Jim,

Excellent observation regarding jeopardy from above.  You are correct in that most industrial and municipal facilities are protected from ground-based intruders—only.

In Houston, with MARSEC and the nearby ship channel, we had a second dimension of security—from the water.

Now you bring up a 3^rd—from the air but far below any of our armed forces’ radar systems.

Horizontally-aimed and vertically-aimed cameras of various kinds (low-light, infrared, regular, etc) coupled with computer-based visual recognition/identification systems to identify intruders will likely be the next  step in facility security.

By the way, a local facility here in Elizabeth City TCOM makes high altitude stationary observation ballons for the Army.  Security as well as target isolation and arms guidance are key functions of these.  Well, with the wars there slowing, business is waning so they’ve id’ed new markets; traffic observation (they can check speed, record license number, photo the speeder, and transmit this to either a toll booth or a ground officer for intervention and one balloon in a high traffic area can provide as much oversight as a battalion of officers.), high risk parking area security/safety patrol (they already have visual recognition systems that can be programmed to recognize ‘unusual’ activity and flag it to ground forces for intervention).  These are two that were identified in a recent article in our local paper on the company.

So, you are correct in identifying the jeopardy. 

Highest regards,

G&E Solutions

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