"Due to the tree canopy and rugged terrain of our search area, the balloon was not as helpful as everyone hoped it would be,” he said by e-mail. “The tree canopy is too thick, we couldn’t see through it. It’s that simple. The balloon was offered to us as an alternative technique. We tried it and just didn’t work. It's best suited for open spaces, not heavily wooded forests.”
The manhunt is focused on finding Eric Frein, a suspected murderer now on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Six weeks ago, Frein allegedly shot and killed a Pennsylvania trooper while wounding another outside the Blooming Grove Barracks in Pike County. After the incident, local and federal authorities named Frein, a local survivalist and amateur military historian, as the prime suspect.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
[Frein's] passion was military history and the minute details of Eastern European military uniforms and weapons. In particular, he focused on the modern Serbian Army and paramilitary groups, more interested in their unusual uniforms than the politics of those who butchered Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. He traveled around Pennsylvania acting out mock battles between Serbs and Croats, including at least one reenactment he appears to have planned and directed himself.
Last month, the Associated Press quoted Frein's father, retired Army Major E. Michael Frein, as saying the man taught his son to shoot well. “[He] doesn't miss.”
Not quite flying high just yet
The Blimp in a Box came from an Ohio organization called the Drone Aviation Holding Corporation (DAHC). (Ars covered the Blimp in a Box product in August 2014.)
According to the company's most recent investor materials, the blimp can be “launched after a hurricane to provide cellular or two-way communications, or be flown over a disaster site to provide immediate live footage to locate victims.” DAHC's highest model, the BIB 300, advertises an ability to detect humans within a radius of six kilometers via its thermal infrared cameras. For years, this type of inflatable spy technology has been sold to the military for ISR (intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance) missions.
Curiously, DAHC was incorporated in late April 2014 as part of a reverse merger with MacroSolve, a publicly traded penny stock. MacroSolve was a patent troll outfit that was famously crushed in a landmark legal case by online retailer Newegg. By June 2014, DAHC acquired the company behind Blimp in a Box—Lighter Than Air Systems, a subsidiary of another firm known as the World Surveillance Group.
So far, it’s been slow going so far for DAHC. In the first half of 2014, the firm's own financial records show that it sustained a net loss of about $391,000.
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