Clean, quiet eye in the sky

In following the lead of the big Alberta cities, the Winnipeg Police Service has lobbied for the acquisition of a helicopter.

Physics require a helicopter to burn a lot of fuel beating the air to carry its own weight, passengers and fuel. As a result, helicopters sit at the pinnacle of the carbon-emission "food chain." If the police want to be progressive, economically efficient and in tune with the need for greener technology, they should take a hard look at the new generation of security airships.

Could an airship do the same job as a helicopter? Clearly, an airship is not going to pick up stranded skiers from a mountainside. But if the task is to search the riverbanks or the Assiniboine Forest, an airship would operate just as well.

Helicopters can achieve speeds of 225 km/h, whereas an airship's sprint speed would be between 100 km/h and 140 km/h. An airship, however, would probably arrive just as fast because it is more likely to be airborne. Moreover, the police concept is to train their cameras on any 911 call site and direct police cruisers to the location. No vehicle could outrun the camera lens, whether it is carried by an airship or helicopter.

A helicopter is an easy, definable asset for the police to request, but it is old technology with very high operating costs, limited capability and negative environmental attributes.

Criminals can adjust to the helicopter's operating hours and can hear them coming. With an airship as a silent and constant threat to the bad guys, their tactical options are eliminated.

The environmental and economic differences between airships and helicopters are like green and black. Even a small helicopter is going to burn through a 45-gallon barrel of aviation fuel every hour it is in the air. An airship can turn off its engines and drift whenever it chooses.

Helicopters require constant daily maintenance; airships require only one serious inspection every 1,000 hours. For the "eye in the sky" mission, an airship can do more for security and police interdiction with much less cost and environmental impact than a helicopter.

Helicopters have been described as "a million pieces trying to shake themselves apart." Excessive vibration requires expensive systems to protect sensitive equipment from damage.

Airships provide an almost vibration-free, stable platform for sophisticated sensors, gyro-stabilized cameras, radio and/or video relays and downlinks to surface operations. The stability of the airship platform lowers the cost of sensor packages and increases the scope of tasks that it can perform.

Before being stampeded into accepting the only solution that the police put forward, the City of Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba should undertake an investigation of greener solutions.

Just as military needs have pushed helicopter technology forward, airships have been gathering increasing attention and investment. Airships are a common safety feature at the Olympic Games and major sporting events. Locations like Moscow, Trinidad and Tobago and Thailand have manned airships providing police and military security.

At least six different airship companies stand ready to provide piloted vehicles for security use: SAIC/Zeppelin, Guardian Flight Systems, Airship Management Services, American Blimp Company, RosAeroSystems and Worldwide Aeros.

Usable payloads range from 1,000 to 2,000 kilograms and they can fly as high as 5,000 metres. All the newer airships are engineered to operate as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or optionally as piloted airships. Usually a piloted airship has to land after six hours to exchange crews, but in UAV mode they can loiter or traverse areas of interest for more than 24 hours.

The Moscow police have proven that airship technology can operate in our winter conditions.

Let the people who have the oilsands have their polluting police helicopters. Manitoba has long advocated the move to greener technology. Using airships to enhance the effectiveness of our police force would be evidence of such a policy.

Barry Prentice is a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 5, 2010 A10