Blimps and Dirigibles are used for many purposes. For instance Aerostats or tethered mini-blimps are used on our Southern Borders with Mexico with cameras attached for an aerial view and infrared view of the illegal alien crossers below. Blimps can also be used to re-establish communication after a Hurricane as a Cell Tower in the sky. The military can also use blimps to guard base camps, surveillance of the enemy or even laser attack beyond line of sight relays to hit the enemy. Yet we must also understand that in each of these situation these blimps will be susceptible to small arms fire. After the Pakistan Earthquake US Relief Helicopters were fired upon. We saw new Orleans criminal types fire upon a police helicopter. Illegal aliens are getting more and more desperate these days as our border enforcement ramps up and drug runners, coyotes and MS-13 Gang members try to cross. They will be shooting at our aerostats. Once these blimps are full of holes they will lose air and come down. But I believe we can counter this problem using some rather simple methodology. How so you ask? Well why not use very strong and lightweight material like NASAs Aerogel or nanotube constructed material, which would be very thin and cut into basketball circumference size circles and placed inside the blimp. If a hole from a bullet penetrates the skin, the air will escape and pull one of these little circles to the hole and suck it into place. By having many of these little thin circles inside some may in fact be sucked out, but eventually one will stick in place and if there are many holes they will eventually all be plugged you see? Consider this in 2006. |
