This fall , there ’ll be a new and extremely powerful supercomputer in Afghanistan . It ’ll be float 20,000 feet above the warzone , aboard a giant spy blimp that follow and listens to everything for miles around .
That is , if an challenging , $ 211 million crash program called “ Blue Devil ” work out as plan . As of now , the airship ’s “ capriciously heavy ” hull – seven time the size of the Goodyear Blimp ’s – has yet to be put together . The Air Force has n’t settled yet on on the dot which cameras and radars and hearing devices will vanish on board . And it ’s still an open interrogation whether the military machine can handle all the information that the airship will be collecting from above .
U.S. plane already shoot surveillance video from on in high spirits , and listen in on Afghanistan ’s cell phones and walkie - talkies . But those chore are ordinarily care by dissimilar aircraft . coordinate their activities – telling the cameramen where to shoot , or the eavesdroppers where to listen – get time . And that extra time sometimes allows adversaries to get aside .
The idea behind the Blue Devil is to have up to a XII unlike detector , all fly on the same dirigible and talking to each other constantly . The supercomputer will crunch the data , and automatically murder the sensors in the correct guidance : pointing a tv camera at , say , the guy yapping about an upcoming ambush . The finish is to get that coordinated information down to primer troop in less than 15 seconds .
“ It could modify the nature of overhead surveillance , ” says retiredLt . Gen. David Deptula , until recently the head of the Air Force ’s intelligence efforts . “ There ’s vast potential there . ”
The first phase angle of the Blue Devil task is already underway . Late last year , fourmodified administrator planeswere send to Afghanistan , and equipped with an array of surveillance geartrain .
phase angle two - theairship - will be substantially bigger , and more complex . The light - than - aircraft , work up TCOM LP , will longer than a football champaign at 350 feet and seven times the size of the Goodyear Blimp at 1.4 million three-dimensional feet .
“ It ’s capriciously large , ” aver a source nigh to the program . “ One of the largest dirigible produce since World War II . ”
The Air Force skip that the redundant sizing should give it enough fuel and He to stay aloft for as much as a workweek at a time at about four miles up . ( Most blimps float at 3,000 feet or less . ) Staying up so high for long is all - but - unprecedented . But it ’s only a third of the proposed flight clock time for a competing Army dirigible project .
The Army ’s “ Long Endurance Multi - tidings Vehicle ” relies on a more complicated , intercrossed Kingston-upon Hull . Blue Devil ’s complexity is in the computer hardware and package it ’ll carry aboard .
sensor will be swapped in and out using an on - plank rails system that connects pallet of electronics . Defense scratch line - upMav6 LLCis doing the integration work . In summation to an regalia of on - gameboard hearing devices , Clarence Day / night telecasting cameras , communications relay , and receivers for ground sensors , the Blue Devil airship will also hold a wide - area airborne surveillance system , or WAAS . These sensors – like theGorgon Starepackage currently being installed on Reaper undercover agent poke – practice hive of a dozen dissimilar cameras to take areas up to two - and - a - half miles around .
The footage can easily drown the people who have to watch it ( not to cite the military ’s often - fragile battlefield meshing ) . Already , 19 analysts watch a single Predator feed . Gen James Cartwright , vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , enjoin a conference in November that he’dneed 2,000 analyststo outgrowth the footage collected by a single drone fit with WAAS sensors . And that ’s before the rise to the next - generation WAAS , which uses96 camerasand generates every hour 274 terabytes of entropy ; it ’d take 1,870 of the hard drives I ’m using properly now to lay in that much data point .
That ’s where the supercomputer comes in . With the equivalent of 2,000 single - gist servers , it can process up to 300 terabytes per minute . So or else of just broadcast all the footage to the infantrymen , like most of today ’s sensors , the dirigible ’s processor will mash the information , impart meta tags like location and meter . Ground troops will query a server on the airship , which will only circularise the hooey they ’re concerned in .
“ People take : ‘ With all these sensors , how ’re you gon na impart all that data down to the soil ? ’ Well , we do n’t necessarily need to institutionalise it all down , ” Deptula say . “ A possible result is to process part of the data on - board , and only direct what is of interest . That reduces the bandwidth demand . ”
Provided the Air Force can get the sausage balloon in the air , and the gadgets on the blimp . The first flight is scheduled for October 15th .
Illo : USAF
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