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+--- Thread: Pentagon plans to spend $52 million in 2022 on U.S border spy blimps (/thread-11606.html)
Pentagon plans to spend $52 million in 2022 on U.S border spy blimps - C C - Jan 20, 2022
https://gizmodo.com/pentagon-plans-to-spend-52-million-in-2022-on-u-s-bord-1848387793
EXCERPTS: The Department of Defense will spend tens of millions of dollars this year on a number of “surveillance blimps” -- high-tech balloons that will be sent to the U.S. border with Mexico for the purposes of ferreting out drug smugglers.
Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon recently agreed to spend $52.2 million on the “operation and maintenance” of as many as 18 blimps, also called “persistent threat detection systems” (PTDS), or simply “aerostats.”
Such blimps, which are often outfitted with high-capacity sensors and cameras, can rise to an altitude of some 15,000 feet and can allegedly record ground activity in granular detail. [...] So the thinking goes, having these bulbous, spy blobs drifting over the southern skies will help spot criminal activity at the border—particularly drug trafficking.... (MORE - missing details)
RE: Pentagon plans to spend $52 million in 2022 on U.S border spy blimps - Syne - Jan 20, 2022
And how do you distinguish drug trafficking from all the other people being allowed to just swarm across the border? And how can the Pentagon or CBP enforce something the executive branch will not allow?