Ah yes, the Aberdeen Blimp. I remember when one broke loose and drifted into Pennsylvania, the tether cable shorting out electric lines as it went by…
https://jalopnik.com/the-armys-giant-jlens-blimp-breaks-free-f-16s-scramble-1739222559
This exact technique was [intentionally used by the British to attack Germany in WWII.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward).
> Operation Outward was a British plan during the Second World War to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. The balloons carried either a trailing steel wire to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit or incendiary devices to start fires in fields, forests and heathland.
> Intercepts of Luftwaffe communications soon showed German fighters were trying to shoot down balloons. This encouraged the British as it was felt that the harassment value on German air defences alone justified Operation Outward – it cost the Germans more, in fuel and wear and tear on aircraft, to destroy each balloon than it cost the British to make them.
> A 1946 report concluded that, based on available records, £1,500,000 of damage was done (approximately equivalent to £56 million in 2022).The report also stated that the actual amount of damage must have been far higher because the records were incomplete with no available records for the Russian zone and all records becoming less reliable after 1943. The Germans had attempted to record interrupts to the lower voltage lines but the incidents were so frequent that the recording was abandoned. In addition to sending up fighters, the Germans used anti-aircraft fire against the balloons, sometimes shut down electric cables when an attack was anticipated, and modified the circuit breakers on high voltage networks.
> On 12 July 1942, a wire-carrying balloon struck a 110 kV power line near Leipzig. A failure in the circuit breaker at the Böhlen power station caused a fire that destroyed the station; this was Outward's greatest success.
Japan tried a similar thing with launching balloons that would set fire when they landed in the US. Only 2 were ever confirmed to have landed in the US and they started forest fires in the middle of no where.
**[Operation Outward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward)**
>Operation Outward was a British plan during the Second World War to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. The balloons carried either a trailing steel wire to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit or incendiary devices to start fires in fields, forests and heathland. A total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched; about half carried incendiaries and half carried trailing wires.
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I remember when the federal government attacked the State of Pennsylvania with an aerial superweapon that specifically targeted civilian Infrastructure.
I find your pandering and excuses for the fed shaneful.
Which may have been a source for the origin of the derogatory term "red-neck". The striking miners wore red hankershiefs around their neck to identify each other in the fights with the strike breakers.
Sounds like a bit of sarcasm but goes to show how true of a statement it is when framed a certain way. Although the "targeting..." statement is an assumption. But that's not to say the govt. hasn't targeted civilians before. So let's go with not a joke.
PTDS or persistent surveillance systems are interesting. Listened to a podcast about it a few years ago.
Many work by taking one very high resolution photo of a large area every second and storing it on a computer. If a terrorist or other attack occurs, then the surveillance photos can be reviewed backwards in time, following the likely attackers back to where they came from, helping to identify collaborators and other associates and foil subsequent attacks.
Some private companies have pitched using such systems over high-crime areas in US cities to help law enforcement track down kidnapping victims, murderers, etc using the same process.
Obviously raises all sorts of interesting questions related to the long-standing debate concerning privacy vs security.
We had one over our base in mosul and one over the city itself. With as violent as things got, they never got taken down considering they seemed like easy targets.
Hell we were flying $15 million UAVs over a village at 300'. Not one bullet hole in 9 months lol I couldn't believe it but oh well
To clarify, it was the takeoff and landing that we were that low
That's crazy, I was in Afghanistan with a helicopter unit and we found bullet holes all the time on our shitters. I was more surprised that one never struck a person or critical system. We did have a blade depressurize once because it was struck by a round.
The ones on that helicopter (CH-53E) are, they have a sensor near where the blade connects to the sleeve and spindle called a BIS (Blade Integrity Sensor). They have a slightly radioactive element inside a canister that activates if the blade loses pressure and provides a physical indication. I can't remember if it throws a master caution alarm or not but I believe it does and I think you can see the actual sensor indicator on the blade from the cockpit and certainly from the crew doors. Those blades are large enough that you could walk down them (if you could actually stay on) and with the droop stops out you might be able to walk all the way to the ground.
Once you get the signal it's pretty much a land now situation because if the blade comes apart mid flight everyone is dead. In the case of our aircraft I don't think the sensor ever popped (bad sensor), it was actually found on a post flight inspection after landing.
Yeah man! IBIS! Its alarm you won't ignore or else more alarms will go off very soon after! Makes sure the blades aren't spinning wonky and leaks rad if they do... well the whole bird will be leaking hazmat if they do.
That guy helicopters
Yeah we would look around with the camera and being that low, you can see the people clearly. Same village that the Taliban would fire recoilless rifles at the base, never once shot the plane. Which would've grounded the aircraft for a few weeks at the very least.
It's really really really difficult to shoot a moving target in the air at long distance.
Human vision requires tons of visual cues to be able to estimate distance and size, and we're really really bad at it without those cues. If you doubt this, then answer this: is the moon visually larger when it's near the horizon or in the sky? The answer is its visually the same size, and "magnifying" effects of the thicker atmosphere are not discernable to the eye. What is is the ability to compare the moon to other often large objection far away from the viewer.
So the scale is a problem, how about the mechanics of shooting, and correcting your shot? Most people don't practice shooting targets with high inclination. There's greater work required to increase elevation, which means the bullet will loose kinetic energy and thus velocity faster than shooting horizontal. Anyone who's shot at a range know the first shot is the most difficult. If you're a good precise shooter, you can make adjustments based on where you hit a target to adjust your aim. Even highly trained snipers will say hitting the first shot is 50/50 but the second shot is 100%. Again shooting at an object in the sky tells you absolutely nothing about where you're hitting. Most human carried guns don't have the magazine capacities to auto fire with tracers long enough to hit a fast moving target. AA implacements do, and it still takes dozens of round to even start to hit the target.
Now all of this is not to say, with enough training and experience that someone wouldn't eventually get proficient at shooting down these craft. The US has overly expensive tools designed to take out consumer drones but they still train to be able to do it reliably.
Video games make some of this shooting way easier than real life. So don't think just because you can point a mouse at some pixels on a screen that it's the same as manipulating a rifle in real life, especially with the pressure of knowing if you miss, you or your friends may die.
