DARPA To Award Walrus Phase 1 Airship Contracts In June

thanks longbow. I was wondering why a modern missile would miss an object of that size. also I would think that the missile would be able to tell it went through or is in close proximity to an object of that size.

I guess my actually question is an airship like that worth the risk of the loss of that much money and tech when it is possibly so easy to shot down? Now i know someone is going to say that it would only be used far behind the front lines but my problem is that in the past couple conflicts the front lines are more and more move able.

Read what I have typed for one. These would used behind the lines, much like large C-5 transports. They would have protection by fighters and have a good anti missile suite.

I doubt fighters would accompany it, it would make no sense, with there speed compared to the airship they would have to circle to to stay close. The C-5 doesn't have fighters protecting it.

The military requires an air vehicle that can lift 500 plus tons, cruises at 100 mph, travel 12000 miles in 7 days, and fly at altitudes up to 20,000 feet.

The engines give off a low IR, and the Airship will have stealth capabilities. It can fly above A2A fire, and can handle hundreds of bullet holes before getting weak and slowly falling down. They could also incorporate flares on it, to help eliminate the threat of heat seekin missiles, and it could have radar jammers, so a radar missile would miss it.

Yes the airship skin is radar transparent, so teoretically (if the gondola has good shape) the RCS of an airship is much smaller than RCS of cargo plane like C-5 or C-17. And again to the possible shot down topic - behind the front lines means there would be probably no or very little danger at all. The airships don't even need to fly to the countries like Iraq, they can unload the cargo at Diego Garcia or Saudi Arabia, for example and the transport plane like C-17,C-5 or Hercules would deliver it to the battlefield.
I think noone has mentioned another advantage of such heavy cargo airships - no need for pilots. They can be remotely controled and guided just by GPS. The landing could be controled through the satelite or ground base personal.
The refueling is also much easier and cheaper - no need for land on airfields or tankers, the airship could refuel, when hoovering, from ships. Too bad current airships are not capable to make let's say 350-400km/hour max, they would be ideal fuel tankers for military planes .

To the price and specs issues, I have read about an airship with 28 tons payload capacity(1500meters alt - over 80 tons at 500meters) well under 20mil.$ per piece. That means you can have 8-9 airships for each C-17 (not to mention the much lower operating costs). The speed was 160km/h max and 110km/h cruise, with range almost 10 000km.