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: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: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.