Old Airlift Vehicle Concept Made New

starexplorer writes "LiveScience is reporting on an early conceptual design of The Walrus the DOD's new planned 'very large airlift vehicle'." Could the concept of a 'war-balloon' really be gaining favor again?

Comments

Re:Heavy lift aircraft don't usually do combat dro

[ackthpt]

except from altitude and even then they are rarely if ever deployed in heavily contested areas. Most of the time they require large airstrips which in itself implies control over land and air of the region.

In the article they mention making landings near combat zones on unimproved landing fields.

What it does offer is many possiblities for not just military operations. If these things pan out in efficiency you can bet UPS and FED Ex would want them. Let alone the possibilities of flying cruise ships!

Oh, heck yes! Have you seen how the passenger compartment of the Hindenburge (LZ-129) was laid out? Pure luxury! I'd fly to London in that in a heartbeat, screw the extra hours it takes.

FWIW, anything is a target for a terrorist, though preference is giving to things that don't shoot back.

Sure, but what is this thing supposed to shoot back with? This looks like the Glider fiasco of WW II all over again.

Rrriiight.... Cargolifter, anyone ?

[McSnarf]

Anyone left who remembers the fabulously failing Cargolifter AG in Germany? http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/cargo lifter/

Re:Heavy lift aircraft don't usually do combat dro

[dakirw]

FWIW, anything is a target for a terrorist, though preference is giving to things that don't shoot back.

Sure, but what is this thing supposed to shoot back with? This looks like the Glider fiasco of WW II all over again.

Something big enough could probably mount some cannons, rockets, or missiles. They could be mounted pod-style, like on attack helicopters, or internally, like warships or the F-22 Raptor.

Re:At Last!!!

[Rei]

Helium aircraft are a lot harder to shoot down than you might imagine. People are so used to party balloons that they seem to get the idea that helium aircraft failures would decompress as rapidly. Not even close - in addition to having more resilient skin, the volume rises proportional to the radii cubed, while the surface area proportional to the radii squared. I.e., there's a lot more gas to dissipate compared to the size of the hole. Then factor in that it's under lower pressure, and you get very favorable numbers. Small holes do very little to large airships.

On the subject of missiles: I wonder how effective traditional homing mechanisms would be on a craft like this, with its potential for unusual engine positionings, visual profile, and probably an odd, disproportionate radar signature. Given its great size and slow speed, if they had effective countermeasures on it it might almost be worth painting it in Dazzle camouflage.

Re:At Last!!!

[EtherealStrife]

Nothing. Most of the modern conceptual designs utilize extreme compartmentalization, such as having thousands of spherical bladders contained within the greater structure. At most a single bladder would be ruptured, having negligible effect. Even a Stinger (or any 'terrorist' missile that could be fired at it) probably wouldn't destroy it -- although, that's mainly dependent on how large it is. Could be a few football fields long or the size of a volkswagon bug. The best they could probably hope for is to *bring it down*, and in airships that could mean a wait of hours for it to hit ground (ample time for crew to parachute, unlike a fixedwing aircraft).

I was bored years ago and crunched the numbers for such a craft:
For a lightly armed/armoured airship (I threw on the actual chassis weight + gas weight + sufficient armor plating to protect against small arms fire, and several sam launchers / small calibre gun platforms...GEEK, I know):
Experimental weight: 1,501,247.50464 lbs (some destroyers weight ~2.5mil, for comparison)
Necessary lift: 1,445,600 cubic meters of helium)

Now that's a HECK of a lot of space being taken up by just the gas itself, but then again it's carrying some serious weight.

I for one welcome our new helium based overlords (sorry, someone had to say it)

Re:At Last!!!

[tsotha]

On the subject of missiles: I wonder how effective traditional homing mechanisms would be on a craft like this, with its potential for unusual engine positionings, visual profile, and probably an odd, disproportionate radar signature.

Well, presumably radar guided missles will home in on the cargo area, which may or may not be what you'd want. But IR missles will probably pick out one of the engines. If you lose an engine you probably wouldn't crash, but you might not be able to land either, since landing airships requires vectored thrust. This could be worse than crashing, depending on how sensitive your cargo is and which way the wind is blowing.

That said, I like the concept. DoD spends huge amounts of money for routine air transport, and this could save big bucks by filling the niche between sea and air freight. Airships are much, much cheaper to operate than C-130s. The key would be to make sure they didn't accidentally become mission critical systems during wartime.

Re:Heavy lift aircraft don't usually do combat dro

[blindseer]

For that matter, why not carry an F-22? This thing is supposed to lift 500 tons.

It's not like it hasn't been tried before. I remember seeing film where a propeller driven biplane was launched and retrieved from the bottom of an airship. I also saw concept drawings of an airstrip atop a Zeppelin type craft. This is not a new idea.

A fully loaded F-22 weighs about 40 tons, that means the craft could lift 12 planes.