I for one welcome our new blimp-based overlords (Except for Ron Paul)

Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias are both puzzled by a mention that Gates is looking to cut big weapons programs and perhaps instead put money to smaller more experimental ideas like sniper blimps (hat tip my friend Monica who emailed me to ask about this).

Some Army officials are pushing development of a small blimp equipped with an automated high-powered sniper rifle that could provide a form of inexpensive but effective air support for platoons in Afghanistan.

So what’s up with that?  I can’t just the idea on the merits, I don’t know enough, but here’s what I think they’re going for:

• Cost savings.  Blimps are probably relatively cheap to keep in the air versus planes or helicopters.
• Mature technology.  I’m not sure about the survivability on a blimp, but it’s nothing that new and innovative.  The sniper thing may not be practical, but putting a sensor package up there shouldn’t be a problem at all.  Similarly remote piloting should be easier than remote piloting a plane or helicopter.
• Close air support.  This would be an army project designed to work closely with ground troops.  If they’re cheap and not trivially easy to shoot down, we can afford to lose a fair number of them in exchange for greater effectiveness on the ground.  The nice thing about close air support is that we’re a hell of a lot less likely to blow up a wedding when the shots are called in by ground forces rather than someone above the clouds.

So, assuming independent technical revenue verifies that these three features can be provided, this seems like the sort of crazy idea that’s worth making a prototype or two to test out.  We’d be much better off trying a bunch of small scale stuff and seeing what works than by trying to innovate with top of the line multi-function systems.

Photo of a random blimp by  Cranky Media Guy used under a creative commons license.