Blimp-like aerostats are heading to D.C. area

This is nothing new! They had a couple of these in the Florida keys at least 30 years ago.
I used to fly down there from Tampa and always made sure I avoided the Prohibited airspace around them. My cousin worked on them until his foot got caught in a guy rope while launching it. He was carried up about 20ft. before he got loose, broke his ankle and retired from the job. One was a downlooking radar to catch drug smugglers or other scarry stuff out there:-)the other one was to broadcast propaganda to Cuba. A waste and a hazard to navigation then and the same now. Just more money for the defence contractors and more toys for the military. What's going to attack us that our ships and aircraft already deployed can't detect. The boogy man they try to keep us scared of does'nt have the weapons and means to deliver them unles the US sells it to them, which would'nt be too far fetched.

It don't say how many are coming, but at $450 million a pop, ain't that just a little bit of over kill?

i remember one in baghdad (biap), as well as many other FOB's. the one in Baghdad was accidentally cut loose several times, due to high rotary traffic. at least three times that i know of was the tether cut because a helo crew didn't read the advisory and hit the line. to top it off, the aerostat became a real target to be chased and shot down, as the prevailing winds would carry the blimp and its associated high tech collection gear towards iran

We sit here and buy useless crap like this, instead of either a) saving the money or b) spending it on something worthwhile, like sonic boom mitigation, more fuel-efficient turbines, advanced materials, or hell even space exploration. This is why we can't have nice things.

Forget the aerostats, why not just paint a big "X" on the Capital bldg., then we could vote again and perhaps get an effective government reestablished?

I don't think is a good idea ,there is to many airplanes fly in this area ( more of them VFR ),like a Washington resident and you see the sky with your soons how you explaine them that you are not in the 2 War .

What will protect us from the (you name them) on the ground and in the Capitol?

Does anyone thing terrorists would try the very same method again? just what a bankrupt country needs to do.. piss away more money on useless showcasing.

Guess I am too dumb to understand the value of these aerostats --- over simply establishing a ring of 3 or 4 ground based radar stations in a radius around DC. You know we do not have any existing ground stations that could be augmented with whatever star-wars technology is in the aerostats - right? Should have to build new ones, for sure (read sarcastically, please).

In my feeble experience / understanding, I always thought these aerostats were used in very remote places where any existing radar assets were non-existent. Sure, there is the Atlantic Ocean to the East, but MD and DL give some territiory to the East.

As mentioned above, I just do not understand the value of these hazards to flight space, when there is an obvious, lower cost, easier to maintain solution already at our feet. Are we trying to create a make-jobs program here?? Are we trying to post a program that can later be cut and heralded as a great step in cutting fat from the budget??? Do we think the terrorists would not think to wait for a stormy day????

Please, someone explain the great wisdom in this program that I am missing - please!

sounds rediculous..publicising the top secrets ha ha ..better send emails to all the terrorists instead !!!!

I'm sure one of the uses for the aerostats will be to carry these:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/darpas-18-gigapixel-drone-camera-could-see-you-waving-at-it-from-15-000-feet/272796/

Guys, this pair costing $ 450 per head are just prototypes paid for by the taxpayer and after three years of proving to be expensive and non-performing DOD true to form will give Raytheon an even bigger contract, does $ 2 billion sound reasonable for them to draw a bigger and more expensive toy that you and aI and every taxpayer will gladly fund even if it does not meet the alleged performance parameters. WHen this idiocy will end.

Shades of London in WW I. Does anyone really think that they will be any more effective?