Battle blimps

G'Day

Found this while I was poking around today.

http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2002/3/return_of_battle_bli
mps/print.phtml

Cheers

I smell a Harpoon scenario there.

> Derek Fulton wrote:

> G'Day
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2002/3/return_of_battle_bli
mps/print.phtml
> Cheers

> Derek Fulton wrote:
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2002/3/return_of_battle_bli
mps/print.phtml

Shades of Aeronef...

> On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Michael Llaneza wrote:

> I smell a Harpoon scenario there.

No, you just caught a whiff of whatever the PopMech editors smoke when they
write these articles!:>

I think they used the phrase 'laser cannons' at least five times... I know
there are serious proposals for bringing back the rigid airship in various
forms, including military, but PM is getting pretty goofy.

The fact that their cover story a year ago or so was 'The Equipment of Star
Wars Episode One" pretty much sunk my opinion of the mag to a new
low...

That said, I like rigid airships, they're cool, and more power to the ideas of
bringing them back! Zepplin AGM in Germany is also back in the zepplin
business; I think they've got their 2nd zep flying now

Brian - yh728@victoria.tc.ca -
- http://wind.prohosting.com/~warbard/games.html -

> Derek Fulton wrote:
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2002/3/return_of_battle_bli
mps/print.phtml
> >

> At 12:54 PM -0700 4/16/02, Brian Burger wrote:

Considering the Laser that is on the ABL takes up the better part of
a 747, I don't see this stuff being fitted to a blimp or semi-rigid
any time soon.

> That said, I like rigid airships, they're cool, and more power to the

Is this the Zepplin NT that was bandied about a few years back?

I personally think Admiral Moffet had some good ideas as far as Airships and
Fleet operations went. Things just didn't pan out very well for them
operationally.

And a 747 is pretty small compared to what an airship can accomodate.
The tone is the sort of "forward-looking statement" that the SEC puts
people in jail for. But 20 years from now something like that may even be
plausible. An airship with a couple of air defense lasers sitting at 20 miles
altitude can cover a lot of territory and sweep the skies clear, and be
impervious to anything in the air. Considering that, I can

see value in pursuing very radical studies.

> Ryan M Gill wrote:

> I think they used the phrase 'laser cannons' at least five times... I

> know

> 747, I don't see this stuff being fitted to a blimp or semi-rigid any

[quoted original message omitted]

G'day,

> And the blimp would be rather more

Why?

Cheers

Offhand, bcause it is a heck of a lot harder to hide, has a bigger
cross-section, and moves slower. On the other hand, I am not a blimp
expert.

Did you look at Blue Planet yet, BTW?

> on 02.4.17 4:57 PM, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au at Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

Beth.Fulton@csiro.au schrieb:
> > And the blimp would be rather more

- It's a bigger target
- It's slower and less maneuvrable
- The blimp can't be armoured because it has to be light
- Holes will (most likely) degrade it's performance more than an
equivalent hole on a jet - this depends on a fair amount of assumptions
about their construction, however.

Greetings Karl Heinz

PS. about the to-be-released Hindenburg mini. My comments about the
size were based on the AIRCRAFT mini-kit box. If they do it in the ship
mini-kit range, it could be up to about 20 cm long or roughly 1:1200

> At 6:18 PM -0700 4/16/02, Michael Llaneza wrote:

I've been a bit busy with work here.. but the gondola on blimps and the volume
of non equipment space is pretty disparate. The gondola on a typical blimp is
probably small enough to fit inside of a C130 and leave more room for the air
bag and other support gear.

Granted, total volume of the Blimp vs a 747 is pretty similar, but the Blimp
is mostly puffed air. Being able to have the same cargo weight as a 747, would
make it a massive airship. Probably on the scale of the larger rigids of the
interwar years.

> At 7:16 AM +0200 4/17/02, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

Not really. The 747 doesn't take much to make fall. An airship can be built
with multiple gas cells that increase its damage resistance. Build the godola
out of stealthy composites and it's hard to target. Same for the gas bag.

Any non combat aircraft is vulnerable to a fighter. Stealth or otherwise.
Thats why AEW's prefer to put the CAP on the MIGS before the MIGs shoot the
AEW.

> At a basic level, yes. On the other hand, things like that tend to

Anything can really when you get down to it.

The problem with air ships is that they aren't fast and sexy. The Navy's
airdales don't want airships. They were used during WWII in the basic blimp
form for convoy escort and were perfect as airborne
observation platforms when scouting for u-boats. Their mission time
in the air is measured in days not hours.

The best modern thought for blimp usage is as AEW platforms that can stay on
station for days at a time between refueling.