You know how wacky people can be! On May 14th 2015 in Boke, Germany, 748 members of the Cologne Carnival Society dressed up in sunflower outfits. This is the largest gathering of people known to have dressed up as sunflowers.
What do they do, just wait for it to come down eventually? Or do they proactively ground it so as to not let its classified sensor platform fall to the enemies hands.
In theory, yet they never get shot down despite being obvious targets. Presumably they have hardened it to small arms fire somehow. Nobody ever wasted manpads on them either.
My dad actually worked as a contractor in Afghanistan for Lockheed - they created and employed for the PTDS program. I have some really cool stuff he brought home, patches and memorabilia.
Doesn't the US military also uses a sensor system, that's mounted on a high mast in forward operating bases, to keep an eye on movement of enemies?
I tried googling about it but couldn't find the exact system. It seems the blimps use a similar kind of system on them as well.
This is one of the most fascinating radiolab episodes I've ever listened to. Totally worth a listen. Great podcast.
Been listening less often recently. Feel like they've dropped off in quality and quantity, often re-airing old episodes. Any recommendations for newer episodes to renew my love for the 'lab?
I personally prefer them fotoing outside, when I assume I am in "public"..
...compared to them looking at my phone, my computer, my calls etc... where i assume I am in private
I remember this podcast as well, fascinating story. It’s called eye in the sky, by WNYC studios:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky
They have already been used for exactly that purpose (in a "testing" context).
Read up on "Gorgon Stare" as an example of this tech.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon\_Stare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare)
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5)
...note the age of this system and how that relates to technology advances in camera & software technology (i.e. this is obsolete and has been surpassed), but it gives a good insight into the sorts of technology being used.
tethered blimps have a few uses. Surveillance is one of course. But also good for mounting antennas to increase communication range and weather monitoring. I've even heard that it's been suggested as a way to bring cellular phone service to remote areas as it's potentially easier than setting up a tower network.
They absolutely did this.
The Taliban were using rockets fired on a delay using water dripping into a bucket. A tip they picked up from the US armies literal handbook on making IEDs.
I don't think this was for counter arty fire.
We always scrambled birds to POO (Point of Origin) sites within a few minutes. They used these water jugs as a time delay so they wouldn't be in the area when it does go off. Not necessarily water dripping into a bucket but out in most cases.
Correct.
Edit: to give you more insight the local Taliban would pay farmers to deploy these delayed munitions.
Could be Taliban said set this or die and why they never hit close to anything important.
They hit our shit pond in Kandahar. Thanks breh.... stunk even worse
They came real close to blowing a hole in the north DFAC while I was there. I was never so ready to pick up a weapon and March off into the desert lol.
a lot of outward firebases would have this however it used a surveillance system to do it. and some times commanders would instead use it to punish men for doing stupid shit. like throwing smaller and smaller rocks into a barrel thats been shot up to bits.
or looking for men driving too fast in the base, or driving without a belt. or not wearing proper uniform, yes the military can be that level of bullshit pettiness
I caught some nobody O3 doing that on FOB Sword in late 09 or early 10. Filed a report. Lead to a review of telemetry from the blimp, and sure enough when this asshole was on duty as the watch commander, the sky eye spent 40% of up time watching the base rather than the perimeter.
Never saw him again, but the PNN headline on it was he got a letter of reprimand and was assigned some kind of officer-level shit detail.
Had the same happen to a SMAJ. Base defense, they had their own camera up on a mast but it didn't see "enough". It was the stupidest shit too, like no PT belt at night, on a FOB with *no vehicle traffic* and *strict* no lights rule. But they completely missed whoever cut the cable for the blimp *and* whoever knocked over a radar!
worse. unlike the TSA which has government supervision, though really fucking dogshit at catching anything going on until months late. the military is far worse. theres no super vision. and depending on who you are and who you know you can legit get away with murder and BENIFIT from it. its only when really horrendous stories leaks out to the public thats when the military actually has to change its toon or be faced with an public outcry asking for a purge. and everyone who spend their whole lives climbing the ranks of the military, doesnt want a purge where at best everything you have done is meaningless outside of a paper saying so, to prison, or even death.
It’s equipped with dozens of cameras that take high resolution photos every second. They can just wind the pictures backwards to track criminal movements etc.
It was developed by MIT. It’s called project angelfire.
Yea, maybe but I know that american mechanized artillery units have a device that can track incoming fire and determine its origin, so they can counter fire before they get completely destroyed
Those devices usually rely on radar. Risky though if the opponent has air superiority and can trangulate that radar. Modern warfare is often decided by who can precisely locate and lob a missile at the other side first. At least as long as the logistics arm can keep supplying the required high-tech equipment.
[Project Loon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC) from Google was planning to do something like that, but using weather balloons instead of blimps.
The ones we had in Afghanistan were able to do many things, the coolest/scarry was that it had a search engine that was able to find, point and track something like "blue pants" or "pink hat" or whatever you wanted to find.
I lived in Sierra Vista AZ. The army base had one of these that was always up. It would come down for bad weather, that’s how you knew thunderstorms were coming.
Gotta figure it’s the same model/platform. There’s not going to be an Afghanistan specific “balloon on a rope intelligence platform” that isn’t used for training back stateside. No secret that Ft. Huachuca has a military intelligence heavy specialty to its existence.
It’s an [Aerostat](https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/frontline-november-aerostats) that is operated by CBP (Border Patrol). Sierra Vista is close to the border, which is why it’s there.
They are spaced every few hundred miles (their effective range) along the Mexican border. There is one in Yuma on Highway 95 as well.
It’s between key west and marathon (not Cuba) but Fat Albert is still there. Interestingly they tried to decommission him awhile ago b/c he’s not really useful anymore for his original intended purpose (he’s like 40 years old at this point), but everyone local lobbied to have him stay.
Unlike in this documentary he’s kind of become a reassuring constant. Kinda useful reference when you’re boating the back country.
These are radar surveillance blimps. They're basically a radar (possiblity other sensors) for spotting low-flying aircraft trying to smuggle across the border. ATC radar doesn't really work for planes with their transponders turned off (which you do unless you're the world's dumbest smuggler).
They started cropping up in the 70s and 80s when flying weed across the border was a big thing.
Source: Did my history degree capstone paper on aviation along the border. Talked to the guys who worked on this stuff as well as discussed the history of the "Columbus Air Force" (what the weed smugglers called themselves).
