This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Why Is A Gigantic War-Blimp About To Fly Above the Skies Of Suburban Baltimore?
Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
One of the most disturbing and relentless trends over the past several years has been the redirection of war technology and equipment from the battlefield abroad toward domestic use in the USA. This has resulted in a militarization of police across the nation and has encouraged small towns to use Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants to purchase ridiculous items such as tanks.
Sadly, it appears this trend is only accelerating. With billions of dollars already spent, and failed wars abroad, the military-industrial complex needs to continue to generate cash flow. May as well just use it against the American people.
We find out from the Washington Post that:
They will look like two giant white blimps floating high above I-95 in Maryland, perhaps en route to a football game somewhere along the bustling Eastern Seaboard. But their mission will have nothing to do with sports and everything to do with war.
The aerostats — that is the term for lighter-than-air craft that are tethered to the ground — are to be set aloft on Army-owned land about 45 miles northeast of Washington, near Aberdeen Proving Ground, for a three-year test slated to start in October. From a vantage of 10,000 feet, they will cast a vast radar net from Raleigh, N.C., to Boston and out to Lake Erie, with the goal of detecting cruise missiles or enemy aircraft so they could be intercepted before reaching the capital.
Interesting, I didn’t realize we were at war. When was the last time cruise missiles were shot into the United States?
Aerostats deployed by the military at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan typically carried powerful surveillance cameras as well, to track the movements of suspected insurgents and even U.S. soldiers.
Defense contractor Raytheon last year touted an exercise in which it outfitted the aerostats planned for deployment in suburban Baltimore with one of the company’s most powerful high-altitude surveillance systems, capable of spotting individual people and vehicles from a distance of many miles.
The Army said it has “no current plans” to mount such cameras or infrared sensors on the aerostats or to share information with federal, state or local law enforcement, but it declined to rule out either possibility. The radar system that is planned for the aerostats will be capable of monitoring the movement of trains, boats and cars, the Army said.
“No Current plans.” What a bunch of assholes. You know they can’t wait to attach an ARGUS surveillance system to these puppies.
“That’s the kind of massive persistent surveillance we’ve always been concerned about with drones,” said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s part of this trend we’ve seen since 9/11, which is the turning inward of all of these surveillance technologies.”
The Army played down such concerns in written responses to questions posed by The Washington Post, saying its goal is to test the ability of the aerostats to bolster the region’s missile-defense capability, especially against low-flying cruise missiles that can be hard for ground-based systems to detect in time to intercept them.
The Army determined it did not need to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment, required for some government programs, because it was not going to collect any personally identifiable information, officials said in their written responses to The Post.
Did the FISA court rubber stamp this assessment?
Technologies developed for battlefields — weapons, vehicles, communications systems — long have flowed homeward as overseas conflicts have ended. The battles that followed the Sept. 11 attacks have produced major advances in surveillance equipment whose manufacturers increasingly are looking to expand their use within the United States.
Aerostats — basically big balloons on strings — grew popular in Iraq and Afghanistan and also are used by Israel to monitor the Gaza Strip and by the United States to eye movement along southern border areas. Even a rifle shot through an aerostat will not bring it down, because the pressure of the helium inside nearly matches the pressure of the air outside, preventing rapid deflation.
So equipment used to control people in war zones are coming to America and there’s nothing to be concerned about?
The Defense Department spent nearly $7 billion on 15 different lighter-than-air systems between 2007 and 2012, with several suffering from technical problems, delays and unexpectedly high costs, the Government Accountability Office found in an October 2012 report.
“They are bringing this to the East Coast, close to Washington, to get the Pentagon guys and Congress to say, ‘Whoa, we could really use this,’?” said Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank with ties to the defense industry. “This is re-purposing. You’ve already spent the money.”
Have fun Baltimore.
Full article here.
»
- 22235 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
... but we can't get a high rez photo of the shit we supposedly left behind on the moon.
They don't want you to see the Watchers and their equipment just yet. Timing isn't right yet. Nothing like the smell of sulfer in the night air...
"Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants"
They control us with our own $, and we encourage them to do so. This shit will get worse and worse until we stop the money-go-round.
This shit will get worse and worse until we stop...
Obeying.
