Surveillance supercomputer
blimps monitor Afghanistan’s capital city from the Kabul sky. With infra-red
and colour surveillance 360-degree video cameras and high-tech radars with
listening devices, they hover quietly above the city.
The American military white unmanned
blimps – or dirigibles or zepellins or Fat Alberts or airships – are 71 metres
long (234 feet) and are tied with cables to the NATO headquarters, floating 6,000
metres (20,000 feet) above ground. Big and visible day and night. They are
seven times larger than the Goodyear Blimps. As one source said, ‘They are
freakishly large.’ They
are one of the largest airships produced since World War II.
Installed gradually – one by
one – since late 2011 they are called a Persistent Threat Detection System
providing 24-hour video surveillance. The latest installation was about January
2016. However, there was one in Kandahar since about 2009.
On 11 October 2015 a British
military helicopter headed for the NATO complex hit a blimp’s tether cables.
The Puma Mk2 helicopter crashed, killing five people – two US service members,
two British service members, and a French contract civilian. Another five
people were injured. The blimp was severely damaged beyond repair.
When the blimps are grounded
due to bad weather, the US military often find bullet holes in them, which
indicates that some residents find them highly intrusive – watching everyone
everywhere.
Some positive outcomes have
been that the one of the blimp’s cameras located a car being packed with
explosives. Officials were able to intercept the potential incident.
Supercomputers analyse data
from the blimps constantly with the aim of getting information to ground
military groups in less than 15 seconds.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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