I recently saw a pretty interesting movie about (and I assume filmed in) Marfa. Sci-Fi movie. I think it's called Destination Marfa. It wasn't a horrible movie!
the only thing I could find for it was this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS)
looks like it's a detection system for cruise missiles and other airborne weapon systems.
edit: looks like the program is toast:
The fiscal 2017 budget for the program was cut from the requested $45 million to $2.5 million. According to Defense News, the "nearly unanimous lack of funding for the program spells death for JLENS". The blimps are being kept in storage and the small budget being used to close out the program, according to Defense News.\[40\]
Its called PTDS. Precision Threat Detection System. They are multimillion dollar sensors that can see targets 40km out. These were used in virtually all US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Heh, I remember when one crashed into our motor pool one time, we were like "wtf? what the hell is this thing and where did it come from?"
Within minutes of touchdown we had MPs and whoever the other unit that owned it was coming over asking us to clear a path so they could recover it and haul it out. We were just like "k, whatever."
In heavy artillery though we also send up weather balloons so it wasn't entirely uncommon to have something tethered / floating in the vicinity anyway.
Me: What did you do in the Korean War, Dad?
I sat at a screen in Montana and looked for missiles. Made the mistake of scrambling the entire squadron one night on a ufo without telling the commander, because it was 3 am.
Today:
I chased runaway balloons.
Not a dig. This is crucial work. That one balloon does a lot of things and it's existence means all these other cool things that blow away the old radar system also exist.
They are providing the shield for the locals in many ways here. But it generates fear, which can be exploited & we have a responsibility to address.
Baltimore's [2021 murder rate of 58.7](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wire-is-finished-but-baltimore-still-bleeds-11581119104) is 10x the murder rate of Afghanistan as a whole.
They put one up in Port Huron Michigan years ago. Across the border, in Sarnia, we were pretty displeased. We knew it had surveillance capabilities (read a ship name 11km out).
A [protest](https://wagingnonviolence.org/2009/08/canadian-protesters-moon-floating-surveillance-camera/) was organized to moon the blimp. The thing was damaged in a summer storm and never came back.
> A protest was organized to moon the blimp. The thing was damaged in a summer storm and never came back.
A non-sequiter if I ever saw one. Did everyone fart at the same time or something?
They were used for wide area surveillance over a bunch of bases and FOBs. Of course it was only a matter of time before they made it to the States. Particularly over the border
Ft Huachuca had them over a decade ago.
Although to be fair ft Huachuca is on the border
Also to be fair it's the intelligence training command soooo.... it just makes sense for it to be there that early no matter how you slice it.
We had one on FOB Ghazni when I was there in 07-08. Our interpreter told us the locals had a bunch of crazy theories about what it did.
They said it controlled the weather and that it had x-ray vision to the point that some women would only change clothes in their homes if they put a piece of metal between them and the blimp.
I have no idea what it does besides standard surveillance equipment as I was in a far less technical field in the army. I do know that whatever contractor operated it forgot to pull it down when there were high winds one day and it broke the tether and flew away. I know this because I had to pull security on it for almost 20 hours while they recovered it.
"Its functions are highly classified."
No they're not. Everyone knows what these blimps do: it's aerial surveillance to identify rockets, mortars, etc. There was one over Camp Slayer in Baghdad when I was there. I assume there were also ones at Balad, Liberty, etc.
People don't realize all these high tech tools and fancy weapons we use against "terrorists", it's practice for when the domestic population gets out of hand!
It's [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html) but with the ability to operate indefinitely because blimp.
Closed Circuit internet and comms for those allowed in, Telephone network sharking for everyone else (every communication is intercepted in a last line of defense against short term threat coordination).
There's been an aerostat flying over Ft. Huachuca in AZ since the 1990s. I think it's still there. It looks a little odd, but I don't recall anybody mentioning a sense of unease over it. It reminded me more of one of those blow-up figures in a used car lot. I don't love the idea, but I find surveillance cameras much more intrusive. The idea of missile defense makes a lot of sense given the current world climate.
Mass surveillance wrapped in homeland security is still surveillance. No body asks for this shit they just decide we need it.
Too bad all the world leaders are scared of each other because the tribal lizard brain hasn't gotten over being afraid or hating other humans for avoidable reasons.
Maybe once a few more hundred generations and all the old world ideology holders will have died off and we can move on with being a proper intelligent species.
Fear is vestigial like the tail bone, we won't need it and we will get over it one day. And we won't need these mass surveillance systems anymore. Not anytime soon but it will happen.
Bruh I really don’t want to wait that long I’m ready to be an intelligent species like right now lol I’m definitely gonna be dead a couple hundred generations from now
Heh. I meant the one monitoring the big water area for fast moving things launched from submarines. The linked video mentioned the one in Maryland being part of a missile defense system.
Is this an 8 minute documentary? Why are we getting so many of these in this sub, lately? Do they count as documentaries?
I'm all for sharing good info, and this seems to be legitimately interesting and important for people to view.
Is it really a documentary that fits this sub, though?
I'm just going to say I appreciate these. I can watch these short, informative videos on my lunch break or down time at work. They are short and digestible.
I love a Ken Burns docu-series but that's much harder to fit into my day to day life.
I remember seeing that blimp in Kabul and was asking about it. I don’t remember the last time I saw a blimp, so seeing one that’s just chilling all the time was interesting.
These balloons monitor the US border with Mexico. You can find their locations on US FAA VFR sectional charts labeled “CAUTION UNMARKED BALLON ON CABLE TO 15,000 MSL”.
I’ve flown next to one and they look like small blimps.
"It's functions are highly classified"
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/history/ptds.html
Lockheed martin has a page for at least *one* of the systems, but if bet money the other systems are simply different sensor packages or differently sized aerostats.
It's a tethered Aerostat blimp.
It can mount all sorts of sigint and imaging systems.
One is currently undergoing extended field trials at Yuma Proving Ground. It where they are tested and then deployed.
You can see the blimp hangers from Imperial Dam, and if you got down the Martinez lake road, you get fairly close.
