In a Rutan forum @ Oshkosh, ( it may have been 2 yrs ago discussing his LSA Amphib he is still tinkering w/ for his personal use ) that back in the day, certain Gov’t agencies contacted him to look @ pictures of what we now refer to as “The Caspian Sea Monster(s)”, to get his take on what the heck is this etc! I am thinking that is pre Mr Gorbachev tear down this wall... Great Story. Yes these things have a niche, I could see them replacing ships do to their speed, especially in next Gen batteries get us to 10x and they go electric for shorter hops vs Turbo-Prop or Turbofan.
This is what happens when there is too much centralization at the top. This is a cool technology that gets all the big wigs excited, but what possible use can it be? The article says to “protect the Northern Sea Route where infrastructure is weakly protected.”. Huh? Protect it against what? Aircraft Carriers? Submarines? How’s it going to do that? It’s a sitting duck.
A new Caspian Sea-monster? Pffft! The original was a sitting duck to virtually any kind of attack, and they’re only good for transporting troops and supplies. Which at high speeds is a good idea, if it were not so vulnerable. More Russian posturing. Kind of surprising the Iranians haven’t built one....
With Russia now having learned from those failures and with way more modern engine technology and access to supercomputers, this new ekranoplan could actually be quite viable, especially in a place like Indonesia with its huge island archipelago chain.
