Hi-tech plan to provide eye-in-sky terror watch

NEWS.telegraph.co.uk | 11-12-02 | David Rennie

[doug from upland]

Pentagon chiefs are planning to ring America with a fleet of huge unmanned airships to watch for missile attacks and terrorist activity.

The plan is seen as a high-technology reprise of the barrage balloons that guarded London during the Blitz.

The Pentagon has asked America's largest defence contractors to come up with bids for the giant airships, known as dirigibles, by the beginning of next year, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.

The airships would be capable of hovering high in the stratosphere for months, carrying a 4,000lb payload of detection equipment.

They would probably be powered by ultra-lightweight solar panels and would be up to three times larger than the Goodyear blimp, the renowned commercial airship.

The Pentagon has told contractors the airships would need to float at 70,000 feet, out of reach of anti-aircraft systems, and above the weather of lower altitudes.

[A. Morgan]

WOW! Make it so!

[Lokibob]

Get out. It sounds like somebody in the Observer was taken in by a scam.

We have adequate defense with radars and satellites.

WWII blimps indeed!!!

[Lokibob]

oops, I meant telegraph.

[AdamSelene235]

Last time I was motorcyling past White Sands, there were several large white blimps floating on the horizon.

Invisible to radar,cheaper than orbit, and they can stay up for quite some time

[Gary Boldwater]

Wasn't Francis Gary Powers shot down by the Russians at an altitude of 70,000 feet in the 1950's? What technological advances have occured so that AA systems effective altitude is less? This is all just a bunch of hot air if you ask me.

[TopQuark]

Put Gore on the test flight.

[fourdeuce82d]

What technological advances have occured so that AA systems effective altitude is less? This is all just a bunch of hot air if you ask me.

Ummm...maybe the technological advance is to orbit the blimps over our own territory, which is beyond the range of AA fire from other countries? I dunno, just a guess...

[Lokibob]

 

I guess I'm wrong.  There is an element of truth in it:

Dirigibles get the call: Uncle Sam wants you

Friday, May 17, 2002

By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Shades of Graf Zeppelin, USS Shenandoah and, oh the humanity, the Hindenberg.

Dirigibles -- massive flying machines that went the way of the mammoth a half-century ago -- are being resurrected as high-tech weapons in the war on terror.

	An artist's concept of a Lockheed Martin high-altitude airship. The new airships will be high-tech weapons in the war on terror.

Twice as big as a jumbo jet and soaring twice as high, they may soon be deployed to guard Canada and the United States, scanning for intruders on the Pacific Northwest's long coastline and international border.

The U.S. North American Air Defense Command -- NORAD -- in Colorado Springs, Colo., is considering a 21st-century generation of airships to watch for attacks, just as the military blimps from Tillamook, Ore., guarded the coastline and shipping lanes during World War II.

These airships, however, would be based on "lighter-than-air principles (but) would be more analogous to low-altitude satellites," said Maj. Ed Thomas, U.S. Aerospace Command spokesman in Colorado Springs.

The 700- to 800-foot-long dirigibles of the 1930s could soar up to 15,000 feet at nearly 80 mph. Specifications for the new generation of airships remain classified, but modern military planners envision a fleet of 10 remote-control craft. The airships, packed with radar and modern communication gear, could remain aloft for months, patrolling 13 miles above the Earth's surface in the calmest part of the atmosphere.

Satellites, by contrast, are much more expensive and can orbit or be parked thousands of miles above the surface. And unlike satellites, which generally cannot be retrieved except for a special space shuttle mission, airships can land for repairs or to take on new equipment.

"We are looking, from NORAD's perspective, at being able to provide enhanced radar coverage" of the perimeter of the continent, Thomas said. Ground-based radar is limited by the Earth's curvature.

NORAD, working jointly with the Army's space and missile defense command, has solicited design concepts from Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Co. A potential Department of Defense contract looms, though neither estimates nor funding have been developed.

The aerospace industry has been talking about airships for years. In addition to defense implications, high-flying airships might be used for resource management, disaster communications and weather monitoring. A South African concern considered building some in 1997, and last January India announced plans to develop its own. Some German firms have been talking about using modern technology for lighter-than-air cargo carriers.

