The 200+ foot-long blimp currently flying at the former Loring Air Force Base is a prototype of a system that may eventually be used to spy on the American citizenry. The Loring project is called SKYBUS and is an R&D project undertaken jointly by Telford Aviation, from Bangor, Maine and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
“The main purpose is to develop an unmanned, remotely piloted airship that can be used in a variety of commercial and defense applications,” Bob Ziegelaar, Senior Projects Manager for Telford Aviation told the Fort Fairfield Journal.
“As such it is essentially a ‘truck’ that can be used or adapted to carry various payloads, ranging from cell phone relays, to search cameras, radar, etc.”
