Dead Zeppelin

[underpants]

This may look like a blimp, but it’s not. It’s the US Army’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle. It’s not just a blimp. It’s a seven-story, football-field-length, bullet-proof blimp made of Kevlar. Get a good look, because you paid $297 million for it, and it flew exactly once, for 90 minutes, and then we sold it back to one of the companies that built it for $301,000.

It was designed for Afghanistan, a country it never got closer too than Rush Limbaugh got to Vietnam. Its guts were designed by Northrop Grumman, like Limbaugh’s, but it was put together – like all these projects are – by subcontractors in 18 states and, touchingly, in England. Because when you’re invading Afghanistan by blimp, your good luck charm is Kipling.

Anyway, we cancelled it after one test flight, at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, where the Hindenburg exploded in 1937. (If at first you don’t succeed…) And we’re taking a $296,700,000 bath on the project, but that’s okay because according to Army spokesman John Cummings: "We learned quite a bit from the technology." Yes, the technology for making balloons that float.

So kiss the Army’s bullet-proof blimp good-bye. What’s $300 million between friends? It will join the spy blimp the Air Force built for Afghanistan, which cost $211 million, and was never used anywhere for anything, and was cancelled in February. I’ll bet we learned quite a bit from its technology too.


http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/real-time-with-bill-maher-blog/2013/12/16/dead-zeppelin.html

[Warpy]

1. THIS is why the Pentagon needs to go on a DIET!

This outrages me no end, the level of waste involved in discovering something a non Kevlar balloon could have turned up or small scale tests of Kevlar vs. common ground fire from places like Afghanistan.

Generals need to make some tough choices and the Pentagon has to stop being a welfare office for contractors with ridiculous weapons and surveillance schemes.

While so many in this country don't have enough to eat or homes to eat it in, squandering this amount of money on something that can most charitably be called Quixotic is obscene.

[underpants]

5. It's psychologically "stealthy"

Villager 1 - "Look! There appears to be a multimillion dollar blimp made of Kevlar"
Villager 2 - "No it isn't"
Villager 1 - "It isn't?"
Villager 2 - "No of course not. It's the 21st century for crying out loud. Who in their right mind would build a f^#%ing blimp these days?"
Villager 1 - "Oh....yeah, didn't think of that"
Villager 2 (mutters to self) "That boy ain't right"

[Turbineguy]

2. McDonalds should send all of their customers

to do a tour of duty at the Pentagon. They'll come out thinking that $795.68 for a Happy Meal is a bargain!

[GeorgeGist]

3. Welfare Kings ...

wouldn't be caught dead saving money.

[area51]

4. It's spending on crap like this

is why we don't have single-payer health care. This is an obscenity.