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. By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
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Filed Under: airborne laser, airplanes, blimps, fire scout helicopters, missiles, unmanned drones, weapons
Companies: mav6, us navy


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  1. identicon
    fb39ca4, 8 May 2012 @ 5:32pm

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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. icon
    fb39ca4 (profile), 8 May 2012 @ 6:39pm

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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 8 May 2012 @ 6:40pm

    I'm Batman !

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    Atkray (profile), 8 May 2012 @ 7:58pm

    Re: Look its a blimp!

    mmmmmmmmm

    fish-head soup

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    A Guy (profile), 8 May 2012 @ 9:19pm

    Uncanny

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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    Wally (profile), 9 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 9 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 May 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/

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 9 May 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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. identicon
    Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 9 May 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!

    link to this | view in thread ]


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