Kurt
Junior Member
Such a for example is rather fast in comparison to anything that moves on the ground with about 100km/h cruising speed. That's one of the reason Zeppelins were used for reconnaisance during the world wars. Their bombing deployment in WWI proved disastrous after the initial shock because of the aforementioned optical visibility (leading to night raids) and vulnerability.
Today, a balloon with a motor to counter winds is a very convenient measure to put a camera permanently up in the sky and you need special equipment to locate and target such a cheap device that can be produced in large numbers. For this reason surveillance airships are still in use. They do compete with gliders in this niche, but are far cheaper and more suitable for ground reconnaisance than all satellite based optical surveillance assets or long range UAVs with very low costs per flight hour.
While Zeppelin NT went down, is still operating. I don't think their idea is bad. All airships have a mix of lift components. A very important lift aspect is their lift through airspeed, just like any aircraft. Another component is lighter than air density, although as in skycat you can waive this for a not much lighter or heavier than air structure of a kind of large flying wing with very low speed and stall speed. That's the way where modern airships go and the military is frequently interested into their developments, although other than the Spanish navy and some other small surveillance airships, I know of no military applications.
A brainchild of mine is to take an armed unmanned aircraft that can deploy an inflateable airship. The airship helps the aircraft to stay on station. On demand the aircraft can let go of the airship and fly to the targets while the airship intentionally goes down towards a friendly base or even has the capability to reattach to a a similar UAV. These ideas have been extensively tested and were quite demanding and dangerous, but today we have made technical progress that would ease the task, like precise split seconds direct communication of both airship and aircraft piloting softwares. It would be possible to use a connection like aerial refuelling dropes and with these make the whole catching affair for retrieval much safer. The guys working on these concepts of parasite carriers long before me came to similar conclusions.
My airship idea is a flying smallest airbase anywhere with own observation equipment, some self defense pods and a deployable un/armed UAV that can stay on station for extended periods and is only a target for optically guided weapons that can easily be fooled with lots of fog and variable height + movement under threat. This thing has not been developed, but I guess it's the way to go. Concerning the buoyancy of airships, this effect greatly depends on the degree of lift provided by movement that in turn can be solar powered (not necessarily solar cells, but lift and thrust through a well designed ) with such a large surface, internal gas storage and foil skin, excluding nighttime.
As has been correctly stated, airships are most unsuitable for a high intensity conflict with a capable enemy, but they can provide surveillance platforms with some armament in order to shorten the OODA loop after target acquisition in constant dispute, but low intensity conflicts (pirates, Taliban, African warlords).
In COI for example you can position an airship with some gliding bombs that can provide cover for any show of force. How do you conduct an ambush after an IED attack if you get wiped out by gliding bombs the very same moment? Gunfire takes some time to work. Airships are difficult to attack platforms in the air for light infantry on pick up trucks or speedboats, that can, because of the range of gliding bombs, cover several convois with little operational costs. The airship is away from the convoi, so doesn't compromise the position. The gliding bombs do provide a long range artillery and because it can constantly be closer to possible danger zones 100km/h are enough to appear as fast as an aircraft that is launched from a farther away base (used to chase away people).
Another application would be submarine hunting, also done during WWII. The wave signature of submarines is very specific and most nation's diesel electric submarines need to snorkel from time to time. A radar and electro-optical reconnaisance airship can do constant surveillance of endangered areas, even employing a dipping towed sonar. The speed of the airship is sufficient to track even nuclear submarines. As armament only a batch of 2-4 light airborne torpedoes is needed and the concept is cheaper to operate than an ASW-helicopter for the same task, although the helicopter can be used in a wider range of threat environments.
The large size of an airship is an advantage because it allows for large very low frequency airborne radar with great detection abilities. That's exactly the weakness of stealth aircrafts, including the F22 Raptor, and would bolster defenses by detecting these over the horizon, including senders and silent forward deployed receivers that communicate with the senders (doubling range of useable information radar emission between sender and receiver).
Future reconnaisance will be a mix of manned and unmanned platforms and some extreme endurance airships and gliders will be part of it. In order to shorten s, unmanned platforms will receive some armament, probably mostly non-lethal and like anti-reconnaissance equipment. This "airship" will share many characteristics with gliders and I'm not sure whether we would call the result still an airship, although it would share the characteristic of reduced density, closer to the density of air than with today's heavier than air-crafts. Delft is quite right that this device won't be workable with mostly or only buoyancy reliant lift.