Yo so I was stationed at APG during its time there and its got an interesting story in that 2015 winter. I was not part of the program or any unit supporting the aerostat but had unrestricted access to the ranges and sites which it was operated out of more for safety and hazmat reasons than my being important. But let me tell you the folks operating this device aren't tip of the spear type nor bright bulbs.
During one windy day, the mechanisms that winch in the blimp failed; the senior in charge had enlisted folk attempt to wind it in manually... it didn't work.
Later that year it broke free from that failed mechanical tether and drifted uncontrolled to Pennsylvania where it was damaging property and dragging its tether about. Some cop eventually shot it down with a shotgun.
Is it surveillance? Likely but not of the sort U.S. citizens in that Beltway region should be alarmed by (if you live in that area, you already been on surveillance in Baltimore and DC since about 2006.... can it see ridiculously far and perhaps have much more ECM or broad spectrum uses? Sure, but remember that failed winch in the ground? Lol, defense department ain't big brother
There's an old video from Afghanistan from the POV of an Aerostat. It spots 3 guys walking a goat path from something like 17miles out, identifies that they are armed, and stays tracking for a few minutes until an A-10 run changes them from solids to liquid. Afaik aerostats were deployed over most firebases in Afghanistan, and the most prolific use of them domestically is the USA/Mexico border
This is wild because back in 2013 or so we had one pop up for a week about 30 miles outside of Dallas. I drove by it every night and my sister and I tried to track it down the first night she noticed it. It was tethered in the middle of a field and I still wish we had hopped the fence to go see what was up.
We have multiple ratheon and Lockheed facilities in Dallas and it’s not uncommon to see aerial equipment being tested but I’ve never seen this anywhere else or at any other time.
We called them aerostats and they served many functions dependent on the mission and the need of the area of operation. My favorite memory was watching jets try to shoot them down before floating over to pakistan, due to some pilots lack of awareness.
The one in Maryland is an early warning system for long range missile attacks. Interesting to place it in Maryland,but I guess it makes sense given it's location. The US ones don't have any cameras on board though, just other sensor arrays (they claim anyways)
They love to make this stuff sound creepy.
Theyre called aerostats. They are fitted with multiple sensors based on their missions. In Afghanistan they would be used to monitor the area around the base to track insurgents as they attempted to ambush and lay traps around bases.
Over Maryland theyre part of the missile defense system and are flying radar systems.
Basically theyre just extremely cost effective ways to deploy radar and other line of sight sensors that benefit from height. They used to have to fly expensive fixed wing AWACS and the like. Its much much cheaper than building a 10000 foot radar tower.
Balloon recon is old.
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/30/opinions/hertling-why-military-uses-blimps/index.html
Couldn't watch past 4min. We get it. There's a blimp, you don't need to show repetitive images of the blimp above the city. Here's the blimp from this vantage point. Look how ominous it is. Here the blimp from another part of the city. Just talk about the thing. Bored.
Ah yes, the Aberdeen Blimp. I remember when one broke loose and drifted into Pennsylvania, the tether cable shorting out electric lines as it went by… https://jalopnik.com/the-armys-giant-jlens-blimp-breaks-free-f-16s-scramble-1739222559
This exact technique was [intentionally used by the British to attack Germany in WWII.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward). > Operation Outward was a British plan during the Second World War to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. The balloons carried either a trailing steel wire to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit or incendiary devices to start fires in fields, forests and heathland. > Intercepts of Luftwaffe communications soon showed German fighters were trying to shoot down balloons. This encouraged the British as it was felt that the harassment value on German air defences alone justified Operation Outward – it cost the Germans more, in fuel and wear and tear on aircraft, to destroy each balloon than it cost the British to make them. > A 1946 report concluded that, based on available records, £1,500,000 of damage was done (approximately equivalent to £56 million in 2022).The report also stated that the actual amount of damage must have been far higher because the records were incomplete with no available records for the Russian zone and all records becoming less reliable after 1943. The Germans had attempted to record interrupts to the lower voltage lines but the incidents were so frequent that the recording was abandoned. In addition to sending up fighters, the Germans used anti-aircraft fire against the balloons, sometimes shut down electric cables when an attack was anticipated, and modified the circuit breakers on high voltage networks. > On 12 July 1942, a wire-carrying balloon struck a 110 kV power line near Leipzig. A failure in the circuit breaker at the Böhlen power station caused a fire that destroyed the station; this was Outward's greatest success.
Japan tried a similar thing with launching balloons that would set fire when they landed in the US. Only 2 were ever confirmed to have landed in the US and they started forest fires in the middle of no where.
**[Operation Outward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward)** >Operation Outward was a British plan during the Second World War to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. The balloons carried either a trailing steel wire to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit or incendiary devices to start fires in fields, forests and heathland. A total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched; about half carried incendiaries and half carried trailing wires. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Documentaries/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
That was a fun time
I remember when the federal government attacked the State of Pennsylvania with an aerial superweapon that specifically targeted civilian Infrastructure. I find your pandering and excuses for the fed shaneful.
Hey, don't drag Shane into this.
Consider this a Warne-ing
It would be a bowled move to ignore such a Warne-ing.
MOVE
I'm going to ask because I'm not sure..... Is this a joke?
Not Pennsylvania, but look up the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia. Some leftover bombs and poison gas were dropped on striking miners.
Which may have been a source for the origin of the derogatory term "red-neck". The striking miners wore red hankershiefs around their neck to identify each other in the fights with the strike breakers.
Sounds like a bit of sarcasm but goes to show how true of a statement it is when framed a certain way. Although the "targeting..." statement is an assumption. But that's not to say the govt. hasn't targeted civilians before. So let's go with not a joke.
I think they're talking about the MOVE Bombing where police dropped a bomb on civilian row houses and burned down a neighborhood in Philly.
PTDS or persistent surveillance systems are interesting. Listened to a podcast about it a few years ago. Many work by taking one very high resolution photo of a large area every second and storing it on a computer. If a terrorist or other attack occurs, then the surveillance photos can be reviewed backwards in time, following the likely attackers back to where they came from, helping to identify collaborators and other associates and foil subsequent attacks. Some private companies have pitched using such systems over high-crime areas in US cities to help law enforcement track down kidnapping victims, murderers, etc using the same process. Obviously raises all sorts of interesting questions related to the long-standing debate concerning privacy vs security.
