Supercomputer blimps in the Kabul sky

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.

https://www.wired.com/2011/01/all-seeing-blimp/

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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