Many years ago, Air Force Officer cadets had to take a full-year course in a new subject called Geopolitics. It was so new that it was fresh material even to our instructors, who were able to make it interesting, never realizing how important its application would become to all the nations of the world.
At that time, the Arctic and the Canadian north were largely unknown to Americans. But Canadians were informed, and did realize how relevant it was, and --- fortunately --- kept track of the geopolitical changes, climate change, the resulting shifts in ice patterns, the growing value of its mineral resources, the increasing difficulties of moving critically important machinery and supplies to outposts of exploration and exploitation ... and incidentally to the original inhabitants (at that ethnically insensitive time, we called them Eskimos). That supply function is being furnished by what we call today, thanks to popular TV reality shows, Ice Road Truckers (IRT). They utilize large, heavy tractor-trailers traveling on frozen water, frozen tundra, indeed on any hard surface that they can find, and even then only during climate seasons where the firmness of the surface is maintained.
Then came discoveries that for political reasons and disagreements are still being discussed : regional temperatures began to rise slowly; the snow pack started to melt earlier and earlier each year. The roads began getting mushy and unusable for longer and longer periods of time, the pace of resupply in the supply chain began to be threatened, and, it seemed that suddenly the fabled Northwest Passage by water up and around Northern Canada became a reality that didn't require icebreakers, as proved by its transit by sailboats. Trucks carrying critical supplies began to fall through the ice or tilt to one side until they fell over on their backs, wheels in the air; areas like Newfoundland and Labrador started to achieve importance and flex their muscles; despite the crowing of some politicians that the mighty Russian Empire had collapsed with the fall of Communism, Russian interest gathered its strength once more and began to refocus on those slippery (in more than one way) political boundaries; tiny Denmark began to reassert sovereignty over long-claimed territory, even Japan got into the intellectual fray over where, what, and how hegemony over arctic seas was exercised.
Suddenly, it seemed that transportation that had seemed impossible, became critical. Two far-seeing academic types from two very different geographic climate zones ---- Manitoba and Florida --- started to focus the world's attention on the importance and the ability to traverse those areas. Despite the negative publicity attached to the perceived dangers of lighter-than-air craft, sadly, the several accidents incurred by Navy airships and, of course, the Hindenburg, hung like a permanent shroud over the future of the airship.
Professors Barry Prentice of the University of Manitoba and Richard P. Beilock of the University of Florida launched a seminal series of conferences called "Airships to the Arctic", in which they proposed using LTA airships to transport materiel to where it was required, thanks to a new field of study that had been dubbed Supply Chain Management.
It wasn't only machinery and supplies headed north that were the subjects of these conferences. The original inhabitants who lived in those areas needed food; fuel for the outboard motors that powered boats they used for subsistence hunting; and emergency medical services for both workers and residents that required their rapid evacuation to large, well-equipped hospitals further south .
As governments and military services began to discover the advantages of airships in observing, participating in battles, communicating, and transporting in otherwise uninhabited areas, without (here comes that over-used but critical word again) infrastructure, large quantities of funding suddenly became available.
As scientists became aware over the last score of years of the great advantages attached to the use of airships ---- silent, unobtrusive, non-destructive of the terrain; as remote sensing became a growing, important part of exploration and research; and as the avoidance of dangerous situations to personnel became apparent, airships assumed a more and more important function in those activities.
Just a few years ago, ISOPOLAR was formed as an independent non-profit organization focussing on these areas, and assumed the leading initiative in coordinating and providing information on Polar matters. About that time, the concept of hybrid airships, which had been kicking around intellectually for some time, started to dominate the field of serious LTA operations. As electronic sophistication increased, the possibility of unmanned hybrids became apparent. Police and security agencies learned of the advantages of this approach, and appropriate equipment began to be produced for the open civilian market. Their ability to overfly agricultural areas without disturbing crops, to cruise slowly above migrating marine mammals without frightening them or disturbing their ancient pathways, the utility and new capabilities of sophisticated remote sensing in a wide variety of sensory areas, such as magnetometry, the very broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, temperature sensing at a distance, side scan and other sonars, all became invaluable, relatively inexpensive, and safe.
It would appear that, finally, all the considerations mentioned above have finally begun to be taken quite seriously by professionals, although it still appears to lurk below the radar of our oversensational media and the underinformed public .
Keep an eye out and an ear open for the dramatic changes in transportation technology that will be occurring over the next few years, all attributable to the increasing dominance of
1. increased government involvement and funding
2. increased use of unmanned and autonomous hybrids, as GPS systems demonstrate their accuracy and as electronic remote control mechanisms become more dependable
3. increased consideration of (yes, even hydrogen) as a lifting gas
4. increased use of airships in marine and maritime activities
5. increased possibilities for the use of airships in dangerous areas such as geologic research, not just for oil and strategic mineral exploration, but even for, say, volcanic lava sampling and analysis
6. interdiction of illegal immigration and narcotics
7. search-and-rescue operations in storm situations with dangerous wave heights
8. first-on-scene situation evaluations in disaster response, and so on.
Whoever would have thought that a dismal science (an old canard formerly applied to economics in general ) like supply chain management could breed such exciting research and life-changing influences ?
We would like to leave everyone with our small but growing clamor that future ISOPOLAR and other LTA conferences be held in Florida, perhaps anchored by the presence of Dr. Beilock at Gainesville, perhaps independently at one of the many beautiful venues on the Gulf of Mexico designed specifically for comfortable professional conferences, during that period of perfect climate predictable there between Christmas and Easter each year, so that a much larger, more international, certainly much more comfortable audience can travel there, attend, contribute, and extend the benefits of this approach to a much wider world. It is obviously much easier to invite participation, attendance, and media attention to a venue on the Gulf of Mexico in winter than to a Manitoba conference at any time. Consider that travel from the Washington, D.C. area to Florida --- and therefore attendance by a critical mass of interested parties --- becomes much simpler and less expensive on those expense account audits. Consider that Disney's expert planning staff chose Orlando, not Ungava Bay, for location of its premier and iconic complex, making it the premier airline destination in the United States. We would like to leave you with the classic comment of one of our Advisory Council members with major business experience, when he was challenged about the choice of a marine biological laboratory in Bermuda for a forthcoming meeting : "Where is it written that meetings, conferences, and planning sessions must be held in the most uncomfortable, unreachable, and miserable places available?"
It's something to think about... Incidentally, if staff conference planners protest that some Johnny-on-the-Spot is required for planning an international conference of any size or consequence, let us suggest that sponsoring institutions such as ISOPOLAR can take advantage of the many experienced professional conference planning firms in that area. Disney World (and it ain't just Mickey Mouse anymore ! ) has remote conference planning and production down to a routine; after all, if we're going to maintain that "remote" is a good enough adjective for "sensing" in our professional lives, we have to concede that the technologically less-challenging function of meeting planner should be a shoo-in for remote control.
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