...Blimps are useless against very large terrorists.
Posted on 03/05/2004 12:35:42 PM PST by Calpernia
The dirigible, or airship, may be employed as a tool to detect potential attacks against the United States, DoD officials told House subcommittee members March 4.
"We believe the best way to protect Americans is to defeat terrorists as far away from our homeland as we can," Air National Guard Maj. Gen. John A. Love said in his prepared testimony before the House Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. Love is a senior officer with U.S. Northern Command, the unified command charged with defending the United States from land, air and sea attack.
Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and National Guard Bureau chief Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum also provided testimony.
While U.S. troops are taking the fight to terrorists in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, Love asserted it's also important "to win the 'home game' by protecting, defending and defeating threats against our nation."
Recent technology demonstrations, Love said, point to the potential use of airships to patrol a 500-mile "buffer zone" established outward from the American coastline.
High-altitude airships, Love continued, could provide "over-the-horizon" surveillance across North America "and out from our coastal waters for air, ground and maritime threats."
Use of airships for homeland defense purposes, McHale explained, is consistent with DoD's charter to provide "the military defense of our nation from attacks that originate from abroad." Testing of prototype dirigibles, he said, demonstrated they "could provide wide area surveillance and communications capabilities."
McHale pointed out DoD's partner role with the Department of Homeland Security in its mission of protecting the nation against, and preparing for, acts of terrorism. DoD, McHale said, stands ready to "provide assets and capabilities in support of civil authorities, consistent with U.S. law."
National Guard Bureau chief Lt. Gen. Blum told House committee members the Guard "is uniquely suited for operational missions inside the U.S. to help protect both the American people and our critical infrastructure."
In fact, there are now 32 certified Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, the three-star general said, noting, "More are on the way." Blum said each team features 22 Army and Air National Guard specialists trained to detect and identify chemical, biological or radiological hazards, and assist in follow-on activities.
Another initiative involves the reinforcement of WMD civil support teams, Blum noted, with "existing medical, engineer and security forces from either the Air or Army National Guard."
The result, Blum pointed out, is "a more robust capability in response to a WMD incident."
Other than not being practical for a number of reasons - I'm not going to delve into fanciful 'designs' that again, aren't in the least EVER going to be practical ... synthetic aperature RADARS work well when you can saturate a target with pulses, taking a trade-off in other parameters; parameters you don't have 'to trade off' from a platform in geosynchonous orbit ...
I sense a total lack of appreciation for this 'field'; received signal strength (and transmit ERP) for *any* system is directly proportional to antenna gain - a factor which is directly controlled by 'capture area' which relates to an antenna's size ... the ONLY way to make up for a signal which has 'sunk' below the noise floor (intrinsic noise in the first active element e.g. as a front end preamplifier) is to increase antenna gain via an increase in it's size there by affecting the S/N (Signal to Noise) ratio ... even so-called Pulse Compression 'chirped' systems which can function with a N'S ratio require a workable N/S ratio prior to 'pulse compression' (in the receiver) and the resultant S/N improvement!
There is no cheating nature and the 'fact' of thermally induced/created 'noise' in all active devices (and even passive devices!) as used in any RF/RADAR/Radio system!
...Blimps are useless against very large terrorists.
Not so fast!
There is the consideration that you might end up 'blocking' other users in the satellite belt with the size antenna that is required -
- and the 'space drag' (from solar particles) on a large antenna may also prevent you from staying on-station in your orbital slot ...
The real answer, I think, to 500 mile 'detection' of aircraft with today's processing/computer power is the use of OTH HF RADAR as I mentioned previously ... then there is the possibility of 'stealth' being used ... RADAR absorbing materials/LO (Low Observables) designs aren't near as likely to work with HF (2 - 30 MHz) RF energy as with RF in the microwave spectrum ...
The price of security. But by the time such a huge antenna were built 1000 miles across, the terrorists would be dead of old age or work-related accidents, and their children would view their parents as hopeless and it might all be over anyway.
Supporting excerpt from:
www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/airdef/an-tps-71.htm
AN/TPS-71 ROTHR (Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar)
...This unique radar system was originally designed to provide tactical warning to battle group commanders of air and surface threats at an extended range allowing time for responsive engagement. Two US Navy high-frequency (HF) over-the-horizon (OTH) radars known as ROTHR (Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar) are operated at Corpus Christi TX and Chesapeake VA, with coverage of the Caribbean Sea and portions of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
The ROTHRs in Virginia and Texas are presently in full-time use for counter-narcotics surveillance, and a third is scheduled for installation in Puerto Rico in the near future.
...
The ROTHR Virginia surveillance area covers more than 2.2 million square miles of the Caribbean extending north-south from southern Florida to the northern coast of South America and east-west from the western coast of Central America to the Lesser Antilles.
This coverage is achieved using 5-to-28-MHz radio waves that reflect from the ionosphere.
ROTHR is a land-based, high-frequency (HF) radar which can cover a 64-degree wedge-shaped area at ranges of 500 to 1,600 nautical miles. This extended range is achieved when transmitted HF energy is refracted by the ionosphere onto distant targets. The faint energy reflected back from these targets (backscatter) is detected by the radar receive antenna after returning along the refraction path. The surface of the earth and the targets in the area of interest reflect some of this energy back through the ionosphere to a separate receive site, where it is processed to generate target track information.
...
Because the existing Over-the-Horizon Radar Systems were originally designed to perform a military mission and not a counterdrug mission, enhancements to provide a better capability to provide surveillance are being developed by the DoD Counterdrug Technology Development Program.
A series of adaptive waveforms have been developed to deal with the problem of Spread Doppler Clutter and its impact on Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar (ROTHR) systems for the ARPA sponsored Counterdrug Surveillance and Interdiction Program.
...
Ha ha ... HARRP hopefully will/has allowed better understanding of the vagaries that are HF/SW propagation ...
Reality is so bothersome isn't it? How much do you think it costs to own and operate the various helicopters, trucks and other vehicles the Coast Guard and Border Patrol use today to get their job done? If you want to patrol with lower fuel costs, lower maintenance costs and more effective time on station, you use something with one hell of a lot fewer moving parts than a chopper. Thats where your airship comes in. The only benefit of the helicopter is that it is more tolerant of high wind conditions and weather. No one is stopping or enforcing anything or anyone with a sattelite, Captain Kirk, until they put laser weapons on them.
There are two years left in this Admin. Millions of illegal aliens, millions of abortions, $ trillions of public debt, bird flu, Katrina, ports under foreign management, $3 gasoline, what is this Homeland Security thing that anybody should care?
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