The Blue Devil 2 Airship

The Blue Devil 2 airship under construction. Photo: Mav6

Here’s the Plan to Fly Missile-Packed Blimps Over Your Home

Upstart Virginia aerospace firm Mav6 is offering to install guided missiles on the massive robotic spy blimp it’s building for the Air Force. The idea would only be slightly terrifying, if the massive airship were headed to Afghanistan, as originally planned. But Mav6 and its CEO, a respected retired Air Force general, are also promoting the giant airship for homeland security missions over U.S. soil. In that way, today’s war blimp could become tomorrow’s all-seeing, lethal Big Brother.

Capable of hovering at 20,000 feet for a week at a time while carrying radars, cameras, radio links and computer processors — the “most powerful” of their type in existence — the Blue Devil 2 airship can also be fitted with “weapons modules,” according to marketing material provided by Mav6. The brochure (.ppt) depicts a rotary launcher fitted with 100-pound Hellfire missiles, capable of hitting pinpoint targets up to five miles away. The launcher would presumably dangle from the tractor-trailer-size gondola that also houses the sensors, radios and computers.