NEAR-SPACE BALLOON ON IRAQ FAST-TRACK

Regular read­ers know that we’ve got blimps and bal­loons on the brain here at Defense Tech HQ. But this is a pretty inter­est­ing devel­op­ment, even for those odd­balls who are, for some rea­son, not obsessed by all things lighter-than-air.
According to Aerospace Daily, “if upcom­ing U.S. Air Force exper­i­ments are suc­cess­ful, free-floating, ‘near space’ sur­veil­lance bal­loons could be deployed to the field by late next year.”
Maj. Robert Blackington of the Air Force Space Battlelab would like to attach a com­mu­ni­ca­tions or spy sen­sor pack­age to an unguided, inex­pen­sive bal­loon. He got the idea, accord­ing to the Daily, from “a com­pany that pro­duces weather bal­loons… The com­pany placed a small dig­i­tal cam­era on one of their bal­loons, flew it to about 100,000 feet and took pic­tures of the Earth.”

Blackington was par­tic­u­larly impressed by a com­par­i­son shot between satel­lite imagery and the bal­loon imagery. “For $600, they got almost an iden­ti­cal shot with the same res­o­lu­tion,” he said.
The bat­tle­lab plans to test-fly a free floater with a small radio on it later this month, accord­ing to Blackington. If the tech­nol­ogy proves itself, deploy­ment could take place quickly, he said.
“My com­man­der keeps say­ing, we want some­thing in Iraq right now to keep kids from dying,” he said. “If it gets proven here, we’re think­ing we can get it over there by this time next year.” 

November 9th, 2004 | Planes, Copters, Blimps | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.