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?

Goo Goo Goo Joob!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Here's another clue for you all - the Walrus was Paul.

Makes me think of "Warlords of the Air" - a peculiar Moorcock book from the 70's. Had flying dreadnaughts - designed by the Chilean wizard O'Bean.

Re:At Last!!!

[pilgrim23]

In a post petroleum era, control of the air may rely on balloon technology. One byproduct of oil production in the US is that we are virtually the world leader in supplies of helium. This fact, and our reluctance to sell same to Germany, was the main reason for a particular fire in Lakehurst NJ some years back

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/ [aerospace-technology.com]

Re:Protection Methods???

[Anonymous Coward]

I can imagine that it will be escorted by a fighter division, not to mention have some high-tech anti-missle weapons and the like, yet I can see an air to air missle easily bypassing those protections and bringing down a TON of hardware with it... major catastrophe...

Missile technology has advanced to the point where regular heavy cargo aircraft can't avoid them either. Yes, the Walrus is huge and slow, but being slightly smaller and faster like a C-5 Galaxy isn't really going to help.

Essentially the Walrus won't really need any protections that aren't already in place during a heavy airlift.

However, the rough-field/land-anywhere capability is a massive boon. You can park one of these babies carrying all the heavy equipment for a full engineering division and make an airfield on the spot for the rest of your heavy lifters.

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:Protection Methods???

[zorkmid]

I'm thinking that protection isn't going to be that big of a problem.

Mount a bunch of Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense guns so you have 360 degree line of fire.

Hook them up to buff computer network and program it to create a 1000 foot killing zone around the craft. So if they flip it on in a hostile area anything heading towards it gets turned into a cloud of debris.

And enough already with all the idiots and their "omgz!! it'll blowdz up like the Hindenburg!!".

That's just annoying and ignorant.

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 [gotouring.com] camouflage.

Re:Stupid but not that stupid

[marshall_j]

Full sized missles and full size AAA are a different matter, but again, compartmentation will help, and gas bags probably don't provide much of a radar signature to trigger fuzes, nor does the gas bag itself offer enough resistance to trigger most fuzes; they will probably fly right through and leave behind a few holes, trivial to patch.

But the cargo inside the ship will indeed be solid and will offer enough resistance!

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

[Savantissimo]

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

insightful??

[Anonymous Coward]

this wasn't really insightful at all. Speaking as the author of the original "sort of weird to field a giant cargo ship you can bring down with a .22" comment, I've been thinking about it and it was just knee-jerk "omg, giant balloon" thinking.

There was a weather balloon with some kind of expensive equipment aboard it about 5 years ago floating over Canada. Whoever owned it asked the Canadians to shoot it down, so they sent out some F4s or something, and they couldn't do it. They basically said that they unloaded a few thousand rounds at it, but that the balloon was so big that these basketball-sized holes didn't really make much of a difference.

Re:At Last!!!

[Savantissimo]

Oops-from a paper referenced in a post farther down the page, the paint wasn't actually the problem.

Nevertheless, you can still build airships without helium. See http://www.flyingkettle.com/outline.htm [flyingkettle.com] . Steam airships have some potential advantages such as being able to make more lift gas on their own, and can reduce lift by venting without losing a huge amount of valuable gas. The envelope can also act as the condenser for steam engines, thus making such engines light enough for use in the air.

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.

Re:At Last!!!

[Kiffer]

An example of just how hard it is to shoot down a large balloon can be found Here [bbc.co.uk]

as far as I know (which is'nt too far) that balloon was a single large balloon, if it was made up of multiple cells it would last even longer. And you could allways try coating it in kevlar or some other resilient skin as Rei suggested.

It's got gob loads of lifting power, so a little extra weight on armour and countermeasures would be ok.