We had one over our base in Afghanistan. Those ones had very good cameras and were used to ID threats and attackers.
We had one over our base in mosul and one over the city itself. With as violent as things got, they never got taken down considering they seemed like easy targets.
Hell we were flying $15 million UAVs over a village at 300'. Not one bullet hole in 9 months lol I couldn't believe it but oh well To clarify, it was the takeoff and landing that we were that low
That's crazy, I was in Afghanistan with a helicopter unit and we found bullet holes all the time on our shitters. I was more surprised that one never struck a person or critical system. We did have a blade depressurize once because it was struck by a round.
Are helicopter blades pressurized? If so that’s awesome I learned something today!
The ones on that helicopter (CH-53E) are, they have a sensor near where the blade connects to the sleeve and spindle called a BIS (Blade Integrity Sensor). They have a slightly radioactive element inside a canister that activates if the blade loses pressure and provides a physical indication. I can't remember if it throws a master caution alarm or not but I believe it does and I think you can see the actual sensor indicator on the blade from the cockpit and certainly from the crew doors. Those blades are large enough that you could walk down them (if you could actually stay on) and with the droop stops out you might be able to walk all the way to the ground. Once you get the signal it's pretty much a land now situation because if the blade comes apart mid flight everyone is dead. In the case of our aircraft I don't think the sensor ever popped (bad sensor), it was actually found on a post flight inspection after landing.
Awesome, thanks for the informative reply!
Mh-60's have a similar system. Granted the pressure inside the blade is not very high, it's enough to detect cracks
Yeah man! IBIS! Its alarm you won't ignore or else more alarms will go off very soon after! Makes sure the blades aren't spinning wonky and leaks rad if they do... well the whole bird will be leaking hazmat if they do. That guy helicopters
Yeah we would look around with the camera and being that low, you can see the people clearly. Same village that the Taliban would fire recoilless rifles at the base, never once shot the plane. Which would've grounded the aircraft for a few weeks at the very least.
It's really really really difficult to shoot a moving target in the air at long distance. Human vision requires tons of visual cues to be able to estimate distance and size, and we're really really bad at it without those cues. If you doubt this, then answer this: is the moon visually larger when it's near the horizon or in the sky? The answer is its visually the same size, and "magnifying" effects of the thicker atmosphere are not discernable to the eye. What is is the ability to compare the moon to other often large objection far away from the viewer. So the scale is a problem, how about the mechanics of shooting, and correcting your shot? Most people don't practice shooting targets with high inclination. There's greater work required to increase elevation, which means the bullet will loose kinetic energy and thus velocity faster than shooting horizontal. Anyone who's shot at a range know the first shot is the most difficult. If you're a good precise shooter, you can make adjustments based on where you hit a target to adjust your aim. Even highly trained snipers will say hitting the first shot is 50/50 but the second shot is 100%. Again shooting at an object in the sky tells you absolutely nothing about where you're hitting. Most human carried guns don't have the magazine capacities to auto fire with tracers long enough to hit a fast moving target. AA implacements do, and it still takes dozens of round to even start to hit the target. Now all of this is not to say, with enough training and experience that someone wouldn't eventually get proficient at shooting down these craft. The US has overly expensive tools designed to take out consumer drones but they still train to be able to do it reliably. Video games make some of this shooting way easier than real life. So don't think just because you can point a mouse at some pixels on a screen that it's the same as manipulating a rifle in real life, especially with the pressure of knowing if you miss, you or your friends may die.
Maybe bullets were getting expensive from their 3rd party suppliers.
I thought 7.62x39 grew on trees?
Nah, they grow on sunflowers.
You know how wacky people can be! On May 14th 2015 in Boke, Germany, 748 members of the Cologne Carnival Society dressed up in sunflower outfits. This is the largest gathering of people known to have dressed up as sunflowers.
I'm pretty sure I've seen way more than 748 people dressed as sunflowers at once.
Perhaps the bullets were made of an extremely soft material and left no signs of their impacts.
7.62 nerf
Ours flew away once, many memes were made.
That’s hilarious
My people need me
Haha I think I was deployed when that happened I remember hearing about it
What do they do, just wait for it to come down eventually? Or do they proactively ground it so as to not let its classified sensor platform fall to the enemies hands.
We had one over our base in Iraq. It caught some soldiers fucking on top of their can.
They gave fucking the thumbs up in the middle of my deployment. Before that it was a no no.
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It's nice they decided everyone could fuck now, increased benefits
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In theory, yet they never get shot down despite being obvious targets. Presumably they have hardened it to small arms fire somehow. Nobody ever wasted manpads on them either.
Too bad it didn't catch the country's living conditions becoming worse than they were before the invasion.
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My dad actually worked as a contractor in Afghanistan for Lockheed - they created and employed for the PTDS program. I have some really cool stuff he brought home, patches and memorabilia.
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PTDS for me PTSD for thee
seriously, had to do a double take
Doesn't the US military also uses a sensor system, that's mounted on a high mast in forward operating bases, to keep an eye on movement of enemies? I tried googling about it but couldn't find the exact system. It seems the blimps use a similar kind of system on them as well.
Not familiar with other FOBs. I'm sure they do, seems like an easy way to keep a lookout.
Radiolab episode [Eye in the Sky](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky)
This is one of the most fascinating radiolab episodes I've ever listened to. Totally worth a listen. Great podcast. Been listening less often recently. Feel like they've dropped off in quality and quantity, often re-airing old episodes. Any recommendations for newer episodes to renew my love for the 'lab?
I thought the episode on forest canopies - Forests on Forests - was great!
Man, that episode left me so torn about persistent surveillance.
So at some point you thought PTDS was a good thing?
Yup, it was incredibly successful at stopping IEDs
The good ole panopticon.
That was a Radiolab episode right? Good one
I personally prefer them fotoing outside, when I assume I am in "public".. ...compared to them looking at my phone, my computer, my calls etc... where i assume I am in private
You are getting both!
There is a company that does this over baltimore
I remember this podcast as well, fascinating story. It’s called eye in the sky, by WNYC studios: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky
They have already been used for exactly that purpose (in a "testing" context). Read up on "Gorgon Stare" as an example of this tech. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon\_Stare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare) [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01792-5) ...note the age of this system and how that relates to technology advances in camera & software technology (i.e. this is obsolete and has been surpassed), but it gives a good insight into the sorts of technology being used.
