Subic firm building high-tech spy ships?

“The world is soon to witness a new industry rising here in Subic,” so goes the Tuesday announcement of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. SBMA’s press statement did not receive much attention on the business pages of broadsheets but a closer look at the announcement made an impression on this writer. Subic could soon be a manufacturing hub for unmanned high-tech spy airships floating 70,000 feet above the earth and surveying every nook and cranny for military intelligence purposes.

That fear, of course, is unfounded at the moment as SBMA’s newest locator, Stratospheric Airship Technologies Sdn Bhd (SAT) of the United Kingdom, plans to merely build solar-powered “commercial airships” that will carry broadband and telecommunications equipment. SBMA administrator Armand Arreza, who signed an agreement with SAT managing director Bryn Lloyd Williams last Thursday, said the British company planned to invest $500 million for its manufacturing hub.

The SBM is actually offered SAT an area at the Subic Bay International Airport, which is being used by Federal Express as a hub of its Asian operations until its eventual transfer to Guangzhou, China, within the year.

SAT’s airships will do their job at 65,000-70,000 feet (about 21 kilometers)-high above the clouds, or the jet stream, and severe weather in a stationary position. SAT’s airship will basically serve as a telecommunications relay but other high-altitude vehicles, like those manufactured by Lockheed Martin, can either as weather observer or a “peacekeeper from its over-the-horizon perch.”

Modern Zeppelin version

SAT, according to the SBMA, plans to bring down its airships to earth every five years for repairs during their 15-year lifespan. The design of the airships, says, Williams, is based on the early 20th century Zeppelins, but is now “totally different” as inert helium will be used instead of hydrogen, which catches fire.

SAT promised to build in Subic “the largest single-spanned building in Southeast Asia.”

“It would be a great sight to behold,” says Arreza. “When the SAT project pushes through, we will see Subic as a high-tech manufacturing center, and this fits very well with what we are trying to do.”

The SBMA said SAT’s high-altitude unmanned airships aimed to provide communications links covering entire countries—a new trend that has promising prospects in view of the telecommunications industry’s rapid growth.

“The key technological advantage here is that we don’t need the ground infrastructure which is too costly and, sometimes, very difficult to install. In some places, it gets stoned or vandalized, and weather conditions interfere with its performance,” says Williams. “We’re talking to Globe and Smart and they have expressed a high level of interest to augment their land-based and satellite systems.”

Lockheed’s new toy

Lockheed, meanwhile, has developed an unmanned lighter-than-air vehicle that will operate above the jet stream. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) said 11 high-altitude airships would provide overlapping radar coverage of all maritime and southern border approaches to the continental US “and may be a significant asset in homeland defense efforts.”

Lockheed calls its airships the Stratospheric Platform System (SPS) dirigible, which operates just barely within the outer limits of the earth’s atmosphere and is emerging as part of the military’s 21st century transformational mindset.

SPS is an unmanned airship that can maintain a relatively geo-stationary position at 70,000 feet. Its onboard sensors’ surveillance coverage extends over the horizon and monitors a diametric surface area of 775 miles. At nearly 500 feet long and 150 feet in diameter at its widest girth, the airship’s volume exceeds 5 million cubic feet.

Lockheed’s Goodyear blimp and SAT’s modern Zeppelin may be apart in missions but just the same, they patrol the same expanse-the jet stream above, where a new air traffic is unfolding. Rey Enano - Manila Standard Today