I’d say this is far, far above what’s practical, or even possible. At anything like that speed, the aerodynamic forces on something the size of an airship would be enormous (much larger than on a 747 at 600 kts). You’d need monster engines (and fuel tanks) to cope with that. You’d need a fantastically strong hull to hold its shape - and such a hull would necessarily be heavy, compromising payload.
My guess would be that the unavoidable tradeoffs between speed and weight dictate a practical maximum speed around 120 knots. I’m reasonably sure no airship has yet attained that.
I agree with you, Xema. The question also becomes, where do you draw the lines for what is an airship, and what is an airplane. I’ve read about a hybrid that actually only achieves part of its lift from the lifting cells, and then makes use of lifting body designs to generate lift to counteract the remaining negative buoyancy. But that’s no longer what I’d call a dirigible, and it then compromises much of the advantage for the OP’s purpose, of being able to cheaply float in the combat theatre to provide surveillance.
What does a giant balloon of death give us that we don’t already have? We have cheap ways to deliver lots of firepower to a combat zone already. We have surveilance ability that matches what a zeppelin could give us already (especially if we already have enough superiority in the area to not be worried about SAMs). We already have powerful weapons with huge psychological impact.
So we’re getting a zeppelin for what, exactly? I agree that it’s totally freakin’ awesome, but it doesn’t seem to fill any practical gap in military power. The only thing it might be useful for is to lift heavy stuff, like an earlier poster said.
No sorry mate,the British Ministry of Defence did a feasability study on this very subject and found that at night in low cloud the Zep could be detected at five miles or more by their characteristic audio signature “A Whole Lotta Love”
In WWII, we had anti aircraft artillery that could reach a height of over 10 miles. We don’t rely on them anymore because missiles are more accurate at distance. You don’t need super accuracy when trying to hit a 500 foot long airship. Just get close and detonate with lots of fragmentation.
You might be able to intercept a missile from a distance, good luck intercepting a shell that’s all of 5 inches wide.
Speaking of rockin’ Zeppelins…
On their current tour, Van Halen is flying remote-controlled, non-combat airships around to amuse crowds during the interval.
So, am I right in reading that a combat zeppelin would be possible, but not practical, because of engineering costs, vulnerability to anti-air artillery, and the existence of other technology to get the same surveillance benefits?
Because if a huge-ass high-altitude blimp is possible, I may need to start another OP on a similar subject.
I believe that, as the one challenged, you have the choice of weapons. If combat zeppelins are satisfactory to you, the next step is for Projammer to propose a field of combat (or in this case, an airfield of combat).
As ever, the French light the way in such affairs of honor:
–Duel: a True Story of Death and Honour, by James Landale (as quoted by Curious Expeditions)
A stealth blimp has huge psychological impact. A giant light-luminescent- ever 3 dimensionally camoflagued, invisible, hovering presence, that sees your every move from miles away? Scares me as it is. Could saturate an entire battlefield this way. No more launching of and waiting on satelites.
Reminds me of the Giant UFO’s in Independence day hovering over the cities.
I think an idea with even greater psychological impact would be to build two giant spherical balloons that look just like eyes staring down, and hover them over the target country.
I like **Sage Rat’s ** Wikipedia link to the “stealth blimp” phenomenon. What phenomenon could possibly explain multiple sightings of huge triangular light formations moving slowly across the night sky?
In fairness, though: I have actually seen one of these things myself, and was briefly fooled by it. It was moving over north Tampa at night, and for several seconds I totally saw it as a single giant floating craft of some kind-- I guess the mind’s natural inclination is to connect the dots and interpret them as part of the same object. I even hallucinated bits of illuminated superstructure for a moment.
I might have never realized exactly what the ‘lights’ on the thing really were if they hadn’t started quacking.
The interesting thing about this suspended chain gun is that it could be effectively limitless in firepower. The rounds could be fed from a delayed ground system and act as counter weight and ballast. The kite’s tail, so to speak.
I hate to even bring this up… But this is something I occasionally flash the geek badge on… Armed airships (such as balloons and zeplins) are outlawed by the geneva convention. Not that I’d expect that to stop anyone if the idea was good enough, but… Just thought I’d mention it.
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