CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - TECHNOLOGY
Nov. 5, 2002 - 7:54 p.m.

A Balloon Brigade? Government Not Giggling at Idea of Dirigible Defenses

By Martin Kady II, CQ Staff Writer

    Call them what you want - blimps, zeppelins or dirigibles - but the bulbous crafts known as "airships" generally are known for either the Hindenburg disaster or for floating over ball games. But the airship industry is making a hard push these days to sell its century-old product for homeland security purposes.

    Airship Management Services, a Connecticut-based company that builds and leases the silent, football-shaped crafts, has already let the Secret Service test its airships for surveillance purposes, and has leased airships to the New York City Police Department to watch over the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Government contractors such as Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) have engineers working on how to integrate high-tech surveillance systems onto these decidedly low-tech flying machines.

    While the hovering aircraft may not inspire confidence in those calling for hardened defense of the nation’s ports, borders and other terrorist targets, industry advocates say they have been seeing increased interest from both military and civilian agencies.

    "Five years ago there was the giggle factor" when discussing airships for police or military surveillance, said William Armstrong, vice president of Airship Management Inc. "But airships have a long history of being used for security applications."

    During World War II, dirigibles acted as air escorts for merchant ships, spotting German U-boats off the U.S. coast. More recently, they’ve been used at the Olympics for crowd surveillance. British intelligence officials even used airships, floating quietly through the night skies over Northern Ireland, to intercept cell phone calls of the Irish Republican Army, Armstrong said.

    "There’s a lot of interest to use airships to look after ports, harbors, borders and mass gatherings," Armstrong said. "We believe there may be value in airships in the homeland security arena."

    The Patuxent River Naval Air Warfare Center in Maryland, meanwhile, is testing airships specially equipped with surveillance equipment for possible use along the coastal United States. And the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has put out a request for proposal asking the industry to develop a blimp that can hover at 70,000 feet.

    "It’s certainly worth testing airships in this area, but with [creation of] the Department of Homeland Security still up in the air, they’re being deluged with ideas," said Fred Barker, an aerospace engineer with the Naval Air Systems Command.

    "It’s still premature to say what the services will use airships for, but it’s definitely something we can look at," Barker said.