I have a rock that keeps away sharks and bears if your interested in buying it, I've always had it and have never been attacked by either thus proving it works. /s
Would you care to read the article? They weren't thin walled capsules, they were cairns. It made it so the statues were a solid block of material. There would be no or little fragmentation or spalling effect towards the statue.
If the bomb hit close enough to directly damage the bricks, it was gonna damage the statue anyway. This is for when a bomb hit close enough to and debris flying towards the statue, so that the bricks take the damage instead.
Given that the statue and the material surrounding it are different could we then just do an MRI of the cairns and see the sculpture, that would be pretty cool.