are being
intercepted and catalogued by adjuncts of the US DoD illustrates that
cyberwarfare is being perpetrated on many more entities besides "Iran and
China."

~~~
rdouble
There are American troops almost everywhere. Robert Kaplan's books "Imperial
Grunts" and "Monsoon" detail their current involvement in Columbia,
Philippines, Mongolia, Iraq, Afghanistan and stations all around the Indian
Ocean.

