The idea is pretty wild, even for the dreamers at Darpa: build a giant blimp that can haul 1,800 soldiers and their gear 12,000 nautical miles, in less than a week.
But the Pentagon’s research arm is serious enough about the project, code-named Walrus, to hand out more than $6 million to Lockheed Martin and Aeros Aeronautical Group to start designing the thing.
The Defense Department has renewed its interest in blimps in recent years; a pair of tethered airships kept watch over the giant American military complex near the Baghdad airport, when I was there. The “tri-phibian” (air, land, sea) Walrus is particularly intriguing because the Pentagon is trying to figure out ways to make American forces less reliant on deep-water ports, foreign bases, and billion-dollar airports to wage war. The Army’s Surface Deployment and Distribution Command has its own plans for a such an airship.
Darpa hopes the designs they’ve just funded will lead to a small-scale Walrus, capable of carting 30 tons, by 2008, Defense Industry Daily notes. That’s as much as today’s C-130 transport planes. But it’s only a fraction of the million pounds that the agency wants the Walrus will ultimately be able to lug around.
(Illustration by John MacNeill, used with premission.)
Looks like the 1930s USS Akron & LA all over again although NEW.
I favor these airships for:
o MedEvac
o Cargo runs
o Recon
o Comm C3I
o Border recon duty.
o SAR
o Weather monitoring???
o Urban air patrol.
Some can house Light planes like Rutan EZ types &
Bell jetcopters for deployment over the city.
OR some can fire sensor rockets into the skies for sciences.
Unmanned Blimps should scan the US Mex border.
Armed with anti RPG defenses alone.
24/7 border recon for ICE.
& for the USCG they can tow ships out from harms way & remove 200 from flooded New Orleans alone vs lone copters.
Airship bases should be:
OK, AR, TN, CA, OH MN, NY, VA, Canada.
The name Walrus should go.
Id rename this projec ZEPPLIEN 2. or ZEPPLIEN 21.
Airship names for Navy use:
USAS-USAirship:
Rickenbacker
Wright Bros
Goodyear
Firestone
Tuskeegee
Akron
Billy Mitchell
Doolittle
Spaatz
Pensacola
North Island
Airship features:
thrust vector ducted props
solar gas bags: heat expands bags?
geosensor pods
crew module & bridge (IF manned)
cabin for crew
Hanger to copters, gen av planes IE 1930s trapeze style recover mode?
fwd radar
downlooking radar
optical module
C3I module (add on)
Rescue Module: rafts, boats, chutes.
aft main drive engine???
Avg speed: 80 mph cruise, 100 Flank.
Airship testing:
Oceania NAS, VA.
Aberdeen Proving Ground MD
OK City OK
Memphis TN.
For airship weapons:
Stingers
Miniguns
40mm cannons.
missiles
rockets
Laser cannon
sonic blaster.
50cal MG types
M60.
EW array
Airship can hover over ocean for water & distill sea water into fresh for crew use.
Craft comes with electroext camoflouge for disguises for operations by switch.
One laptop can guide the whole ship.
Good Morning Russell,
A great post on “Hydrogen Airships” unfortunately the post is dicussing “Helium Blimps”, not unlike the kind that fly over NFL games.
The U.S. Navy used “Blimps” well up into the 1950’s as an ASW platfrom. Although of questionable effectivness, I believe that only a single U Boat sinking was attributed to a Blimp during WWII. Blimps are cheap and can loiter over an area for as long as the crew can stand it.
Any future uses for Blimps might be as unmanned: communications relays, osbervation platforms or for electronic counter measures. The idea of using lighter then air for transportation of men and materials or as a weapons platform has kind of had its day.
The advantages of Blimps are that they are portable and cheap, the draw backs are the number of ground support personal and facilities required to keep them in the air and of course the make great targets.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
“Stewart’s Platoon”
Personally I see heavy lift blimps as a great idea. They could easily be faster than ships and don’t require a deep port and can even move inland (Fighting a war in central Europe or Africa would not require long convoys to the battle). They are also likley to be cheaper to operate than heavy lift aircraft in just maintanance and are much cheaper than fixed or rotor craft for moving cargo. (Fuel, oil, Heleum costs). Beyond that the flexability of being able to land anywhere there is a few football fields of open space is huge. (It’s like a VTOL container ship) They would not be great as Skinner said for the battle field itself but neither are cargo ships.
And that is leaving out all the uses it has in smaller forms.
Another use for blimps: Cellular “Tower”
Imagine 3-4 of these over New Orleans: people can talk again.
Good use as well: platform to launch / refuel MV-22 Ospreys
A good name: “Shoothere” or “Gonewithewind”
They just closed the Tustin MCAS near me a couple years back, and it has two gigantic blimp hangars in it. They’re local landmarks. At least one is scheduled to be torn down at unknown cost. I bet they start needing blimp hangars around the time it’s rubble.
