U.S. To Launch Huge "Eye In The Sky" Armada

Perhaps, though not yet - those who live in fear of an eye in the sky tracking their every move have until 2009 to dig a bunker and set of underground tunnels to the nearest shops. But yes, the American defence contractor Lockheed Martin has been working for three years on a $40m contract awarded by the US Missile Defence Agency to build 11 High-Altitude Airships. Each airship will float 12 miles (20km) above the surface (in the low stratosphere), be powered by solar panels and could oversee an area of 600 square miles. Put 11 of them over the US with suitably powerful cameras, and they could keep watch on every square metre of the whole country. The project's aims include being used as "a mobile, retaskable, high-altitude, geostationary long-endurance platform" whose functions "will span from communications and weather/environmental monitoring to short- and long-range missile warning, surveillance, and target acquisition". ("Target acquisition" is what civilians call "aiming a weapon at something".)