Pentagon Bringing Back the Blimp

[Therumancer]

When it comes to Surveillance it all depends on who your using it on. In general someone being able to see you only matters if they have the range to do something about it. In a sort of catch-22 type situation if we were to float blimps above a certain altitude over places in The Middle East, Asia, etc... and they were shot down for spying, by doing so the nations in question would be revealing themselves in violation of arms bans that limit their missle ranges and such. Of course that only works if your willing to actually do something about it.

That said, at a high altitude, camoflauging something like this would be relatively easy, going back decades Disney was doing some fairly impressive things with camoflauge, and ther have already been a few digital projects that made me think they could be adapted to try and hide something like this in the right circumstancs. Being largely held up by a balloon the blimp probably has a low power signature too. In theory if you were to say put a bunch of blimps above a nation like China, sandwiched between the ground and their satellite assets in orbit (ie at very hugh altitude), in a time of war it might make a great way of jamming transmissions and such if you had them secretly in place to begin with. An interesting way of setting up a bunch of sleeper, EW drones.


I'm just discussing basics, the point is that with a bit of innovation I can see a lot of things that could be done with the technology (sometimes low tech is the best tech) from a military perspective, especially if they can get them to the point where they can stay airborne pretty much indefinatly with minimal active power use.

Otherwise the stated "civil" use is actually fairly ingenius, because I can see it being a cheaper way of hauling cargo than using actual cargo planes, assuming you do it in a fairly safe area.

 

[OldGrover]

This is relevant to my interests. (I work in logistics/freight)

I'd be fascinated as well to see what we could do with tall ships. Take modern engineering and materials, and apply the shipping techniques of pre-steam vessels. It'd be slower, but you'd have practically zero emissions (presuming we use solar power and small wind turbines). It'd increase the cost of international freight, as you'd require more crew, but that may well be a good thing.

They actually did that - in the early 1900's, four, five and six masted steel schooners carried coal from England to the West coast of the US (around South America) and other places. They got by with very few crew, actually, mostly by being really horrible to the people that worked on it (nothing like furling and unfurling sails in a winter gale at the top of a mast with too few people to do it)

They eventually lost out to coal powered ships - they just weren't cheap ENOUGH compared to the increased speed and reliability of steam power. With automated furlers and such, they could possibly stage a renaissance, but given most bulk carriers now burn really, really cheap fuel (though a lot of it), I'd be surprised if the math worked out.

 

[Zen Toombs]

Tis Castle Wulfenbach, from the glorious webcomic, Girl Genius.

I recognized it. =D

Yay! Tis always nice to see another... what do they call Girl Genius fans? Regardless, it's always nice to see another of those.

 

[Frezzato]

War aspects usefulness: Negative.

Intelligence gathering: Relatively Unless. Possible use as communications craft. Easy target

Pentagon Bringing Back the Blimp

Along with ferrying supplies around, the Pentagon is already thinking of how it could be used for surveillance missions, albeit one has to wonder how inconspicuous a giant floating balloon might look overhead in a warzone.

Actually, the Tethered Aerostats [http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/aerostats-making-an-impact-in-afghanistan?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=aerostats-making-an-impact-in-afghanistan] made by Raven Aerostar have proven extremely useful in Afghanistan in the fight against IEDs and tracking the movement of nearby enemy forces, but mostly IEDs. These are stationary surveillance balloons which can stay in the air for several months. It's a life or death situation now for the soon-to-be independent government there, and tethered balloons have made an impact, for better or for worse:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/world/asia/in-afghanistan-spy-balloons-now-part-of-landscape.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


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The article is about powered blimps though, and too much focus is shed on these new technologies, but the US government is a crafty beast, so I'm not willing to write off the idea of powered blimps entirely. You see, it's not always about the product but rather the technology involved. Even though the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon killed off the stealth Comanche helicopter [http://articles.cnn.com/2004-02-23/us/helicopter.cancel_1_comanche-sikorsky-aircraft-corporation-schoomaker?_s=PM:US] in 2004, someone dusted off their thinking cap and the technology helped out [http://theaviationist.com/2012/05/01/stealth-black-hawk-new/#.UOxDw2_Ad8E] a little later on.

Spoiler: Yeah, baby.

 

[Frezzato]

Me too. Hindenburg aside, the Germans had an incredible safety record with Zeppelins. Just look at the Graf Zeppelin. That thing did some serious mileage. If the British, Italians and Americans copied them more closely, airships wouldn't have got the bad rap that they did.

Do you know more about Zeppelins? I read that the crews were issued these flameless, self-heating meals, like in cans. They would only heat up when opened. It sounded so cool, like the predecessor to the MRE.

 

[Falseprophet]

No, they were phased out because of the Germans were using Hydrogen instead of Helium (though the low-grade "rocket fuel" paint did not help either). They got an unfair reputation for being unsafe.

They had no other option. Helium was known to be safer, but the only source was the United States and Germans were forbidden from buying it under the Treaty of Versailles. There were German-American partnerships later on in the 1920s that gave German airships access to American helium.

Then the Nazis came to power, and they, not unreasonably, saw airships as utterly worthless for combat. The main reason they didn't get rid of them as soon as they came into power is because zeppelins were so beloved by the German public, partly because Ferdinand von Zeppelin had been so respected. A later US military embargo denied helium for the Hindenburg so they were forced to use hydrogen, and everyone knows what happened next.

Do you know more about Zeppelins? I read that the crews were issued these flameless, self-heating meals, like in cans. They would only heat up when opened. It sounded so cool, like the predecessor to the MRE.

Not sure about that, the Hindenburg had a smoking room [http://www.airships.net/hindenburg/interiors/crew-areas-keel]. Maybe it was the zeppelin bomber crews in World War I who had self-heating meals.

 

[SinisterDeath]

I'm not sure a flying watermelon is that much more stealthy.

Beat me to it.

 

[Burst6]

Do you know more about Zeppelins? I read that the crews were issued these flameless, self-heating meals, like in cans. They would only heat up when opened. It sounded so cool, like the predecessor to the MRE.

You can just buy those if you want. They're called hot cans, and they're commercially available. From internet reviews i heard they don't taste that great, but they're pretty cool.

 

[SEXTON HALE]

Does seem like it would be pretty cool to have the occansional blimp pass over head,reminds me a lot of the alternate universe in fringe.

 

[Frezzato]

Do you know more about Zeppelins? I read that the crews were issued these flameless, self-heating meals, like in cans. They would only heat up when opened. It sounded so cool, like the predecessor to the MRE.

You can just buy those if you want. They're called hot cans, and they're commercially available. From internet reviews i heard they taste pretty bad, but they're pretty cool.

Thanks, man! When I Googled 'hot cans' I was expecting a very different set of search results. Heh.

 

[Prince Regent]

This has me wondering where they're going to get the helium for a project like this. Isn't there a shortage right now?

Oh well nothing wrong with using old fashioned hydrogen. Just dont smoke anywhere near it.

 

[Pinkamena]

There's a lot of problems with blimps. Helium is getting rarer and rarer on earth since it's disappearing out from our atmosphere, blimps can easily start leaking, and they do not have the same maneuverability as most other air-borne vehicles. I'm sure it has its pros too, but unless it's made from kevlar and use something else than Helium, I don't see how it can be justified.