Today, a balloon with a motor to counter winds is a very convenient measure to put a camera permanently up in the sky and you need special equipment to locate and target such a cheap device that can be produced in large numbers. For this reason surveillance airships are still in use. They do compete with gliders in this niche, but are far cheaper and more suitable for ground reconnaisance than all satellite based optical surveillance assets or long range UAVs with very low costs per flight hour.
While Zeppelin NT went down, is still operating. I don't think their idea is bad. All airships have a mix of lift components. A very important lift aspect is their lift through airspeed, just like any aircraft. Another component is lighter than air density, although as in skycat you can waive this for a not much lighter or heavier than air structure of a kind of large flying wing with very low speed and stall speed. That's the way where modern airships go and the military is frequently interested into their developments, although other than the Spanish navy and some other small surveillance airships, I know of no military applications.
A brainchild of mine is to take an armed unmanned aircraft that can deploy an inflateable airship. The airship helps the aircraft to stay on station. On demand the aircraft can let go of the airship and fly to the targets while the airship intentionally goes down towards a friendly base or even has the capability to reattach to a a similar UAV. These ideas have been extensively tested and were quite demanding and dangerous, but today we have made technical progress that would ease the task, like precise split seconds direct communication of both airship and aircraft piloting softwares. It would be possible to use a connection like aerial refuelling dropes and with these make the whole catching affair for retrieval much safer. The guys working on these concepts of parasite carriers long before me came to similar conclusions.
My airship idea is a flying smallest airbase anywhere with own observation equipment, some self defense pods and a deployable un/armed UAV that can stay on station for extended periods and is only a target for optically guided weapons that can easily be fooled with lots of fog and variable height + movement under threat. This thing has not been developed, but I guess it's the way to go. Concerning the buoyancy of airships, this effect greatly depends on the degree of lift provided by movement that in turn can be solar powered (not necessarily solar cells, but lift and thrust through a well designed ) with such a large surface, internal gas storage and foil skin, excluding nighttime.
As has been correctly stated, airships are most unsuitable for a high intensity conflict with a capable enemy, but they can provide surveillance platforms with some armament in order to shorten the OODA loop after target acquisition in constant dispute, but low intensity conflicts (pirates, Taliban, African warlords).
In COI for example you can position an airship with some gliding bombs that can provide cover for any show of force. How do you conduct an ambush after an IED attack if you get wiped out by gliding bombs the very same moment? Gunfire takes some time to work. Airships are difficult to attack platforms in the air for light infantry on pick up trucks or speedboats, that can, because of the range of gliding bombs, cover several convois with little operational costs. The airship is away from the convoi, so doesn't compromise the position. The gliding bombs do provide a long range artillery and because it can constantly be closer to possible danger zones 100km/h are enough to appear as fast as an aircraft that is launched from a farther away base (used to chase away people).
Another application would be submarine hunting, also done during WWII. The wave signature of submarines is very specific and most nation's diesel electric submarines need to snorkel from time to time. A radar and electro-optical reconnaisance airship can do constant surveillance of endangered areas, even employing a dipping towed sonar. The speed of the airship is sufficient to track even nuclear submarines. As armament only a batch of 2-4 light airborne torpedoes is needed and the concept is cheaper to operate than an ASW-helicopter for the same task, although the helicopter can be used in a wider range of threat environments.
The large size of an airship is an advantage because it allows for large very low frequency airborne radar with great detection abilities. That's exactly the weakness of stealth aircrafts, including the F22 Raptor, and would bolster defenses by detecting these over the horizon, including senders and silent forward deployed receivers that communicate with the senders (doubling range of useable information radar emission between sender and receiver).
Future reconnaisance will be a mix of manned and unmanned platforms and some extreme endurance airships and gliders will be part of it. In order to shorten s, unmanned platforms will receive some armament, probably mostly non-lethal and like anti-reconnaissance equipment. This "airship" will share many characteristics with gliders and I'm not sure whether we would call the result still an airship, although it would share the characteristic of reduced density, closer to the density of air than with today's heavier than air-crafts. Delft is quite right that this device won't be workable with mostly or only buoyancy reliant lift.
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