One Of The Biggest Problems In Providing Aid, Other Than Mustering The Will...

...Is having the coordinated support logistics to provide that aid in conjunction with the security to give it a chance to be applied at all. A fact that compounds the logistics because you have to supply, and support the security forces as well; usually by establishing a forward operating base of some kind; no easy thing to do when insurgents can attack it and its supply lines as well as the people you're trying to help.

What if, instead of the usual approach of bringing in all of the extra personnel to set up an FOB, you could have a tactical platform that could function as both a mobile FOB, as well as a large scale logistics delivery system, and one that would not need improved landing sites at all. A tactical platform that could defend itself even as it excels as a support, and delivery, system.

That platform exists in my design for hybrid, dirigible blimp, air trains.

With such dirigible blimps linked together you get a lot of automatic flexibility in what you task each unit to do. This is so because the twin hull design eliminates the need to either carry payloads as a part of internal hull volume, or as a suspended sling load. Here there is protected space between the hulls, up into which you can have very large, standardized containers, pulled into and secured. As such what each lift unit does is entirely dependent on the modules it carries (with one exception as regards sensors. which, to some extent at least, you could accept the weight penalty of mandating that all units have some form of basic package, and then specialize the entire lift unit only as needed). This is why any unit can be power generation, operating staff space, weapons dispenser carriage space, bulk cargo space, etc.).

Starting with a basic 5 unit train (which gives you two engine units, and three cargo units -- one for support staff, one for train specific defense, and one for your ground security force) you could have an orbiting FOB on site 24/7; the numbers then varying depending on what the situation calls for in regards to actual numbers of support staff, security soldiers you wanted to have at the ready, as well as the depth of your train specific defense. The aid supply stream would then come in on copies of the same five unit, minimum delivery train; which gives you both engine unit redundancy, and the flexibility to go into the landing zone with only one cargo unit, and engine unit, put at risk at a time.

And the really neat thing here is that, if we started this for our own needs first, because we really do need a whole new approach to what is the full scope to "public transport," but did it as a public project, for nobody's gain but the nation's, think what we could do in parallel to helping ourselves. Think what true public transport might mean to the rest of the world if we helped them set it up as well.

What kind of different moral ground could we, as a nation, be able to start from, if we were to start doing things like that on a regular basis?

It is a thing, though fragile, that brings a great deal of hope for me. Hopefully, if you think about it more, and started talking about it more, wherever you can, it could bring a bit more hope into your life as well.

Yemen, Africa Crisis is Largest in the World, Aid Agencies Say