Airship answers: Pentagon knows it wants an intel blimp, but not how to get it

摘要

The U.S. doesn't know yet who should build the giant prototype airship it wants to have flying over Afghanistan 18 months after the contract award -- or exactly how the program should be bureaucratically structured. What backers do know is that the compartment that would house the craft's intelligence sensors and communications equipment should be named for U.S. Navy Lt. Michael Murphy, a Medal of Honor recipient. Naming the compartment the Murphy Bay says volumes about how and why backers have come so far in selling the idea of a 250-foot-long, unmanned spy blimp that would hover over an area for three weeks at a time. In June 2005, Murphy was leading a four-man Navy SEAL team on a clandestine mission high in the mountains of Afghanistan when his team came to face to face with some goat herders. The team discussed killing the unarmed men to protect the secrecy of Operation Redwing, the name for their mission to find and spy on an Afghan militant. The SEALs released the herders. Within two hours, bullets and grenades rained from dozens of Taliban fighters, according to an account by the team's lone survivor. Though already shot through the chest, Murphy pulled out a mobile phone and walked out into an open area to call for help.