Posted on 12/17/2014 7:16:29 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Active Duty ping.
“Yep, that’s an incoming IC.....bzzzt....boom!!”
Simply brilliant plan.
Which is why the U2 is still flying after half a century and Global Hawk is not
Club K
Yes, and this barrage balloon is designed to guard the border between New York and Ohio.
Bet it covers more than that.
It is my understanding they are primarily intended to spot cruise missiles. I wonder what their angle/field of view is though? If they look out to and even slightly above the horizon they could see sub-launched ICBMs I guess...
But with all that ability to detect and track a low flying cruise missile amid all that background clutter... I wonder how good their detection, clutter rejection, resolution, and moving target tracking is? Could they track regular ground vehicles too? People?
Actually, aerostats go back to the American Civil War being used as visual observation posts.
Uhh, I was just pointing out that ICBMs are NOT cruise missiles.
Well, I know a guy who used to work at the airship site in the Texas Big Bend country and he said they could see moving motor vehicles.
Could this indicate that someone is worried about a strike from a cargo ship or a sub launched from a couple hundred miles out to sea?
The Socialist Labor gang had a plan refuel aircraft from U-boats to bomb New York and Japan did launch planes from subs off the West Coast once or twice.
And i was mocking the stupidity of the headline writer to even confuse ICBM w a cruise missile. A local blimp to spot inbound MIRV warheads— you’d have a couple of seconds of warning.
Why the Army? Shouldn’t this be the USAF?
Why should this be radar only? Shouldn’t it also have a laser? I just don’t get this project at all.
The Army has traditionally had the tasking of coastal defense of the country and in the modern era they operated the anti-aircraft missiles along with artillery.
Trivia bit-———The B17 got the moniker of Flying Fortress in the 1930s when the Army Air Corps was trying to pry funding out of Congress. They sold the program as a defensive extension of the Coast Artillery and not as an offensive weapon for foreign war. Attack an enemy fleet when it was further out to sea.
The name had nothing to do with the plane’s machine guns since the early Forts hardly had any.
That's a little too "traditional" for my taste given that the USAF has the task of managing air space for ICBMs and aircraft.
They sold the program as a defensive extension of the Coast Artillery and not as an offensive weapon for foreign war.
In the valley below me is a road that was paved in 1919 with 5" of heavily reinforced concrete on the excuse that the Army would use it for transporting artillery to the coast, which they did once a year. It was pure pork.
I grew up and lived near a Nike Site in my neighborhood. IIRC, they were run by the Army.
If I were an enemy of the U.S., I’d put a high powered laser on a sub that could burn holes across the blimp’s helium compartments.
The picture of the platform is identical as well in the above article. Also seems like a platform that should be along the border with Mexico, well, if we were serious about stopping illegal trafficking along the border.
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