Giant surveillance blimp to protect Capitol building
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Representative Candice S. Miller (R-Michigan), who chairs the House Administration Committee, wants to make the Capitol building more secure after existing security measured failed to detect or stop Douglas Hughes who, on 15 April, flew his gyrocopter into the Capitol manicured lawn.
Miller, in her official capacity, recently visited U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) ground stations on the U.S.-Mexico border, and was impressed with the panoramic and detailed view of a section of the border which was offered by a CBP’s Tethered Aerostat Radar System, or TARS.
She now wants to deploy this “sophisticated technology” at the Capitol.
Roll Call reports that the giant blimp would be loitering the Washington, D.C., skies at about 10,000 feet, a vantage point which allows the 2,000-pound radars the blimp carries to spot an aircraft at a distance of 200 miles.
“They’re going to be using drones to deliver your taco here pretty soon,” Miller said during a 20 May hearing, in which Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine testified. She suggested the Capitol police might be able to get “surplus stuff” from the Department of Defense. “I mean, this is what’s coming, so how can you be able to assess using technology that’s available, as quickly as you can?”
Miller is not the only lawmakers calling for improved measures to spot aerial intruders, and these lawmakers, too, point to Hughes’s gyrocopter flight as an example of why more money should be invested in surveillance of Washington’s skies.
Representative Elijah E. Cummings (D-Maryland), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said both Republicans and Democrats have made it “very clear” to federal law enforcement authorities that they want “anybody who has anything to do with airspace to avail themselves to the most sophisticated technology.”
“We’re going to hold their feet to the fire. I think they are doing the best they can, but I think what this has shown is it shows you where you’re vulnerable,” Cummings continued. “There are always copycats.”
Giant radar-equipped blimps already monitor the sky along the Atlantic Coast. The blimps, launched in December, cover a 340-mile range stretching south to North Carolina and north to the suburbs of Boston.
The House recently approved $369 million for the Capitol Police Department’s fiscal 2016 budget. Representative Mark Amodei (R-Nevada), vice chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee which controls Capitol Police funding, told Roll Call “eyes above the sky” would “be received with an open mind.”
“It will just be a matter of time before somebody’s got a drone flying around here,” Amodei said. “What are you going to do with drones to make your stuff more effective, more efficient? It’s present technology so we probably need to start figuring out how you’re going to use it and defend against it.”
Miller agrees. “Drones are just an exploding technology,” she told Roll Call, citing Amazon’s proposed delivery service, as well as agricultural drones. “You’re not putting the toothpaste back in the tube — it’s coming. So, for all the good things that they can do, there’s also a security risk.”
Miller is also not concerned that a giant white blimp would mar the Washington, D.C. skyline, noting that some blimps can fly at higher altitude and would thus be less visible.
“They’re not huge blimps,” said Representative Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), who supports adding more aerial surveillance. “You could do a number of things that are not visually unappealing to our visitors and yet still provide the vehicle to have additional eyes on the Mall.”
“For us, it’s really about making sure that visual monitors that all our [Department of Homeland Security] has, that we have the proper funding and the proper resources for them to make more strategic decisions — whether it be Capitol Police or DHS or anybody else,” said Meadows, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee with jurisdiction over D.C. affairs.
Dine, in his 20 May testimony, said the Capitol Police have been looking into the technology.
