cool but creepy new plane
From the people that brought us the U-2 comes a fancy-shmancy, all-new and way creepy new plane! This new plane is called the “Cormorant.” “Why?” you ask. Good question.
The answer to your good question is that this sucker will be launched from the missile tubes of submarines, float to the surface of the water, and then take off like some beautiful, yet callously murderous bird of prey. Or like some … curious … bird of watching stuff happen. See, it can also be a spy plane! This ability to launch from underwater is why it’s called the Cormorant in the first place. It is named (for you non-birders) for the aquatic bird of the same name. That’s about where the analogy ends.
The actual bird is not outfitted with Al Qaeda-hating missiles, which is why Lockheed had to make a fake one. Also, they can’t be flown by remote control, like the existing predator drone. They are really only good for fishing, and nets work better anyway. Long story short, while considerably more expensive than even the finest hand-raised cormorant (bird), the Cormorant (plane) is arguably more strategically useful.
On the other hand, the actual bird sends out more of a message of peace, and this might be the way we should be leaning anyway. If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you lend a man your cormorant, he could eat for, like, a week or something. It depends on how long it was leant for.
Maybe the Bush Administration is being a little too hasty when pursuing these wicked-awesome, but potentially deadly replacements for the (granted even more deadly) Trident missiles of the Cold War. But what if, just what if, we could make a dove-shaped plane that launches from those same missile tubes, and instead of dropping bombs, they drop … fish. Wouldn’t we all be a little better off? Wouldn’t we be the proverbial “bigger man”? Plus, we would kill off our enemies with the much more insidious mercury poisoning, over the course of several generations. Now that’s “a new kind of war.”
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