US air warfare

I've come up with a modern suggesstion to true air power. What if the US used the Walrus airship project and made it into a flying aircraft carrier. just the tech we have now we can put the planes on top and have two unmaned blimps on each side with defense weapons. the carrier blimp would be 300 yard long and can carry strykers and Rangers with air support, this would give the US a 30 min to 1hr rapid deployment and with multiple airships troops can get their every 30 min. right! with improved satalites we can watch weather and avoid weather problems. Giving the US a true air suprmency with a flying fleet that has patriot missiles and radar and stealth F 35 or F22s and apaches and A 10s not to mention Rangers who now can truly lead the way. Also a blimp of this proportion would be a couple of millions and defense for it wouldn't increase prices that much and the new abilities we would have. also it could run on nucleur energey or a air compressed engine cause its in the sky.

Better yet why dont we design a society where creative minds like yours can be put to a more constructive use. Maybe making blimp cruise ships that travel the world and you can take smaller planes down to specific destinations. I dunno, great idea, but this military # is getting old. Even the fun video games for me are war related, halo 3 anyone? I love it and im awesome at it, yet I wish we were working more for progress than embelishing on these very very ancient irrational behaviors. Sex and violence have been exploited long enough, let us concentrate on the much more complex desires like connection and granduer. True granduer not of the dominate nature but of the beloved, respected, and worshipped.

Dunno why it doubled posted, sry

[edit on 17-10-2008 by Looking4LikeMindz]

Originally posted by killascout777
I've come up with a modern suggesstion to true air power. What if the US used the Walrus airship project and made it into a flying aircraft carrier. just the tech we have now we can put the planes on top and have two unmaned blimps on each side with defense weapons. the carrier blimp would be 300 yard long and can carry strykers and Rangers with air support, this would give the US a 30 min to 1hr rapid deployment and with multiple airships troops can get their every 30 min. right! with improved satalites we can watch weather and avoid weather problems. Giving the US a true air suprmency with a flying fleet that has patriot missiles and radar and stealth F 35 or F22s and apaches and A 10s not to mention Rangers who now can truly lead the way. Also a blimp of this proportion would be a couple of millions and defense for it wouldn't increase prices that much and the new abilities we would have. also it could run on nucleur energey or a air compressed engine cause its in the sky.

You might look up the historical airships USS Akron and USS Macon. The idea of the flying aircraft carrier dates back to the late 20s.

As for reasons it won't work, one of the big ones is structural strength. Just because an airship can *lift* a certain load, doesn't mean that it can carry that load on its back. Landing an aircraft on the back of an airship's envelope (particularly a blimp-type airship) will result in the airship folding around the aircraft, with dire consequences all 'round. By the time you add in enough structural rigidity for the airship to take the stresses of landing and take-off, you'll not have sufficient lifting capacity to carry any meaningful air wing.

There's also the issue of damage control. How resilient is this airship to damage? A modern CVN is a fairly tough piece of work...take a look at the fire damage aboard the Enterprise and Forrestal during the Vietnam War, and imagine a similar incident aboard an airship.

Even if you could solve the problems of strength and damage control, there's the question of benefit. What do you gain, exactly, by making a blimp-carrier? The speed difference is impressive as a stand-alone number, but it's insignificant compared to the speeds of missiles or modern aircraft. You wind up with a system that carries a huge burden of increased cost for no meaningful change in capability.

ive always wondered why they dont desighn a high altitude blimp strapped with j-dams and let it hover over iraq or afghanistan and when the ground troops need some support they just lase the target and bombs away ..... i guess it would need to be some kind of drone blimp but would be a great idea for instant air support all ready over head with no waiting period


just a though

reply to post by bravo40


It's another case of "how expensive and complex is this solution, vs some other solution to the same problem". Blimps are high-maintenance systems, and relatively hard to defend. That makes them very much 'niche' systems in military use. How is a blimp full of JDAM an improvement over a battery of conventional artillery? It's certainly less flexible...what happens if the troops in question need something other than massive ordnance? Smoke, for example, or dedicated anti-armor support? What happens if they need fire support for an extended period? Reloading your blimp with JDAM will take hours once it's out...an artillery battery can restock while firing, and maintain fire for as long as the loaders can take the strain (or be relieved with new crews).