> At 5:09 PM +0900 4/17/02, Edward Lipsett wrote:

Cross section yes. RCS...no. They are not the same.

One could build a very low rcs blimp for not a heck of a lot of money.
Remember, you aren't working with the same airframe stresses. Your areas of
concern are

Gondola: easy to reduce rcs, its a box suspended from the bottom of the gas
envelope.

Control surfaces: easy, they are large foam composites, heck build them EMF
transparent.

Engines on the gondola: Shroud the props inside large fairings that have
excellent RCS capabilities.

Gas envelope: easy, make it transparent.

Now the only question is can you build a radar emitter that doesn't radiate or
reflect when it's not operating? Can you build phased array emitters that are
stealthy?

> Ryan Gill wrote:

> Now the only question is can you build a radar emitter that doesn't

[quoted original message omitted]

> At 9:38 PM -0400 4/17/02, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

> It depends on the relative sizes of the gasbag and antenna array.

A composite semi-rigid could do this quite well. A Composite rigid
could do it really well given the internal support structure.

Doesn't even have to be very significant... helium manages to fit through
remarkably small holes that are completely AIRtight.

> on 02.4.18 1:13 PM, K.H.Ranitzsch at KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

[quoted original message omitted]

G'day,

> Offhand, because it is a heck of a lot harder to hide, has a bigger

Based on Karl's answer you were thinking alike;)

> Did you look at Blue Planet yet, BTW?

It is on my "list of things I MUST get around to doing".... do you think it
will still be a round in 2070?;);)

G'day,

> - It's a bigger target

Assuming it's as easy to detect (which it probably is).

> - The blimp can't be armoured because it has to be light

Well the balloon section at least. I've seen some blimp stuff where the
gondola was pretty well done and once you get to a certain size it has a
benefit of its own as evidenced by the Sikorsky Muromets' record vs fighters.

> - Holes will (most likely) degrade it's performance more than an

OK I'm working off WWI stuff here, but they actually survived better than
planes on average given that they rarely turned into a "flying brick" after
the first round of fire. Weather seems to have been a much bigger danger to
them.

Cheers

G'day,

One other thought that just hit me. Are modern weapons limited by "lowest
possible speeds" like some of the WWII anti-air stuff. I remember
reading once that the Swordfish (I think I've got the name right) did well
against
anti-air in WWII as it went to slow for the weapons to track it ;)

Taking advantage of that via battle blimps or other innovations based on
"lower tech" warfare could be fun;)

Cheers

G'day,

> And any significant leaks will.force the blimp down.

Not immediately, the WWI ones at least often had such slow leaks they had
plenty of time to turn tail and head for home.

Cheers

Beth.Fulton@csiro.au schrieb:
> G'day,

Don't think this is really true for WWII AA guns. Slow planes were difficult
to hit for fast fighters, mostly because they were very maneuvrable and could
evade rather easily.

> Taking advantage of that via battle blimps or other

One rather obvious victim is the Doppler radar used against airplanes.
This is tuned to filter out stationary or slow-moving objects (terrain
or cars). A blimp could well stay below its detection speeds. However, this
would mostly be useful if the blimp is flying low. Against a
high-flying target, the Doppler filter could simply be switched off, as
there isn't anything there to clutter the radar reception.

Greetings

G'day,

> Don't think this is really true for WWII AA guns.

I only had a chance for a cursory dig this evening, but "An Illustrated Data
Guide To World War II Maritime Attack Aircraft" notes that

"a biplane of such low performance that it was difficult for both monoplane
fighters to fly slow enough to hold in their sights for more than a fleeting
moment and for anti-aircraft guns to track the type with sights
calibrated for use against faster warplanes"

Cheers

> At 2:01 PM +0900 4/18/02, Edward Lipsett wrote:

Eventually. I seem to recal reading a number of accounts as to how difficult
it was to make a zepplin go down even after repeated exposure to machine gun
fire from air craft. It wasn't until the advent of the tracer that it became
much easier. The sheer size of the volume of air, makes it difficult.
Additionally, as far as the leak issue in general, good year seems to have the
general concept well in hand.

> At 7:12 AM +0200 4/18/02, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

> But Radar is, even nowadays, not the only sensor that an enemy can use.

Granted. But those suckers can hide in clouds and spend lots of time
loitering. Additionally, if they are acting as the AEW and have lots of radar
aperature to look at you with, they can also guide missiles in on you. Imagine
a SPY radar that is not on the ship, but 14,000 feet over the task group.
Suddenly that radar foot print for those SM2ER's has a whole much longer
range. Opforce would find their aircraft sitting on the ground with RWR's
going off.

