Greg's Corner

You won’t believe WalMart’s new weapon against Amazon

Yes, the headline sounds a lot like clickbait, but you really won’t believe it. While Amazon is taking to the streets with its expansion by buying Whole Foods and other properties, WalMart is possibly planning to take to the skies. The American retail giant from Bentonville, Arkansas, has filed a patent for a floating distribution center, aka a blimp.

If the patent filing is to be believed, the plan seems to be for WalMart to have unmanned floating dirigibles with a fleet of drones to deliver items to the home. This is supposed to be another solution to the problem of the ‘last mile’, the most expensive part of home delivery. However, is this actually a feasible solution, or is WalMart just filing a patent in hopes the law and technology will catch up to their dream?

In the short-term this sounds more like a daydream than anything. The FAA, like most government agencies, are slow to catch up to new technologies. At present, it doesn’t seem likely that the FAA would allow a fleet of unmanned blimps to litter the skies releasing delivery drones in their wake. Not to mention, what if one of these unmanned blimps were to be involved with some kind of air incident? While it may not be WalMart’s fault, it could be a potential PR disaster if anyone were to be hurt by one of these blimps.

While it takes bold strategies to overcome your business competitors, on the surface this seems like nothing more than a fantasy.