Moving an elephant atom by atom costs a lot more than moving the elephant in one pre-assembled lump. And that is what the US Army's Project Walrus is about - putting together an entire action unit of war machinery, with all the wiring and plumbing preinstalled, and placing it in the most strategic place. Whilst this would completely rewrite the way that war is conducted, the Walrus - a massive lozenge-shaped blimp the size of a football field capable of transporting 500 tons at a time - could offer solutions to myriad peacetime problems, opening land-locked countries to trade, enabling heavy construction materials to be delivered into urban centres with minimum disruption, freeing our highways of high volume, heavy loads, offering a more robust and agile air transportation network capable of absorbing disruptions due to weather or attack.
(Via The Anomalist.)
Of course, the Walrus invites comparison to the "flying triangle" phenomenon. I think it's likely that if the military is openly contemplating such an airborne monster now, then it's almost certainly pre-tested the idea with various prototypes.
The Walrus doesn't seem to account for all FT sightings, but perhaps it can help explain some of them. For example, the FTs' alarming tendency to hover over busy highways and even suburbs might make sense if the Air Force is assessing a flying platform's merit as a roving supply base for use in heavily populated areas (such as post-war Iraq or ground zero of the next big natural disaster).
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