Seed Bombers: Old Military Planes Redesigned To Drop 900,000 ‘Tree Bombs’ Per Day [Video]

Among many in the green community who are environmentally cautious, the tantamount deforestation around the world has been a situation of high concern. Given the fact that most major ecosystems in danger of over-logging are the ones providing the world most of its oxygen, it is understandable why. The Inquisitr has kept up with the latest on how they are fighting back, especially the tribes living in the Amazon Rainforest who capture, strip, and humiliate illegal loggers.

To be fair, the green community understands people do need wood. The problem is that the green concept of planting a tree for one cut down is not being followed or enforced. That may all change as a military innovation company has refitted military bombers to drop “seed bombs,” which will result in the planting of 900,000 trees per day.

According to an article by the Guardian and followed-up by Treehugger and Inhabitat, Lockheed Martin retrofitted a fleet of unused and decommissioned C-130 Hercules cargo planes, originally created to drop land mines, to drop “seed bombs” instead. If the plan goes according to Lockheed Martin’s design, the planes will be recommissioned as foresters. In a single day, each plan can drop up to 900,000 trees. Take into account that 2,500 C-130s are sitting unused in 70 different countries, a lot of tree saplings can surely be planted.

The idea for “seed bombing” originally came from former RAF pilot Jack Walters. His idea was published in a scientific paper almost 36 years ago. Unfortunately, Walters’ idea was deemed technologically impossible at the time. That is no longer the case today, as Peter Simmons, a Lockheed Martin representative, explains excitedly.

“The possibilities are amazing. We can fly at 1,000ft at 130 knots planting more than 3,000 cones a minute in a pattern across the landscape – just as we did with landmines, but in this case each cone contains a sapling. That’s 125,000 trees for each sortie and 900,000 trees in a day.”

If Lockheed Martin’s plan is dispersed across many countries, as much as one billion trees could be planted in one year. This is also very favorable for the military innovation company since they have a large carbon footprint. As a matter of fact, they hope to market their idea to other companies with large carbon footprints as a way to offset them.

To learn more about “seed bombing,” Minds provided videos that thoroughly explain how the process works. They are attached below for your viewing.

Now that you know Lockheed Martin’s plans to recommission old planes to plant trees to counter aggressive deforestation, what are your views? Which companies should jump on to help push this plan to fruition?

[Image via Inhabitat]