U S Navy Crop Dusters

I was checking my email and found a note forwarded to me by Rich. It was a warning of the possibility that tsunami relief workers could become infected with avian influenza and then spread an epidemic around the world. But being forewarned is being forearmed! We now know we need to monitor for avian influenza!

But an ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure. So why not use crop dusters to spray the inundated sections of land? This strip tends to be fairly narrow. Let's assume that the width of the strip averages 1/2 mile. Then 1000 miles of coastline has 500 square miles of affected land. That is about the size of one U.S. county. Aerial crop dusters could spray this in no time. And just as 9/11 meant we worried less about airborne asbestos, maybe here we could learn to stop worrying and learn to love DDT.

If the infrastructure to do the crop dusting doesn't exist locally, we could fly it in. Probably one C-17 could bring in the plane(s). Buy the insecticide locally and helicopter it out to the Abraham Lincoln & Bonhomme Richard. Land the crop dusters on deck ala the Doolittle raid over Tokyo. A veritable rolling crop dusting operation!

Update - Of course the COOL way to do this would be to take some KA-6Ds out of mothballs. Put a “restrictor plate” in the hose leading out of the “birdcage” to reduce flow from 300 gallons per minute to say 3 gallons per minute. Now you’ve got a carrier qualified 500 knot crop duster with 10,000 to 15,000 pounds of giveaway insecticide! And a state-of-the-art navigation system to put the load “on target”. Let’s see France do that!

Update 8:41 AM 1/1/05 - WAY COOL IDEA - NIGHT CROP DUSTING!!!! Let's bring some A-6Es out of mothballs so the KA-6Ds can fly as their wingmen. Then we have an all weather day/night capability! Does anybody know if night crop dusting would be more efective as the insects would be grounded? Sounds plausible anyway. Nail them in their sleep! Serves the little buggers right!