No! Nooooo! Say it ain’t so, Darpa! The Walrus pro­gram — the fringe-science agency’s awe­somely, almost insanely, ambi­tious plan to build an air­craft carrier-sized blimp — is over, Defense Technology International dis­cov­ers.
Congress had always been skep­ti­cal about the idea of an air­ship that could schlep 500‑1000 tons halfway around the world. (After all, the Pentagon’s cur­rent go-to air­borne hauler, the C-130 Hercules cargo plane, holds about 22 tons.) But blimp-lovers had pushed the “tri-phibian” (air, land, sea) Walrus as a way to make American forces less reliant on deep-water ports, for­eign bases, and billion-dollar air­ports to wage war.
But it wasn’t meant to be. Darpa took away the fis­cal year 2006 fund­ing for the Walrus. And the agency’s 2007 bud­get request calls for “ter­mi­na­tion of the Walrus effort.”
Now, the Army’s Surface Deployment and Distribution Command had its own plans for a heavy-hauling air­ship, too. I’m check­ing to see if they’re still inter­ested. Keep your fin­gers crossed.
UPDATE 9:46 AM: Don’t get too bummed, blimp fans. Darpa’s plan for an all-seeing air­ship that tracks an entire bat­tle­field at once is still intact.