Eye in the Sky

High over Cudjoe Key, Fla., Fat Albert sways lazily in the breeze, but he is in fact a tireless worker. This 200,000-cu.-ft. helium balloon is one of three deployed in Florida and the Bahamas that are on the lookout for drug smugglers and helping with other intelligence-gathe ring activities.

The 175-ft.-long balloons are linked to ground stations by steel cables. Hanging from their bellies are 1,000-lb. platforms with $3.5 million in sophisticated radar equipment similar to that carried by AWACS planes. Though the balloons have been known to come unleashed (one wanderer had to be shot down in 1981), airborne radar is still more efficient than the ground version. It can pick up traffic in what Customs agents call "Smugglers' Alley," a wide band of Caribbean sky that is virtually invisible to land-based radar dishes because the curvature of the earth prevents them from detecting objects close to the ground. When Fat Albert or one of his big buddies sights a suspicious flight, Customs officials send out a plane to track it. Says Customs Agent Red Dinmit: "It doesn't get them all, but it sure sees most of them."

Fat Albert can also pick up communications from Cuba and from Soviet satellites. Unlike ground radar, the balloons can also detect cruise missiles coming from the south. It would, however, take 20 Fat Alberts to cover the southern border completely.

Legislators from Gulf Coast states have been asking the Administration to fund additional balloons, and last week it agreed to allocate $9 million to deploy three more, largely at the urging of Florida Senator Paula Hawkins. The new balloons will have a further advantage: they will be ship-tethered and able to roam over the Gulf, thus extending their search range.