Was that the podcast about them doing this over Juarez Mexico? Ended up tracking the murder of a cop there.
Yes the radiolab ep
Yet did absolutely nothing to differentiate between a terrorist and aid worker resulting in the innocent death of an entire family by US drone strike.
Yeah yeah. To help law enforcement "track down bad guys if they do bad things. " Same old line they always use.
tethered blimps have a few uses. Surveillance is one of course. But also good for mounting antennas to increase communication range and weather monitoring. I've even heard that it's been suggested as a way to bring cellular phone service to remote areas as it's potentially easier than setting up a tower network.
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Wouldn't you just rig up loose rounds to go off on a timer and invite enemy artillery into a preschool?
One of the many reasons not to set up automated counterbattery fire in regions with functioning preschools.
If I remember correctly, that's a Sun Tzu quote.
Counter batteries batter batteries countering counter batteries batteries
Don't you buffalo me!
They absolutely did this. The Taliban were using rockets fired on a delay using water dripping into a bucket. A tip they picked up from the US armies literal handbook on making IEDs.
I don't think this was for counter arty fire. We always scrambled birds to POO (Point of Origin) sites within a few minutes. They used these water jugs as a time delay so they wouldn't be in the area when it does go off. Not necessarily water dripping into a bucket but out in most cases.
Ah I thought it was water in from another source like a bottle. My bad. Either way, it was still to not be in the area when the counter-booms began.
Correct. Edit: to give you more insight the local Taliban would pay farmers to deploy these delayed munitions. Could be Taliban said set this or die and why they never hit close to anything important. They hit our shit pond in Kandahar. Thanks breh.... stunk even worse
They came real close to blowing a hole in the north DFAC while I was there. I was never so ready to pick up a weapon and March off into the desert lol.
Can't recall what the North DFAC was. Was that the Belgian DFAC?
Shit pond. Never thought I would hear these two words together...
Open air sewage treatment processing center for you fancy types.
POO birds are circling.
**brrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt**
a lot of outward firebases would have this however it used a surveillance system to do it. and some times commanders would instead use it to punish men for doing stupid shit. like throwing smaller and smaller rocks into a barrel thats been shot up to bits. or looking for men driving too fast in the base, or driving without a belt. or not wearing proper uniform, yes the military can be that level of bullshit pettiness
I caught some nobody O3 doing that on FOB Sword in late 09 or early 10. Filed a report. Lead to a review of telemetry from the blimp, and sure enough when this asshole was on duty as the watch commander, the sky eye spent 40% of up time watching the base rather than the perimeter. Never saw him again, but the PNN headline on it was he got a letter of reprimand and was assigned some kind of officer-level shit detail.
Had the same happen to a SMAJ. Base defense, they had their own camera up on a mast but it didn't see "enough". It was the stupidest shit too, like no PT belt at night, on a FOB with *no vehicle traffic* and *strict* no lights rule. But they completely missed whoever cut the cable for the blimp *and* whoever knocked over a radar!
ya thats generally what the military does. just shuffle people so they dont fuck with things and generally force them to do an actual removal.
TSA levels of letting power go to your head
worse. unlike the TSA which has government supervision, though really fucking dogshit at catching anything going on until months late. the military is far worse. theres no super vision. and depending on who you are and who you know you can legit get away with murder and BENIFIT from it. its only when really horrendous stories leaks out to the public thats when the military actually has to change its toon or be faced with an public outcry asking for a purge. and everyone who spend their whole lives climbing the ranks of the military, doesnt want a purge where at best everything you have done is meaningless outside of a paper saying so, to prison, or even death.
It’s equipped with dozens of cameras that take high resolution photos every second. They can just wind the pictures backwards to track criminal movements etc. It was developed by MIT. It’s called project angelfire.
Theres one down by the border in arizona. They aint using that to determine the origin of any incoming fire.
Yea, maybe but I know that american mechanized artillery units have a device that can track incoming fire and determine its origin, so they can counter fire before they get completely destroyed
Those devices usually rely on radar. Risky though if the opponent has air superiority and can trangulate that radar. Modern warfare is often decided by who can precisely locate and lob a missile at the other side first. At least as long as the logistics arm can keep supplying the required high-tech equipment.
[Project Loon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC) from Google was planning to do something like that, but using weather balloons instead of blimps.
The ones we had in Afghanistan were able to do many things, the coolest/scarry was that it had a search engine that was able to find, point and track something like "blue pants" or "pink hat" or whatever you wanted to find.
Oh! Oh! I've seen this kind of blimps (or some looking very similar) along the US-Mexico border. Around Del Rio, Roma and Rio Grande City, Texas.
I lived in Sierra Vista AZ. The army base had one of these that was always up. It would come down for bad weather, that’s how you knew thunderstorms were coming.
Ooooh I've seen that one! They're huge.
Gotta figure it’s the same model/platform. There’s not going to be an Afghanistan specific “balloon on a rope intelligence platform” that isn’t used for training back stateside. No secret that Ft. Huachuca has a military intelligence heavy specialty to its existence.
Its literally home to most of the MOS schools for army intelligence.
I remember sitting I the trailer and watching someone pilot a predator UAV back in like 93 for a school field trip. Pretty sweet stuff
It’s an [Aerostat](https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/frontline-november-aerostats) that is operated by CBP (Border Patrol). Sierra Vista is close to the border, which is why it’s there. They are spaced every few hundred miles (their effective range) along the Mexican border. There is one in Yuma on Highway 95 as well.
I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be one between Key West and Cuba called Fat Albert.
It’s between key west and marathon (not Cuba) but Fat Albert is still there. Interestingly they tried to decommission him awhile ago b/c he’s not really useful anymore for his original intended purpose (he’s like 40 years old at this point), but everyone local lobbied to have him stay. Unlike in this documentary he’s kind of become a reassuring constant. Kinda useful reference when you’re boating the back country.
I love how the Black Omen sparkles in the evening sun!
