Chief financial officer Karl Bangert said plans for the largest piloted airship ever built could be adapted to be an unmanned radar platform.ĬargoLifter, which has been maneuvering in recent weeks to stave off bankruptcy, just needs a contract to get the project started, Bangert said. ICBMs, cruise missile threats, air threats," Thomas said.ĬargoLifter, which sold its first tethered balloon designed to lift heavy cargo in March, entered an agreement this month to collaborate with Boeing's Phantom Works. "They would look for anything that traditional radar looks for. Canada, the United States' partner in NORAD, is looking separately at airship technology, but might participate in a U.S. government funding to build a prototype high-altitude airship, with the idea of stationing 10 ships to cover all the continental borders of the United States, said Maj. Israel used a similar balloon carrying cameras to monitor Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity during its recent standoff with Palestinian militants. Customs Service use radar on low-altitude tethered balloons to look for drug smugglers.
"You can put as much into an SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) Star Wars type thing as you want and a cruise missile would sneak under, but an airship could plug the gap." 11 proved is the ability of a group of people being able to outwit a sophisticated country by using unconventional methods," said Nick Cook, a London-based aerospace consultant for Jane's Defense Weekly. Military planners envision unmanned airships as high-altitude radar platforms keeping watch for anything trying to penetrate U.S. military has been forced to reassess threats, and two major defense contractors are pitching the zeppelin as a potential piece in the homeland security puzzle. As the gleaming white-and-blue airship takes off from a freshly mown field at Berlin's Tempelhof airport, the notion of using the 150-year-old technology in defense of the United States seems as impossible as Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's dream of using his cumbersome creations as fighting machines.īut with the Sept.
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