WSGI Buy all you can on sale for 1 cent, undervalued, just received a patent, and government proved.
http://www.google.com/patents/US20140012433
If you can't beat them at least profit from them.
http://www.wsgi.com/
http://www.ltascorp.com/
If everyone would just go to work for the Military Industrial Complex we wouldn't have any enemies.
Impeach Obama for everything. He is incompetent. Everyone knows he is lying. What purpose does he serve? None. Get rid of the Totus.
These blimps look very vulnerable to airborne attack.
Until you violate the Military Operating Area (MOA) airspace they're sure to put around these things and they send an F16 or two up to have "a talk" with you.
Yeahbut ...do rogue missiles talk? ;-)
1984 and Brave New World were obviously instruction manuals. They are sticking strictly to the script.
Ever hear of L.A.S.H.? Cute name for something that can loiter for days at 60k feet where you'll never see it.
tex-mex border is better placement.... dont you fucking think
when they can't play war overseas they play here.... oh and dont forget to give up your second amendment rights
raytheon that produces anti missle systems that are 10% effective until israel makes them work... that raytheon... selling useless shit with the ok of congressmen lining their pockets.... what about sequester... oh taht was just a term to placate the overtaxed DONKEY CLASS.... the one supporting the military industrial complex and the parasite complex.... when is the donkey going to kick the massa int he balls and stomp him to oblivion....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6d2FiFv8tU
@teslaberry
What makes you think anyone is trying to scale down war? It looks like the world is comming to a paradigm shift and throughout history whenever this happens war increased. Please elaborate if your still here, thanks.
yea, so i agree with you.
but i have a different lense.
world war 2 never really ended in the sense that war has been continuous more or less just fought through proxy wars of all sorts.
the united states nearly nuked china twice in the late 40's and 50s.
war has economic and political purposes generally speaking. and we are already seeing an escalation of war in some ways. of course, to ANYONE paying attention to world trade collapse and international politics, it does indeed look like the world is setting itself up for a massive increase in hostility.
but things are not the same as what they once were-------a massive war by western interests in very dangerous because of the threat of civil war due to unrest resulting from debasement, artificial scarcity imposed by cartelized governance, and purposeless malinvestment described as redistribution.
when you look at the soviet union, the same major factors worked to undo the soviet government as are now working upon the american one. the soviet KGB understoof their domestic dynamic and doubled their effort ---burning ever more tax dollars----to try and get control over their domestic situation.
their efforts were purposeless and only brought about collapse quicker, but in fact, 'they' indeed did get control---but not without the government collapsing and reforming themselves as the Fsb.
i forsee the same happening in the u.s. as china inevitably takes over. the bottom line is that PRODUCTION combined with a soveriegn currency which is only made possible by soveriegn military ---always win in the long run of history. the production, results directly from demographics. it can be argued that the telecommunication and industrial revolution have changed the nature of demographics' contribution to production but they haven't fully reversed it.
china produces, and they sell their own products increasingly in their own currency---dictating the terms of trade ever more to their own benefit. they are even venturing into africa cautiously.
you cannot fight this with a massive 'war'. a 'big' war is simply mutual suicide between the west and east. no one can possibly win that war. nuclear weapons make a 'hot' war unattractive to the west. and continued wars are too expensive. the west is in deep decline, people udnerstand this and yet they don't want to make the deductive leap to embrace the fact that a nuclear superpower 'hot' war simply is 95% unlikely . the powers that be can continue to coordinate globalism without having to start a major war. and without relying on the US for global dominance. the idea of american exceptionalism---that 60 years of post war dominance has changed the fundmanetal rules of geo-politics is bogus.
the world can and will transition as it always has.
I am not saying massive wars aren't possible, but just dramatically reduced. due to the policies of Mutually Assured Destruction.
The MOST IMPORTANT geopolitical game now is the race to nuclear proliferation. everyone knows this. if you don't have nukes you're NOTHING> because in the next big war, the non-nuclear countries will be the pawns and victims. the next big war is not likely to be the massive nuclear holocaust people presume. it will be something like what we see right now before our very eyes.
In history YOU DO see persistent false flags and many pivot points where excuses were created to unleash the pent up forces of war. so this possbility still exists, and it is very possible that these false flags are being engineered before our very eyes. No one can be 100% certain.