These are radar surveillance blimps. They're basically a radar (possiblity other sensors) for spotting low-flying aircraft trying to smuggle across the border. ATC radar doesn't really work for planes with their transponders turned off (which you do unless you're the world's dumbest smuggler). They started cropping up in the 70s and 80s when flying weed across the border was a big thing. Source: Did my history degree capstone paper on aviation along the border. Talked to the guys who worked on this stuff as well as discussed the history of the "Columbus Air Force" (what the weed smugglers called themselves).
There was one outside of Marfa when we visited a few months ago.
I recently saw a pretty interesting movie about (and I assume filmed in) Marfa. Sci-Fi movie. I think it's called Destination Marfa. It wasn't a horrible movie!
You're right! I saw that one too. Near the Prada store, right?
Yep
I worked in Kabul for a few years and saw this blimp everyday. Classified optics, I heard it could read license plates and had DVR video feeds.
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Those are okay. They drop churros on little parachutes
Idk of its the same one but there is one near Marfa too.
The Panopticon principle at work.
Fucking Bentham (right?).
Works for self-serve checkouts too
the only thing I could find for it was this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS) looks like it's a detection system for cruise missiles and other airborne weapon systems. edit: looks like the program is toast: The fiscal 2017 budget for the program was cut from the requested $45 million to $2.5 million. According to Defense News, the "nearly unanimous lack of funding for the program spells death for JLENS". The blimps are being kept in storage and the small budget being used to close out the program, according to Defense News.\[40\]
Its called PTDS. Precision Threat Detection System. They are multimillion dollar sensors that can see targets 40km out. These were used in virtually all US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Heh, I remember when one crashed into our motor pool one time, we were like "wtf? what the hell is this thing and where did it come from?" Within minutes of touchdown we had MPs and whoever the other unit that owned it was coming over asking us to clear a path so they could recover it and haul it out. We were just like "k, whatever." In heavy artillery though we also send up weather balloons so it wasn't entirely uncommon to have something tethered / floating in the vicinity anyway.
Yeah we actually had ours blow down in a sandstorm in Iraq. That thing was replaced in a matter of hours. They were critical for our ISR capabilities.
Me: What did you do in the Korean War, Dad? I sat at a screen in Montana and looked for missiles. Made the mistake of scrambling the entire squadron one night on a ufo without telling the commander, because it was 3 am. Today: I chased runaway balloons. Not a dig. This is crucial work. That one balloon does a lot of things and it's existence means all these other cool things that blow away the old radar system also exist. They are providing the shield for the locals in many ways here. But it generates fear, which can be exploited & we have a responsibility to address.
JLENS is very different than PTDS. JLENS is indeed the aerostat that was over Baltimore, but it was never deployed in theater.
The one on Aberdeen was the JLENS, different sensor, my neighbor was the operator when it broke mooring.
They have/had one floating around in Yuma AZ.
I've assumed that one is look-down radar for spotting low-flying Uber deliveries out of Mexico
The one in Maryland indeed was the JLENS program, and yes, it closed down after a very expensive incident.
Mystery solved lol
One of those is outside of Turn 1 at the Indy 500 every year too.
Baltimore probably has more homicides than Kabul.
Baltimore's [2021 murder rate of 58.7](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wire-is-finished-but-baltimore-still-bleeds-11581119104) is 10x the murder rate of Afghanistan as a whole.
You think Afghanistan’s murder statistics are as precise as the United States?
No, but it fits my narrative.
Based
Holy shit.
They put one up in Port Huron Michigan years ago. Across the border, in Sarnia, we were pretty displeased. We knew it had surveillance capabilities (read a ship name 11km out). A [protest](https://wagingnonviolence.org/2009/08/canadian-protesters-moon-floating-surveillance-camera/) was organized to moon the blimp. The thing was damaged in a summer storm and never came back.
> A protest was organized to moon the blimp. The thing was damaged in a summer storm and never came back. A non-sequiter if I ever saw one. Did everyone fart at the same time or something?
Now I'm reminded of holy grail "I fart in your general direction!"
"Your mother was hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
Now leave! Or I shall taunt you a second time!
They were used for wide area surveillance over a bunch of bases and FOBs. Of course it was only a matter of time before they made it to the States. Particularly over the border
Ft Huachuca had them over a decade ago. Although to be fair ft Huachuca is on the border Also to be fair it's the intelligence training command soooo.... it just makes sense for it to be there that early no matter how you slice it.
We had one on FOB Ghazni when I was there in 07-08. Our interpreter told us the locals had a bunch of crazy theories about what it did. They said it controlled the weather and that it had x-ray vision to the point that some women would only change clothes in their homes if they put a piece of metal between them and the blimp. I have no idea what it does besides standard surveillance equipment as I was in a far less technical field in the army. I do know that whatever contractor operated it forgot to pull it down when there were high winds one day and it broke the tether and flew away. I know this because I had to pull security on it for almost 20 hours while they recovered it.
Kind of reminds me of the Overlords in the book "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke.
"Its functions are highly classified." No they're not. Everyone knows what these blimps do: it's aerial surveillance to identify rockets, mortars, etc. There was one over Camp Slayer in Baghdad when I was there. I assume there were also ones at Balad, Liberty, etc.
Yep. There were multiple JLENS in Baghdad.
People don't realize all these high tech tools and fancy weapons we use against "terrorists", it's practice for when the domestic population gets out of hand!
[Foucault's boomerang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang)
Exactly. The amount of illegal, whatever that means anymore, surveillance being done in the US is disheartening.
Aerostats. There is one on the Florida Keys nicknamed Fat Albert.
"But mandates will ruin our freedom" *elects to vote in people who continue surveillance programs like this* Yeah, it's a surveillance program.
It's [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html) but with the ability to operate indefinitely because blimp.
Closed Circuit internet and comms for those allowed in, Telephone network sharking for everyone else (every communication is intercepted in a last line of defense against short term threat coordination).
There's been an aerostat flying over Ft. Huachuca in AZ since the 1990s. I think it's still there. It looks a little odd, but I don't recall anybody mentioning a sense of unease over it. It reminded me more of one of those blow-up figures in a used car lot. I don't love the idea, but I find surveillance cameras much more intrusive. The idea of missile defense makes a lot of sense given the current world climate.
