Pentagon to Deploy Huge Blimps JLENS over Washington, DC for 360-degree Surveillance and Around the World

Newsflash from your Hollywood Attorney:

A pair of high-tech Army blimps is coming to the greater Washington, DC area, and soon they will be able to provide the military with surveillance powers that spans hundreds of millions of acres from North Carolina to Niagara Falls, Canada.

The airships are part of Raytheon’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, and when all is said and done they’ll offer the United States military what the defense contractor calls “an affordable elevated, persistent over-the-horizon sensor system” that relies on “a powerful integrated radar system to detect, track and target a variety of threats.”

Raytheon has just wrapped up a six-week testing period in the state of Utah and is now sending its JLENS fleet to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Once there, the Army intends to get some hands-on experience that will eventually culminate in launching the pair of airships over Washington, DC.

Once above the nation’s capital, JLENS will allow the Army to see for 320 miles in any direction from 10,000 feet above the earth. The system can be set up to operate on its own for an entire month without requiring refueling, and offers the Pentagon surveillance capabilities that dwarf other options at a penny of the cost.

Its manufactures say JLENS “enables commanders to defend against threats including hostile cruise missiles, low-flying manned and unmanned aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving surface vehicles such as boats, SCUD-launchers, automobiles and tanks.”

“Affordable defense from real world threats,” Raytheon touts the system on its website.

To provide that security, though, the Army will send its integrated pair of airships — around 75 yards in length each — high into the sky carrying “powerful radars that can look deep into enemy territory.” First, however, the residents of the metropolitan Washington, DC area — and those in around a dozen states stretching the mid-Atlantic into New England — will be asked to ignore a pair of sophisticated spying machines.

                           “JLENS uses advanced sensor and networking technologies to provide 360-degree, wide-area surveillance and precision target tracking,” the Defense Department found in an unclassified audit of the system conducted in late 2011. But while that tracking is designed to go after enemy drones and spot other suspicious activity, it is also touted as being able to provide a good enough image of moving land targets — or essentially anything. In a press release from February, Raytheon said the JLENS surveillance radar can “simultaneously track hundreds of threats.”

See Video.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni3MKJNSLOk#at=98

Of course, the surveillance ship is only half of the JLENS program. That aircraft, one of the two tethered blimp-like vessles, is equipped with the appropriate lenses to wage sophisticated surveillance missions. Also included in the package is a separate ship equal in size that contains fire control radar that picks up data about incoming threats and then communicates with separate missile systems that can then wage attacks, or counter-attacks.

                       "We're proving blimps can see more than just the 50-yard line," JLENS program director Doug Burgess told Popular Science this week. "We really feel like we're at the point now — development is complete — and the system is ready to be deployed wherever it's needed."

According to PopSci, the JLENS already successfully completed two exercises in 2012 in which it guided a missile to shoot down other missiles — one over sea, another over land.

But while the likelihood of having one of the airships shoot down an armed drone heading for the White House seems unlikely, it’s a precaution that the Army intends on being prepared for — even at the widespread cost of losing privacy.

"When the government is conducting real-time aerial surveillance within the United States," Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told The Huffington Post, "there are privacy issues that need to be addressed."

Raytheon estimates the using the JLENS instead of traditional, fixed-wing surveillance aircraft, could bring the cost of operation down by as much as 700 percent.

Source..... http://rt.com/usa/army-raytheon-jlens-blimps-594/

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US Army restricts access to "Guardian" Newspaper’s Website has been Filtered and Restricted for its Personnel over Secrets in NSA Leaked Stories

The US Army confirmed on Thursday that access to The Guardian newspaper’s website has been filtered and restricted for its personnel. The policy is due to classified documents described in detail in the stories.

Gordon Van Vleet, spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, said in an email to the Monterey Herald that the Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks."

The spokesman said the procedure was routine part of "network hygiene" measures to prevent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive information.

"We make every effort to balance the need to preserve information access with operational security," he wrote, "however there are strict policies and directives in place regarding protecting and handling classified information."

“Until declassified by appropriate officials, classified information - including material released through an unauthorized disclosure - must be treated accordingly by DoD personnel," Van Vleet explained.

In a later phone conversation he clarified that the filtering was “Armywide” rather than restricted to some US Army facilities.

Van Vleet said NETCOM, which is part of the Army Cyber Command, does not determine what sites its personnel can have access to, but "relies on automated filters that restrict access based on content concerns or malware threats."

The Guardian's website has posted classified information regarding the NSA's surveillance activities, including PRISM, the massive domestic spying program that has Internet companies collude with military intelligence to keep tabs on Americans' online habits.

The source of the leaks is Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and ex-staff member of a private contractor working for the NSA, who disclosed secret documents about US surveillance to several newspapers, including The Guardian.

The Herald inquired about the issue after staff at the Presidio of Monterey, a military installation in California, told the newspaper that they were able to access The Guardian’s US site, www.guardiannews.com , but were prevented from accessing articles on the NSA that redirected to the British site.

Source... http://rt.com/usa/guardian-access-restricted-army-367/

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