DailyDirt: Flying Weapons
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
If there’s a way to make a weapon more mobile, the military has probably tried it. Bat bombs were created during World War II, but after spending a couple million dollars on development, the project was cancelled. Here are just a few more modern examples of flying weapons that are currently under development.
- Mav6 is building deadly blimps — attaching guided missile systems to a huge, optionally-manned airship. This blimp can hover for a week a time, and it’s surveillance capabilities could be coming back to the homeland… [url]
- The Airborne Laser was a proof-of-concept weapon that could take out missiles (in flight!) by shooting a laser from a modified Boeing 747. It’s not really a practical way to shoot down missiles, but the idea seems to pop up about as often as putting lasers on sharks. [url]
- The US Navy is planning to convert some of its unmanned Fire Scout helicopters into autonomous pirate hunters. These ship-launched helicopters would be able to keep an eye out for small boats and possibly deter Somali pirates on the open seas. [url]
- To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what’s currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]
By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
Filed Under: airborne laser, airplanes, blimps, fire scout helicopters, missiles, unmanned drones, weapons
Companies: mav6, us navy
Comments on “DailyDirt: Flying Weapons”
Hopefully the navy will not be hunting down the other kind of pirate with those helis.
Re: Re:
Using them on people who downloaded Avengers isn’t really that much of a stretch with the way things are going.
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.
Re: Look its a blimp!
mmmmmmmmm
fish-head soup
There’s a reason blimps stopped being used in warfare after WWI.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Re: 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!
I’m Batman !
Uncanny
I was just telling someone else about the (dumb) plan to use drones to watch us yesterday.
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.
Anybody interested in doing a fancy controller for your own drones?
http://hackaday.com/2012/05/07/fancy-telemetry-control-display-for-a-quadcopter/