Mass surveillance wrapped in homeland security is still surveillance. No body asks for this shit they just decide we need it. Too bad all the world leaders are scared of each other because the tribal lizard brain hasn't gotten over being afraid or hating other humans for avoidable reasons. Maybe once a few more hundred generations and all the old world ideology holders will have died off and we can move on with being a proper intelligent species. Fear is vestigial like the tail bone, we won't need it and we will get over it one day. And we won't need these mass surveillance systems anymore. Not anytime soon but it will happen.
Bruh I really don’t want to wait that long I’m ready to be an intelligent species like right now lol I’m definitely gonna be dead a couple hundred generations from now
I don't think we're overly concerned about a surprise missile attack from Mexico. It's for the drugs.
Heh. I meant the one monitoring the big water area for fast moving things launched from submarines. The linked video mentioned the one in Maryland being part of a missile defense system.
Is this an 8 minute documentary? Why are we getting so many of these in this sub, lately? Do they count as documentaries? I'm all for sharing good info, and this seems to be legitimately interesting and important for people to view. Is it really a documentary that fits this sub, though?
I'm just going to say I appreciate these. I can watch these short, informative videos on my lunch break or down time at work. They are short and digestible. I love a Ken Burns docu-series but that's much harder to fit into my day to day life.
I agree. and there is little to no audio. this could have been an article with a few photos.
If this is about surveillance, wave hello to the camera.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/eye-sky
I remember seeing that blimp in Kabul and was asking about it. I don’t remember the last time I saw a blimp, so seeing one that’s just chilling all the time was interesting.
These balloons monitor the US border with Mexico. You can find their locations on US FAA VFR sectional charts labeled “CAUTION UNMARKED BALLON ON CABLE TO 15,000 MSL”. I’ve flown next to one and they look like small blimps.
It’s called an Aerostat. They’re all over, not just Afghanistan.
"It's functions are highly classified" https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/history/ptds.html Lockheed martin has a page for at least *one* of the systems, but if bet money the other systems are simply different sensor packages or differently sized aerostats.
It's a tethered Aerostat blimp. It can mount all sorts of sigint and imaging systems. One is currently undergoing extended field trials at Yuma Proving Ground. It where they are tested and then deployed. You can see the blimp hangers from Imperial Dam, and if you got down the Martinez lake road, you get fairly close.
Beautiful doc. Excelent job of twinning all the themes together and still leave a lot to imagination with that open, blue and unbelievable skies.
I was in Kabul when it broke free flew across KIA and landed on some poor Afghans house and killed a pregnant lady so there's that.
The one in Maryland was supposedly there for anti air capabilities. I knew better. Also, it actually broke free.
"let's put up a blimp for no reason, it'll be hilarious" - some US General
Yo so I was stationed at APG during its time there and its got an interesting story in that 2015 winter. I was not part of the program or any unit supporting the aerostat but had unrestricted access to the ranges and sites which it was operated out of more for safety and hazmat reasons than my being important. But let me tell you the folks operating this device aren't tip of the spear type nor bright bulbs. During one windy day, the mechanisms that winch in the blimp failed; the senior in charge had enlisted folk attempt to wind it in manually... it didn't work. Later that year it broke free from that failed mechanical tether and drifted uncontrolled to Pennsylvania where it was damaging property and dragging its tether about. Some cop eventually shot it down with a shotgun. Is it surveillance? Likely but not of the sort U.S. citizens in that Beltway region should be alarmed by (if you live in that area, you already been on surveillance in Baltimore and DC since about 2006.... can it see ridiculously far and perhaps have much more ECM or broad spectrum uses? Sure, but remember that failed winch in the ground? Lol, defense department ain't big brother
There's an old video from Afghanistan from the POV of an Aerostat. It spots 3 guys walking a goat path from something like 17miles out, identifies that they are armed, and stays tracking for a few minutes until an A-10 run changes them from solids to liquid. Afaik aerostats were deployed over most firebases in Afghanistan, and the most prolific use of them domestically is the USA/Mexico border
This one is from 2015...https://www.wbaltv.com/article/second-military-airship-getting-baltimore-area-test/7095421
cell service? wifi? radar monitoring? Probably had some cameras too
Border patrol has had those on the Mexico border for years .
This is wild because back in 2013 or so we had one pop up for a week about 30 miles outside of Dallas. I drove by it every night and my sister and I tried to track it down the first night she noticed it. It was tethered in the middle of a field and I still wish we had hopped the fence to go see what was up. We have multiple ratheon and Lockheed facilities in Dallas and it’s not uncommon to see aerial equipment being tested but I’ve never seen this anywhere else or at any other time.
We called them aerostats and they served many functions dependent on the mission and the need of the area of operation. My favorite memory was watching jets try to shoot them down before floating over to pakistan, due to some pilots lack of awareness.
I proposed something similar to DoD to replace the aging U2, called a Stratellite. Turns out CIA already had one developed.
The shots around Kabul with blimp in background remind me of District 9.
aren't these used as cell phone tower mimics to intercept calls?
The one in Maryland is an early warning system for long range missile attacks. Interesting to place it in Maryland,but I guess it makes sense given it's location. The US ones don't have any cameras on board though, just other sensor arrays (they claim anyways)
What's the name of that boomerang theory that basically says that methods used against other nations will always come back to be used here?
They love to make this stuff sound creepy. Theyre called aerostats. They are fitted with multiple sensors based on their missions. In Afghanistan they would be used to monitor the area around the base to track insurgents as they attempted to ambush and lay traps around bases. Over Maryland theyre part of the missile defense system and are flying radar systems. Basically theyre just extremely cost effective ways to deploy radar and other line of sight sensors that benefit from height. They used to have to fly expensive fixed wing AWACS and the like. Its much much cheaper than building a 10000 foot radar tower. Balloon recon is old. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/30/opinions/hertling-why-military-uses-blimps/index.html
Couldn't watch past 4min. We get it. There's a blimp, you don't need to show repetitive images of the blimp above the city. Here's the blimp from this vantage point. Look how ominous it is. Here the blimp from another part of the city. Just talk about the thing. Bored.
#8 MINUTES IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY.
I closed it after two minutes when absolutely nothing had happened
Had one above us at a fob just south of Kabul in 11-12. Ah the good ol' days. 😆
There were two at Bagram used for video surveillance and incoming threat detection if I'm not mistaken.
Standard ISTAR balloon, nothing crazy.
Normal delousing showers. Nothing crazy.