Your tax dollars at work

The Department of Defense is thinking of creative ways of spending American tax dollars. The DoD has been considering a zeppelin-esque aircraft designed to carry an "entire battle ready Unit of Action" from an American base to the front line. The craft dubbed WALRUS is to provide the capacity to transport "500-1000 tons of military payload across 6,000 miles within 4 days."

I hope they won't be as easily shot down as dirigibles used during WW I by the Germans to bomb London. I suppose this isn't the Hindenburg, but that's a lot of war materiel and tax dollars to move in an airship. Isn't it? Maybe it's a great idea. Dunno. There may be a smaller prototype by 2007, so it won't be long until we get a look at DARPA's(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) project if it survives budget constraints. An article about the WALRUS, appeared on the website Live Science September 2005. Lockheed Martin and Aeros Aeronautics each received approximately $3Million for Phase I of the project.