My own take is that New York to DC is the federal government of america--that very region. as the u.s collapses-----the rest of the country will slowly recede into mass poverty and eventually the fed will lose control and form a new coalition same as in soviet moscow to post soviet moscow. the presence of the fed naturally declines, but the selective and random nature by which they wield authority will increase. the u.s. will begin looking more like a thug-oligarchy. the military will contract somewhat and this will pave way for the east to fill the power vaccum.
the u.s. military will have to adapt and develop strategies for more effecitve use of money and capital. or , like russia, they will fade into obscurity from pre-soviet powerhouse to post-soviet shithouse. the current russian military and navy is mostly a joke apart from their strategic dominance. CHINA is rising. their next economic crisis will be their great depression from which, liek the u.s. they emerge even MORE powerful.. americas next crisis will be more akin to what is currently going on in Europe. decay.
I think that you make an interesting connection bringing up the USSR. I believe the US is about to go the way of Russia in 1991. Sometime soon, the dollar is going to crap out on us and the US will instantly go 3rd world like Russia did in 91 or Argentina in 01. Remember how crappy Russia was back then? Get ready for the rule of law to mean a whole lot less if there isn't a cop around. It might not be all bad to go to the bottom, tho-I figure most of the chickenshit regulations and their enforcement will have to go by the wayside, too. The massive security apparatus they're trying to assemble piecemeal around the US won't last without regular infusions of dollars. What police dept is going to spend precious funds on maintaining their tanks when just keeping cops on the street isn't easy?
In fact, did anyone see the article the other day about how hard it is for police departments to hire competent officers who have mastered highschool-level writing skills? Does it seem funny they can get high-tech surveillance gear, advanced drones, shot-spotter cameras, super-duper urban tanks from OIF/OEF, and other Gee-Wizz gear, but they can't get competent personnel who meet their basic requirements? Who the hell will operate all this stuff? It's just like the military's lack of focus on individual personnel for high-tech toys (largely useless without a USSR to fight). They ignored soldiers for equipment in an era when the boots on the ground are more important than tank divisions and strategic nuclear bombers. Perhaps the cops are embracing tech, rather than Community-Oriented Policing (COP), where they get to know a community on the ground face-to-face as members of the community, not intimidating pseudo-soldiers.
Robert Kaplan in Empire Wilderness theorized the FedGov may become a shadow of itself as private entities supplant and replace it, i.e. the private entertainment venue, like the mall, as opposed to public parks and public beaches, and the development of private gated communities and incorporated suburbs outsides of blasted, decaying urban buttholes, like Detroit. He thought the FedGov may fade into an entity that only has real power around the fringes, in national parks, at the border, and in DC, while cities, sububs, private corporations, and states would have more power as they developed their resources, made their own international connections, and private businesses eclipsed previously FedGov-only arenas, such as space travel. Just look at private space travel where NASA was king only a decade ago. It was an interesting idea, but Kaplan was writing pre-9/11, so his vision never quite gelled.
This is the spawn of Cheap money, Aggressive salesmen and a Dumber than dumb CONgress...
I can't quite make it out, but I think it has a sign displaying "Hillary 2016" on the side.
Someone expecting an EMP event?
Note to terrorists: Aim the first cruise missile at the fucking blimp. Then send the rest to the capital.
Seems to me that Preppers need to Aero-smith an Aero-stat themselves. Long private Aerostats. ;-)
Just to watch the Watchers, of course. Purely for academic and Constitutional reasons.
Bullshit. Those aren't used for detecting cruise missiles. We got that stuff settled years ago when we were worried about the Soviets. Aerostats are used for stationary surveillance. When I was in the military, we had those stationed close to the border for observing the illegals crossing and running through the desert. They have night vision, thermal imagers, cameras, antennae, etc. We also used them in Iraq for watching the area around the base. They're big, floating camera platforms. You can say they're a test, but obviously they're going to be spying on Baltimore from fedgov property. You can shoot at it, but don't expect it to do much-they'll just winch it down, patch it, and send it back up.
The excitement would be in seeing what happens if someone manages to clip the tether.
