23: Hi-tech unmarked NYPD chopper patrolling the skies

Photo: Tom Turner

According to the NYPD, you won’t even recognize that it’s there, but high above the heads of New York City’s citizens, there is a $10 million special NYPD helicopter with an impressive arsenal of surveillance equipment inside it. The chopper, called “23″, looks like a plain helicopter on the outside, but on the inside it is chock-full of hi-tech gadgetry, most of it intended to protect the people on the ground from terrorist attacks.

The helicopter’s unmarked paint job belies what’s inside: an arsenal of sophisticated surveillance and tracking equipment powerful enough to read license plates — or scan pedestrians’ faces — from high above the nation’s largest metropolis.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said that no other U.S. law enforcement agency “has anything that comes close” to the surveillance chopper, which was designed by engineers at Bell Helicopter and computer technicians based on NYPD specifications.

The chopper is named simply “23″ — for the number of police officers killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

This is an example of how powerful the surveillance equipment on the helicopter is:

Without leaving Manhattan airspace, the chopper also was able to get a crystal-clear picture of jetliners waiting to take off from LaGuardia Airport and to survey Kennedy International Airport’s jet fuel lines, which were targeted in a plot uncovered last year.

Pretty insane and pretty awesome at the same time. I’ll be on the lookout for this chopper from now on.