So does this mean that Lockheed has won? Because I know there are (or were) others in the running for the USAF Walrus project, a couple are world Skycat & Millenium Airships, I liked both of there concepts…I dont even think I have seen Lockheeds Walrus Concept…..I bet it would be cheaper to go with something other then lockheed…but I guess the AF thinks it might be cheaper since there allready giving them money for the HAA.
If these were available now, less then a dozen of the full size ones could have evacuated all 25000 people who ended up around the Superdome.
As a large scale rescue craft these could have tremendous utility (pluck people out of water a roof at a time, or even dozens of people off the tops of skyscrapers).
As heavy lift construction platforms one of these could have been used to lower in 30-50 ton blocks into the breach of the levee (instead of 1.5 ton sandbags).
And a use I haven’t seen discussed before is the use of a fleet of these as a replacement for new light rail lines in dense urban areas that need improved public transit(like metro Los Angeles).
If they had boardable ones in New York on September 11, 2001, could they have deployed quickly enough to pluck people from the rooftops?
Not likely but still in New Orleans they would be an outstanding asset right now. If they have the altitude to get out of range of shoulder fired missiles, they would be an outstanding addition.
The skin of currently made blimps is artifically colored. It is the same material that was used in the Glossimer Albetrois and the Solar Challenger. The material can be made totally transparent. Then the only parts that would be visable would be the gondola, motorworks, and what it was carrying. They also have an extremely lower radar signature. More information on the material can be had from DuPont.
Check out some of the back issues of Popular Mech, Popular Science, Aviation Magazine on LTAS (Lighter Than Air Ships) for more information.
Blimps originally went to the weighside for a few reasons, namely speed. blimps aren’t fast, faster than sea based ships yes, but not faster than helicopters -which from a military standpoint is what really took the place of blimps- I think many people have felt they put the blimp to rest too soon and I’d agree. A blimp as a mobile C&C platform with troop and equipment transport-where speed is not of a concern- is an idea long overdue. although giant targets and not what i would recommend for hovering over downtown Kabul with a general or two in it, its a good idea. Blimps as an Offensive weapon is not a good idea.
As for the current rescue mission in New Orleans, why not use the military’s current heavy transport hovercrafts? They seem ideal to me.
I’d lay odds the Air Force might imagine F/A-18D “Super Hornet” makes a right dandy transport plane. And I’d lay odds they dislike the C-5 despite its effeciencies and purposes, because it is “The only plane in the military that gets down on all fours and takes it from both ends” during loading.
Whatever practical purpose these blimps may have, I don’t believe the government is capable of employing it to that purpose, if only from pessimism of where I see a lot of military money going, sometimes.
Still, it isn’t a bad idea. Heck, its probably a great idea. But I’d lay odds its’n more likely someone’s idea of a deployable special strike force, or an aerial armed empire of ZEPP. … Not good uses.
Lockheed won because the bidder was the Lockheed Skunk Works (ADP), who developed the U-2, SR-71, et. al. There isn’t a more respected name in aviation anywhere in the world if you’re going for a breakthrough, and DARPA is.
Aeros must have had a very good proposal to be the #2.
Defense Industry Daily’s in-depth profile on the Walrus project includes a note re: Milennium Airships, which may have lost the bid but could definitely remain involved in the project.
Finally, I’m really sorry SkyCat didn’t win because they seem to have a very good grasp of the civilian end, and civilian HULA production would help in a number of ways. I hope they go on to succeed in the civil market, and pick up some military contracts for border surveillance SkyCat-20s as well.
Long term, I think the US Army would be wise to think about kick-starting an industry here. Wouldn’t be the first time – not even for inflatables…
Here’s the DID in-depth profile link for the Walrus Program:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/10/walrus-heavylift-blimp-getting-off-the-ground/index.php
And here’s a good “kick-start an industry” example:
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2005/05/ssc-developing-multiple-uses-for-airbeam-technology/index.php
Lots of uses for confined gas these days. A natural idea, I guess, being in Washington….
My company has been working on this blimp technology for years. Solid Fuel Rocket Blimps. Live or die, I’ll make a million!
1) I’d like to see these used for fighting wildfires out west. Five or six of these units custom-fitted with sprinkler lines (making it look more like a daddy-longlegs than a walrus) can surround an area and lay down a steady drizzle/downpour until the blaze burns itself out. It seems to me that a few thousand tons of water concentrated over the firezone could last a weekend or more.
2) This whole idea reminds me of Bucky Fuller’s theoretical Clond Nines: http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail311.html#Nine
I worked on this project for one of these companies, of course Walrus was cancelled last month for lack of interest and therefore money in Congress. First of all this is a hybrid craft, it’s not an airship or an airplane, it is heavier than air but gets partial lift from the Helium gas cells for Up/Down operations and gets the forward velocity from engines via dynamic lift(wing). The biggest problem with this whole concept is that people think it’s crazy, I mean could you imagine something as big as an aircraft carrier or the Titanic flying through the air with 500 tonnes of men/equipment, it’s a hard sell that didn’t.