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Athens Readies Airship for Terror Patrol
ATHENS, Greece - The airship looks more like a giant beach toy than the cutting edge in the war on terrorism. But Athens has big hopes for its inflatable spyware, which is being prepared to float over the city during next month's Olympics.
The 200-foot airship, which coasted in from Switzerland this week, will provide aerial images of greater Athens to help police direct the most expensive security operation in Olympic history.
Images from the blimp will be used with footage streaming from 1,300 new street and venue cameras, surveillance vans and nine police helicopters for the $1.2 billion security blitz.
The airship, filled with noncombustible helium, is fitted with dome-shaped sensors, including chemical "sniffers" and ultrahigh resolution cameras that also work at night, as well as detectors to pinpoint unexpected changes in image patterns.
"We'll provide the police command center with some of the many images they get from the cameras," said George Spyrou, head of Airship Management Services Inc., based in Greenwich, Conn., which is operating the blimp.
The airship is expected to adopt the name Phevos, after Athens' bloated Olympic mascot.
"We can zoom in on what's going on," Spyrou told The Associated Press by telephone. "They might tell us to hover over a parking lot for 20 minutes because there's someone we're not sure about taking something out of his car."
Airships, used to watch over Allied navy convoys in World War II, are bidding to make a major comeback with the heightened need for security after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001, and offer a cheaper and more flexible alternative to unmanned satellites.
"The advantage is that they're very stable and can remain in the air for eight, 10, 12 hours without refueling," said Spyrou, whose company trains helicopter pilots to fly the six airships it operates around the world.
Spyrou's firm leased blimps for surveillance and use as overhead billboards for Olympics at Los Angeles in 1984, Seoul in 1988 and Atlanta in 1996, and were also used by the British military to track the Irish Republican Army (news - web sites) in Northern Ireland.
Some pilots from past venues have signed up to fly Phevos, which is parked on overgrown grass at Athens old seaside airport which now serves as an Olympic complex.
In Athens, the airship will spy on venues scattered around this heavily built-up city of more than 4 million and the port of Piraeus, where luxury cruise ships will be moored for visiting dignitaries and Olympic officials.
Last month, the government announced it will not dismantle closed circuit television cameras after the Olympics, spurring a protest campaign that has included street rallies and indignation from privacy advocates.
Those angry at the high cost of security have begun hanging "electronic informer" posters under surveillance cameras.
Athens' monitoring equipment is being supplied through a $300 million government deal with Pentagon (news - web sites) contractor Science Applications International Corp.
The San Diego-based SAIC consortium includes several Greek companies. Spyrou's Airship Management Services hopes to expand business in Greece after the games to patrol area islands to spot illegal immigrants or the mainland for frequent forest fires.
"We'd like to build ships in Greece and make it a Greek business," Spyrou said. "This is a long-term plan. We don't see this as a flash in the plan. ... After all, we're Greek."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... _the_blimp
xm eixa dei kai to zeppelin tis goodyear prin tessera xronia nomizw...wraia einai 
Originally Posted by freak brother
) stis eidhseis? 
