Posted on 01/24/2014 9:22:47 AM PST by Biggirl
THE PENTAGON -- The Pentagon has discovered a gap in the defenses of Washington, D.C., and it's about to test a solution.
But depending on your point of view, the solution is either vital for national security or a threat to American privacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
“Aberdeen is a testing ground for such programs.”
Repeat.
“from snippets and bits over the past months, “someone’ sure is doing a lot of monitoring for radiation (?)”
No secret there. DNDO is flying a suite of NaI spectrometers over large areas, logging “normal” background gamma spectra.
With a good baseline, then, if some creep steals a big radioactive source, it will stand out against a known background. Useful too for nuke accidents.
I learned of this because I was helping some people build a backpack spectrometer, with big NaI scuntillators in a backpack, so that a source coold be detected, identified, and located quickly while looking lie some guy walking along in jeans, tshirt, sneakers, backpack. A very sensitive rig that readily detected radiation patients from a local hospital, which is why a spectrometer is needed (a patioent waling along emitting technetium gammas is a patient, not a terrorist emitting cobalt 60 gammas). Part of that project was several truck-mounted spectrometers and a few copter mounted ones.
Someone is serious about dirty bombs or illegal radiation sites.
radiation surveillance conference - surprise! Baltimore
2012
maybe someone has been watching “The Sum of All Fears”
sounds like the technology discussed at this conference
I’m sure all the surveillance focused on Baltimore is just a coincidence and has nothing to do with the port, or the many medical and defense research facilities in the area. not to mention the nuc power plants to the north and south
Why would they need blimps to spy on us when our computers, our phones, and records are already being hacked, monitored and spied on by government?
“I’m sure all the surveillance focused on Baltimore is just a coincidence”
Yeah, and just coincidentally near DC. They had a truck in Boston and New York a while back, plus some other cities.
It is a good thing that they are starting NOW to deal with dirty bombs and smuggled radioactives. Imagine if the Tzarnev brothers had stolen a hospital radiation source and added that to the firecrackers in their pressure cookers?
“Why would they need blimps to spy on us”
Look up JLENS. It’s a radar, mounted on a balloon.
imagine a human dirty bomb with a suicide vest
The point blew right by ya.
lol I guess so, want to try again? I totally missed it.
“imagine a human dirty bomb with a suicide vest”
Yes, that would be gross. That was one use for the backpack scintillator, plus putting a small Geiger counter on every cop.
A medical patient does not have enough rad material to be a threat to a crowd, but a bad guy who steals ALL the radioiodine might be, so you have to be able to determine what isotope and how much in a hurry.
Based on the fact D.C. is sweeping the American population with their surveillance/spy apparatus, who do ya think those in D.C. fear more, those in front of them or behind them?
I don’t buy it. We are worried about Iranian cruise missiles? Now??
So the Russians and Chinese having low flying nuclear armed cruise missiles throughout the Cold War didn’t appear as a threat?
This is more likely about domestic surveillance as in that ARGUS youtube video.
“So the Russians and Chinese having low flying nuclear armed cruise missiles throughout the Cold War didn’t appear as a threat?”
That’s why they built JLENS- at the time there was no good way to detect a cruise missile. It’s been designed, now it’s being tested. Just finished up at White Sands and Dugway, now it’s being tested over water, one way, and land the other.
OK, I admit I laughed. The thought crossed my mind that daily life in most of the country would go on unaffected.
Makes sense, but... If some group had the ability to launch a cruise missile, wouldn't this same group have the ability to shoot down a blimp?
“wouldn’t this same group have the ability to shoot down a blimp? “
They’d have to shoot it down with something the radar can’t see coming.
Small arms fire at 10kft is not a threat, and even if you could hit it, it won’t go pop like a party balloon.
“If they take out D.C. with cruise missiles they’d actually be doing us the greatest favor in history.
OK, I admit I laughed. The thought crossed my mind that daily life in most of the country would go on unaffected.”
I have to disagree. At that point there would be no pay checks for a lot of federal employees who might then not show up for work. Would we miss all these bureaucrats?
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