Say, with all the money they invest in surveillance, doesn't it seem funny that we live in an era of increasingly sedentary people who never go outside anymore? IF they REALLY want to know what we're doing, the'll need to send little mylar helium balloons with cameras into all our homes. Little model Hindenburgs floating around the living room and in the den and around the kitchen in orbit around the ceiling fan and little derigibles patrolling the bathroom and up and down the stairs and behind the couch. Cue Flight of the Valkyries on a tinny little speaker...
""Mustard gas! Zeppelins!"-Archer
Yyyeeeeaaaahhhhhh!!!!
It's called smart meters with appliances along with your new digital cable box. Monitor every facet of your existence.
If that’s not enough, just checkerboard the sky some more for a full body chemical treatment.
Welcome to the demonic Global dictatorship.
Find peace in Christ
That's what the new Microsoft X-Box is for. It has a camera and mic that is always on. So... someone (NSA) is always watching you. Same with the new "smart TVs".
That only works if you have Xbox Live and cable. I don't have the new Xbox, nor do I have cable. My TV is unplugged most of the time and has been turned on maybe 1 time in the last 7 months. The Xbox isn't used very often, either. I got no smart appliances and even if I did, I would still have to connect them to something and at this point, I'm not interested in talking to my stupid refrigerator or microwave. They'll have to settle for spying on my emails and land line phone calls.
weather mod radar enabling.
conventional radar not norad needed
bluebeam projections
testing localised barium alloy levels
not your normal foto video or aircraft radar blimp.
raytheon do not invest in normal
Its a blimp tetered to the ground to an elevation of 10,000 feet. Cost 467 million dollars. Subject to weather conditions. WTF!!! Commonsense has long left DC. All I can say is, We are so fucked!! So lets replace all the drones with these priceless assets.
Will they be piping music from the Alan Parsons Project "Eye in the sky" from above?
"I am the eye in the sky, looking at you, I can read your mind".......................
Bring on the Zeppelin part deuche
Hey, if they're going to be spying on us, can they put up more over DC to see where the congressmen and the resident spend their private time?
We could crowdsource the feeds from the derigibles, like they did with the border cameras, ID the known tittybars and BDSM clubs and bathhouses, focus the cameras, and ID our leaders as they come and go. At least that way we could get something useful for our espionage dollars, more "bang" for our buck, so to speak
If these blimps are capable of "hundreds of miles radar" range", there would be no reason to deploy it overhead of Baltimore and Washington DC. A device of that purpose wouldn't need the bandwidth of a fiber optic cable tether.
Oh, FFS. Cant we do Newts moon-base thing instead?
But it will still come down. All it takes is an enemy rifle shot from the ground to render it useless.
https://archive.org/details/SimpleSabotageFieldManualStrategicServicesPr...
HOw long untill the Delta shuttle or some other commercial or private craft from/to BWI or DCA hits the tether.
Image a bright kid with bimb instructions from YouTube and a quadcopter from Toys-R-Us.
I suppose we should worry about the Canadians lobbing a few over Lake Erie, certainly they have been plotting a takeover for decades (note heavy sarcastic tone).
While I am against drones, I actually think this is a good idea over the 'war zones' in the United States. There are some sections of Baltimore (and many sections of DC) where the criminals are in charge more than the police. The criminals are also better armed than the police. Could this help control crime in those areas? Maybe -- but nothing else has worked. As long as they tie the use and observations to tracking drug dealers and crime, and as long as this is done in very (very!) high crime areas, I could actually support this. If you are afraid to go out of your house after dark because there are dealers hanging out on nearly every street corner, then somehow I don't think you would mind some overhead surveillance if it let the police take back the bad neighborhoods. Of course, the question becomes -- why would they place this over a 'SUBURB' of Baltimore, and not over the bad neighborhoods within the city itself...
I might be wrong but isn't Baltimore going full feral as we speak?...I would just love to listen to the radio-comms from that blimp...
- We have a black male running on Milton heading north..we believe he is armed\
- We have a black male running on East Fayette...etc.,etc.,....
- We have a ....you know what, f*** this shit! we're going back to the base!
I'm open to any contrarian view though since I've never been there..
This is the guy who is running the exercise in Baltimore:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwflPKP1xWo&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Interesting.
Stated purpose is to detect low, fast cruise missiles, yet no mention of counter-missile defense assets being deployed.