The Age of the Blimp

Dale Brown has struck again with his new fiction thriller "Armageddon". In the novel he extorts the value of blimps used for aerial survelliance. Do you the posters support his believes?

[edit on 2-8-2004 by flycatch]

i remember seeing something online, maybe a DARPA website about using such high altitude blimps for survailance. i think they would also carry missiles to shoot down any sort of threat as well, but i'm not sure about that.

here's a thread on the topic:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

i'm sure there are more.

Deffinetly. Blimp are becoming more and more popular. Darpa and others like Lockheed are putting some serious amounts of cash on airships.

I have never read of a missile blimp, but I believe Darpa is developing the (HAA) High Altitude Airship. Which can stay aloft for months powered by solar panels and carring aroung 4,000 lb of survalence equiptment, and possibly attach a mirror to it so it could extend the 747 Air Born Laser's range.

Also I read in this months Popular Mechanice that the Army now wants a Airship that can lift 500 tone and a 1000 tons version. They said it could carry 1,200 army ready men. With a top speed of 80 mph this thing sound 1000 times better then any Huge Slow ship.

Oh, BTW they said the blimp would be as long as a carrier. I just hope they at least cover it up in kevlar or something, so small arms fire couldn't bring her down.

Originally posted by Murcielago
I have never read of a missile blimp, but I believe Darpa is developing the (HAA) High Altitude Airship. Which can stay aloft for months powered by solar panels and carring aroung 4,000 lb of survalence equiptment, and possibly attach a mirror to it so it could extend the 747 Air Born Laser's range.

yeah, that's what i was thinking of. thanks!

A blimp airship is the best thing to carry/transport mega-loads.Even with today's jet transports its a very viable technology.Check this link...

www.aerospace-technology.com...

Originally posted by Murcielago
Oh, BTW they said the blimp would be as long as a carrier. I just hope they at least cover it up in kevlar or something, so small arms fire couldn't bring her down.

In a blimp that big, small arms fire would not really matter - it would take a LOT of holes before you would see a difference in performance, much less something that could bring the ship down.

BTW, nice avatar

Airships, have one major flaw. They can not fly in bad weather. Every major airship crash (including the fire on the hindenberg) can be directly attributed to weather.

Originally posted by HowardRoark
Airships, have one major flaw. They can not fly in bad weather. Every major airship crash (including the fire on the hindenberg) can be directly attributed to weather.

But new airships are more meneuvarable then old ones.

But weather doesn't matter since these blimps will be well above any weather at around 65,000+ ft.

Northrop Grumman developed a derivative of the Hybrid Air Vehicles HAV 304 hybrid airship for battlefield surveillance, the RZ-4 Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), which first flew in 2012 but did not go into service due to technical and performance challenges as well as a tight budget.

Last year, a production order was placed for the ten examples of the Hybrid Air Vehicles Airlander 10 by Air Nostrum, marking the first airline order for a large airship since the 1920s and 1930s.

Links:
news.northropgrumman.com...
www.hybridairvehicles.com...
www.flightglobal.com...