Lockheed already owns veteran blimp maker Goodyear Aerospace Corp. of Akron, Ohio, and has been making airships since 1929. Lockheed now produces "Aerostats," small, remote-controlled, tethered blimps that float 15,000 feet high and are used to monitor the U.S.-Mexican border. It also builds the manned blimps used as flying billboards.

Boeing on May 2 agreed to work with CargoLifter of Germany to study high-altitude airships for commercial and military purposes. But on Monday, CargoLifter was said to be facing insolvency after failing to find initial funding. Boeing spokesman David Phillips said it remains unclear what that means for the arrangement.

"No deals have been signed and we are fully aware of the financial challenges of a start-up company," Phillips said. "We are discussing a broad number of potential commercial and military defense opportunities with them."

Boeing's Unmanned Systems Group and its innovative PhantomWorks research group are working on the concept, which has roots in technology that has been around since the first airship was built in 1900.

Dirigibles came into vogue in World War I, when the Germans used them as the B-52 bombers of their day. Their hydrogen-filled Zeppelin fleets bombed London -- until the British did them one better by inventing incendiary bullets.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Zeppelins came to be used for quick and luxurious trans-Atlantic passenger travel at more than 100 mph -- the Concorde of the day.

The first U.S. dirigible, the Navy's USS Shenandoah, launched in 1923, was the first rigid-frame airship filled with non-flammable helium. It crashed in a storm in 1925.

The end of the dirigible was foreshadowed in 1937 with an image burned forever into the public mind, as the 804-foot-long Zeppelin Hindenberg burst into flames in Lakehurst, N.J. A traumatized broadcaster witnessing the disaster moaned, "Oh, the humanity."

Though helium replaced flammable hydrogen, airships were eclipsed by always-faster and ever-bigger conventional aircraft, though the U.S. Navy used blimps for long over-water patrols into the 1960s.

There are four kinds of lighter-than-air ships: hot-air balloons; non-rigid blimps that maintain their shape by internal pressure; semi-rigid blimps with a solid keel but pressurized envelope; and rigid airships, or dirigibles such as the Zeppelins, with aluminum frames held aloft by lighter-than-air gas in cells.

The 500-foot-long airships proposed for NORAD "would not be rigid dirigible-type airships. They would have rigid structures to hold surveillance gear and engines, however," said Cary Dell, spokesman for Lockheed-Martin in Akron, Ohio.

"We proposed and first announced in 2000 a high-altitude airship, unmanned, to fly autonomously at 70,000 feet above the jet stream, where you get above a lot of weather. It would be feasible for autonomous platforms up there, with ground controls, to stay on station in a relatively synchronous position," Dell said. NORAD showed interest last year.

Although NORAD wants the new high-altitude airships for radar surveillance, they could eventually hold other systems, said Thomas, the NORAD spokesman.

"It would be a truck, so to speak, that can carry different payloads -- imagery, infrared warning systems, communications and other uses," Thomas said.

Some privacy watchdog groups say lighter-than-air craft could whip up controversy, depending on the nature of the surveillance.

"Radar itself probably doesn't have any privacy implications, but if they start using video cameras and monitoring equipment on the ground, that would be a problem," David Banisar, deputy director of Privacy International, a Washington, D.C., surveillance watchdog group, recently told the Denver Post. "But it all sounds fairly ludicrous right now."

---

[doug from upland]

Thanks for providing the additional info. I was also stunned when I heard of this.

[doug from upland]

You indeed have the answer.

[_Jim]

We have adequate defense with radars and satellites.

Well now, to be truthfull, there are some gaps in covering all air traffic at *all* atltitudes ...

[Lokibob]

Before I posted the first time, I searched Google News and came up dry, so I posted.

It took a google search using "dirigible" to dig up that article. Note that it is dated May, well out of google news' 30 day window.

Everybody has to eat some crow, sometimes. It is a dish best served with an apology, so my apology is "I was too quick on the trigger, sorry".

[Steel and Fire and Stone]

"It would be a truck, so to speak, that can carry different payloads -- imagery, infrared warning systems, communications and other uses"

I've been intrigued with the idea of Airships for 30 years for use as heavy-lift transport haulers. True, they're much slower than fixed wing aircraft. However, the cost per-mile-per-ton would a fraction of that of a cargo jet, and they could still cover USA to Europe or Asia in a couple of days. Seems like it'd be a great alternative to ship heavy equipment "2nd day air" to Asia at container cargo pricing.

