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1.  

   

   fb39ca4, May 8th, 2012 @ 5:32pm

   
   

   Hopefully the navy will not be hunting down the other kind of pirate with those helis.

    

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2.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, May 8th, 2012 @ 6:02pm

   
   

   Look its a blimp!

   MovieBadguy: Look there is a surveillance blimp.
   MovieBadGuy'sNotsobrightasistant: What should we do about it?
   MovieBadguy:I don't know, what vulnerabilities could a balloon the length of a football field have?
   MovieBadGuy'sNotsobrightasistant: I don't know, it seems impossible.
   MovieBadguy: You idiot. Go get me a sling shot and a penny nail. I swear some times you are too dumb to work here. But you work for fish heads so I can't complain.

    

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3.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, May 8th, 2012 @ 6:13pm

   
   

   Re:

   Using them on people who downloaded Avengers isn't really that much of a stretch with the way things are going.

    

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4.  

   

   fb39ca4 (profile), May 8th, 2012 @ 6:39pm

   
   

   There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

    

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5.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, May 8th, 2012 @ 6:40pm

   
   

   I'm Batman !

    

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6.  

   

   Atkray (profile), May 8th, 2012 @ 7:58pm

   
   

   Re: Look its a blimp!

   mmmmmmmmm
   
   fish-head soup

    

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7.  

   

   A Guy (profile), May 8th, 2012 @ 9:19pm

   
   

   Uncanny

   I was just telling someone else about the (dumb) plan to use drones to watch us yesterday.

    

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8.  

   

   Wally (profile), May 9th, 2012 @ 12:40am

   
   

   Holy Bat Bomb!!!! The government chose nukes instead :-)

   I remember watching a special on The History Channel about different weapons in WWII. The bat bomb was filled with honeycomb trays that telescoped out at a predetermined altitude to wake the bats and let them fly away. They implanted a timing device and an incindiary bomb inside the bats.
   
   Now as most everyone knows, bats love flying into rafters and whatnot. When they ran the test on a mockup on a Japanese suburban neighborhood, the bats flew straight into the houses which burnt to a crisp. Even some of the houses on base caught on fire.
   
   The test was so successful that if the Atom Bomb had not been in testing stages, our loveable bat bomb would have been used.

    

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9.  

   

   Lawrence D'Oliveiro, May 9th, 2012 @ 2:07am

   
   

   Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

   Airships, on the other hand, notwithstanding their presenting a large, slow-moving, low-altitude target, full of flammable hydrogen gas in soft, unarmoured bags, proved surprisingly hard to shoot down. You had to punch an awful lot of holes in them before the leaks became really serious.

    

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10.  

    

    Anonymous Coward, May 9th, 2012 @ 3:25am

    
    

    Anybody interested in doing a fancy controller for your own drones?
    
    http://hackaday.com/2012/05/07/fancy-telemetry-control-display-for-a-quadcopter/

     

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11.  

    

    Anonymous Coward, May 9th, 2012 @ 7:06am

    
    

    Re: Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

    US dirigibles then in the Navy's fleet used helium, and not hydrogen. The Hindenburg is a very good example of why this was so.

     

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12.  

    

    Anonymous Coward, May 9th, 2012 @ 11:18am

    
    

    Re: Re: Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

    The Hindenburg used hydrogen instead of helium because the US had a corner on the market. Making hydrogen(known to be volatile) the only viable option.
    
    Also since the actual tanks are in closed in cells that are designed to be stronger then the skin, the likely of shooting one down is pretty minimal as you would need to hit one or more of the tanks.
    
    The skin is just to make it pretty and help with aero dynamics. Just be easier to shoot out its engines. Then if the blimp is occupied you have prisoners for bartering. Else, just steal all the electronics out and find a vulnerability. You could theoretically use a strong enough emp cannon, but there is bound to be more shielding from rf interference then on the ground. To much risk for stray signals getting a direct hit.

     

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13.  

    

    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, May 9th, 2012 @ 5:39pm

    
    

    Re: There's a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.

    The Germans only had hydrogen. And they were still hard to shoot down!

     

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