In the late 19th century, zeppelins were thought of as the flying machines of the future. Though time and a well-publicized explosion may have quelled those ambitious predictions, blimps and drones are once again poised for their moment in the spotlight, this time as the next wave of domestic surveillance platforms employed by the U.S. government.
Congress has already ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into American airspace by 2015. In fact, UAVs like the Kestrel surveillance blimp have already been tested at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kestrel, the latest state-of-the-art surveillance system, is able to monitor and record an astonishing 70-square-mile area day or night and piece all video feeds together into a single live image that that can be manipulated and enhanced like any standard surveillance camera. The video system can also be tied to other signal intelligence eavesdropping equipment, enabling it to lock onto people using certain devices such as radios and cell phones, and match those signals with a large database of other information.
Kestrel works with one rotating camera that is constantly surveying the landscape below, and six complementary cameras capable of capturing higher-resolution images if the rotating camera catches something of interest (presumably areas of greater motion). Say, for example, a child is abducted in a parking lot hundreds of feet below. Operators can use the information Kestrel has scanned, punch in the time and coordinates of the abduction and recover a high-resolution image of the kidnapper and his vehicle.
While images of unmanned drones and blimps scouring the American landscape may bring up broader questions about governmental intrusion on our everyday lives, these flying machines could be the answer to protecting U.S. borders without the need for massive law enforcement manpower or an expensive, environmentally disastrous border fence. However, if the U.S. government attempts to deploy this technology in American cities, we can only imagine the pushback they’ll get from those who feel that domestic surveillance is already too invasive.
(Via Popular Mechanics)