Similarly, Popular Mechanics has had artist drawings some years ago of Airship-passenger liners. What would you choose for a trip to Asia? A nine-to-fifteen hour trip with your head between your knees, or a 36 hour weekend-trip with comfortable beds, fine dinning and entertainment, and a chance to get over the jet lag BEFORE you hit your destination (at half the cost of the plane ticket!). As one who has done the Trans-atlantic and Trans-pacific runs, I can tell you that airships would rule for long distance travel, and probably, would spur new investment in SST technology (because the air carriers would have to economically reduce the travel time to a few hours to beat the airships).

If the DOD does the ground work, I'll bet the air freight companies will be close behind seeking to implement the technology into their industries.

FReegards.. SFS

[doug from upland]

You more than made up for it by finding the article complete with a cool graphic.

[blackdog]

And the crew would only be needed for take-off/landing. Once at altitude they could just go auto pilot on GPS airways above commercial traffic. The only glitch would be the pressurization issue. A lot of goods will not react well to small psi @ 70,000'MSL. They will outgas or outflow hydraulicaly at those heights. Bags of potato chips explode at around 15,000' in an unpressurized cabin. Keeping such huge cabins @ 29.92 or even 22.00 would sort of kill the lighter than air effort don't you think?

[blackdog]

I think the real purpose is to provide high inventories of Hellfire missiles that can be launched at anything that flies, drives, floats, walks, or crawls in a few seconds notice. I like the idea. It is a lot cheaper and effective than scrambling F-16's every time some threat might be on the radar screen. It is also a serious response in strategy toward a multiple threat which may use diversionary strikes to cover for a real attack.

[Lokibob]

Did you guys see this one posted this afternoon on FR?

 

From:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-spelican07nov10,0,6601097.story

 

 

Boeing dreaming up new flying machine

By Ken Kaye
Staff Writer
Posted November 10 2002

Imagine a cargo plane so huge it could hold 10 railroad locomotives in its bay, or 35 fully loaded semitrailer trucks, or 1,000 Volskwagen New Beetles.

In other words, picture an ocean-going freighter that flies.

That's what Boeing did when dreaming up the Pelican, a 6 million pound flying machine -- equal to the weight of 7.5 fully loaded 747s.

For now, it's only a drawing board concept and many years from becoming reality. But if the Pelican were built, like the bird, its wing tips would tilt down and it would glide over the water, rather than fly at high altitude.

That would allow it to take advantage of a cushion of air at ground level, known as "ground effect," which would permit it to fly 11,500 miles nonstop and haul up to 1,400 tons in cargo.

"As you can see, it's a pretty massive airplane," said Erik Simonsen, spokesman for Boeing's Phantom Works, the company's research and development arm, which designed the ultra large aircraft.

Massive?

The Pelican would be a flying outlet mall.

To give some idea of its enormity, the Pelican would have 76 wheels dangling down for landing gear, needed to distribute all that weight. Most of today's modern airliners have six to 10 wheels.

Its wings would span 500 feet and cover more than an acre. They would have to fold up a bit for landing and even more for taxiing.

While over the sea, the Pelican would have the most modern radar and navigational equipment to ensure it doesn't ram into an ocean-going ship.

"It would skim across the ocean and detect any obstacles or weather far ahead," Simonsen said.

Although it wouldn't be nearly as efficient at high altitude, the Pelican would be able to fly as high as 20,000 feet.

And although it would be more at home close to the water, it wouldn't be a seaplane; it would be designed to land on runways like at Miami International Airport. It would climb a few thousand feet before reaching land, then slip into the flow of other air traffic and make a normal approach.

"There's still a lot of designing to be done," Simonsen said. "But it's pretty interesting technology."

Chicago-based Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacture, has no target date to build the Pelican, because it has no guarantees that it will have any customers. But it hopes the U.S. Army will buy into the idea and make it a military transport.

In a single hop, it would be able haul 17 Army M-1 tanks, which weigh more than 80 tons apiece. Currently, the U.S. Air Force C-5, the largest U.S. military aircraft, can only carry one of those tanks.

Eventually, it might become available as a commercial cargo hauler, likely to fly only to about a dozen major global cargo centers, such as Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and Miami.

