You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Land of the Free
The massive balloons that have made drug smuggling by plane nearly extinct
2019-08-26
[Washington Examiner] RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas ‐ It was just another Monday in 2001 when a few of the country’s top national security officials gathered inside the Pentagon to discuss taking all the air out of a program that used balloons for surveillance near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The goal of the gathering was to push TARS, or Tethered Aerostat Radar Systems, comparable in appearance to unmanned stationary blimps but containing top-of-the-line airplane detectors, onto another department's shoulders. That day, the Air Force, which had overseen TARS since 1992, washed its hands of it, not caring if the program came to an end.

The next morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airplanes and turned off the aircraft's transponders. The only way the government was able to track those flights was by using air radars: the same types of radars flying inside the balloons on the southwest border.

"That situation heightened the vulnerability and the security concern against air, and there was no more talk of terminating TARS from that point forward," explains Rob Brown, a senior official within U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations component.

After 9/11, the Air Force held onto TARS until 2013, when the program was permanently moved to the Department of Homeland Security. Since then, Brown has overseen TARS and affectionately refers to the aerostats as "big ass balloons." They can also be defined as motionless sacks, tethered to the ground, and filled with a buoyant gas and carrying cameras capable of detecting activity far away.
Posted by:Besoeker

#5  And the more they spend the cheaper the drugs get. Funny how that works...
Posted by: M. Murcek   2019-08-26 13:28  

#4  #1 Yeah, my first thought was "So...barrage balloons?"
Posted by: charger   2019-08-26 08:50  

#3  One flies above Fort Huachuca near the Mexico border
Posted by: Frank G   2019-08-26 08:47  

#2  Huh...when I first read the headline, I thought it would be an article on how the drug smugglers were using balloons instead of planes. What a stupid concept I thought...serves me right for assuming.
Posted by: Warthog   2019-08-26 08:46  

#1  All of this amazing, new technology, isn't it wonderful ?
Posted by: Besoeker   2019-08-26 07:57  

00:00