The plane would be welcome at Miami International Airport, which ranks No.1 in the nation and No. 4 in the world for international freight -- if the airport's runways could accommodate its girth, said MIA Marketing Manager Chris Mangos.

He said the air cargo industry has been using larger freight-hauling aircraft and the Pelican could help increase shipments to Latin America and Europe.

Air cargo companies say it's far too early to even consider purchasing a Pelican, for which not even a preliminary price tag has been established.

However, if FedEx, the largest cargo company in the world, were to buy just one Pelican, it could carry the same amount of cargo as 21 of its jumbo MD-11 jets, which hold up to 65 tons of cargo apiece.

If converted into a commercial airliner, the Pelican would be able to hold about 3,000 passengers. By comparison, when the Airbus A380 starts flying in 2006, it will be the world's largest commercial airliner, able to seat 555 passengers.

But, aviation experts say for insurance reasons, it wouldn't be practical for the Pelican to carry passengers. One accident and that insurance company would be wiped out, said Bill Mellberg, an aviation author.

However it might be used, the Pelican represents some of the most futuristic thinking out of Boeing's Phantom Works, an aviation think tank which has concocted everything from advanced satellite systems to giant military bombers.

All the concepts are designed to be feasible, Simonsen said. But only a few major projects have become reality, so far, because airplanes cannot be developed and built without support from a customer.

Chuck Eastlake, a professor who teaches aircraft design at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, said the concept of a plane like the Pelican flying low over water might be the wave of the future.

"The whole concept of the wing in ground effect is that you can fly with considerably less power than at high altitude," he said.

To some, the plane's boxy design is reminiscent of Howard Hughes' "Spruce Goose," a giant wooden seaplane with a wingspan of 320 feet and eight engines. The 150-ton Hughes Flying Boat only flew once, on Nov. 2, 1947, when Hughes lifted it 80 feet off the water near Long Beach, Calif.

For its time, it was a colossus. But the Pelican would make the Goose look like a chick.

The Pelican is more similar to a much earlier and more grandiose idea: In the late 1920s, American theatrical designer Norman Bel Geddes envisioned building an "Ocean Liner of the Sky," a 700-ton airliner that would hold more than 600 passengers and crew.

Like the Pelican, Bel Geddes' flying cruise ship would have flown just over the water, only it would have lumbered along at 90 mph, which would translate to an ocean crossing in about 35 hours. Lindbergh did it in 33 hours.

But the idea behind the Bel Geddes plane was luxury. It would have had four tennis courts, six shuffleboard courts, a stateroom, a solarium, a 200-seat formal dining room, a dance floor, a café and a lounge.

It was never built because for its time it just wasn't feasible.

But if it had been, the Pelican would have dwarfed it, too.

Although it might be hard to believe an aircraft so enormous is being considered, aviation experts note that at one time no one thought a plane as big as the 747 would ever be built.

"Deciding to actually build the thing would be a significant leap in technology," said Eastlake, the aeronautical professor. "It would be way out of the ordinary. It would be something I'd definitely like to go see."

 

The Pelican is a 6 million pound flying machine -- equal to the weight of 8.5 fully loaded 747s -- made by Boeing.

 

[_Jim]

I think the real purpose is to provide high inventories of Hellfire missiles

This might be a bit of a problem ... with the discharge of a missile drastically altering the 'flight' characteristics and stability which then would require some minutes to re-orient/restabilize the platform during which time the RADAR and other observation equipment will have lost any 'targets' under track prior to said launch ...

This would not be a bad follow-on contract for a few lighter than air craft whose only function was to provide a platform for missiles - but the BIG advantage is the direct line-of-sight advantage that being airborne gives RADAR and optical sighting/detection technologies ...

[_Jim]

If the DOD does the ground work, I'll bet the air freight companies will be close behind seeking to implement the technology into their industries.

I see this "lighter than air" technology as having only niche application - with defense surveilance as being *the* one. We have moved past the 'dream' stage of getting 'something for nothing' in the way of lighter than air craft - the winds and weather are just waaaay to variable for anything like this to be used for serious purposes regularly on any kind of schedule (as it would require it to pass into 'the weather layers' under next to ideal conditions thereby rendering it highly unpredictable and unreliable)!

Need GREAT weight/freight-hauling capability? Then make use of barge, ocean-going freight or train-car transportation ...