> At 9:21 PM +1000 4/18/02, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

Well, depending on how the blimps return was tailored, it could appear to be
weather on a lot of radar systems. Radar uses Range and speed gates for
determining whether to toss some return out in the signal processing. A
helecopter hovering could theoretically disappear due to the ground signal
processing if the rotors were stealthy. If it sits at low speeds, it'd appear
like it were part of the terrain to a look down radar set.

EW has this whole group of different kind of jamming modes that all have to do
with fooling the radar receivers when they get the pulse back.

For example, if one can send a strong radar pulse back at the receiver while
it is off axis from you, you can make your aircraft appear to be off to the
side by a great degree. Another method involves sending out a radar pulse
stronger so that the range gate is fooled into excluding the later smaller
ping thus making the target appear closer. There's more to that than I state,
but those are the basic ideas.

EW guys could have a field day if they were able to get at a large airship
that was stealthy.

> At 1:40 PM +0200 4/18/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> One rather obvious victim is the Doppler radar used against airplanes.

Except weather. Build a large portion of the blimp transparent to the radar
that doesn't see water.

> At 10:02 PM +1000 4/18/02, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

Those automatic gun sites used some pretty fancy electro mechanical computers
to compute firing angle for all of the lead indicator and range mechanisms on
ships. Not something you can just add a software update to.

> From: Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>

Additionally, as far as the
> leak issue in general, good year seems to have the general concept

While I agree in general, sorry to be pedantic but it's one word: Goodyear.

3B^2

_________________________________________________________________

Ryan Gill schrieb:
> >Modern fighters have TV sets with zoom optics and IR

Above a certain height, there are not that many clouds. And even in cloudy
heights, you may well have days of sunshine. Plus, clouds may well indicate
turbulence, which is not too nice for a blimp. A rigid Zeppelin should cope
better.

And if the blimp relies on optical or infrared sensor for recce, it can't do
much from inside a cloud.

> Additionally, if they are acting as the AEW

And their anti-radiation missiles would have a juicy guidance beam.

I'm not saying that a battle blimp could not be useful. Just that it it won't
be invulnerable.

Greetings

> At 7:38 AM -0700 4/18/02, Brian Bilderback wrote:
Goodyear.

I haven't seen any Blimps dropping out of the sky on statiums recently.
Additionally, one of the early US Rigids wasn't called the Akron for nothing
you know.

> At 5:09 PM +0200 4/18/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

True.

> And if the blimp relies on optical or infrared sensor for recce, it

Granted. But you could do a number of things. Airships can change altitude
pretty well given a decent amount of ballast and dynamic lift.

> And their anti-radiation missiles would have a juicy guidance beam.

Nice thing about ARMS vs Airborne emitters. You can turn things off and
inertial guidance doens't do much for you.

> I'm not saying that a battle blimp could not be useful. Just that it it

Nothing is invulnerable. An aircraft that is sitting over a Carrier battle
group or over a Surface Action Group with lots of advanced SAMs is rather hard
to get to.

> Ryan M Gill wrote:

> I haven't seen any Blimps dropping out of the sky on statiums

??? All true, but my only point was that Goodyear blimps, owned by the
Goodyear corporation, named after Mr.Goodyear, are spelled Goodyear, not Good
Year. Again, I was being nitpicky and it's probably as irrelevant as it is OT,
but I just wanted to point it out....

3B^2

> At 12:03 PM -0700 4/18/02, Brian Bilderback wrote:

;-P I totally missed that. I thought you were saying that Good Year
was a bunch of tossers and don't know anything about airships and rubber
manufacture...

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002 12:03:39 -0700 "Brian Bilderback"
> <bbilderback@hotmail.com> writes:

Ryan, it's one of 3b^2's 'traits' and he just can't help himself <grin>

> "K.H.Ranitzsch" wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----

The TV camera is not a search sensor. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but
the camera is used to identify targets tracked by the radar. Before you zoom
in you look for some kind of dot in the sky, but if the battleblimp cleverly
makes itself as luminescent as the sky behind it, the dot ceases to exist. The
use of lighting systems to make a skylined object disappear is one of the
hypotheses for the origin of the "Philadelphia Experiment" urban legend,

> KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> Beth.Fulton@csiro.au schrieb:

There actually were a few aircraft that, if pursuing a ship into the wind,
would have a relative motion so low that they would drop under the calibrated
region of the mechanical computers. The swordfish and a japanese torpedoe
bomber fit the bill. As reprogramming a mechanical computer to accommodate a
slower target speed requires switching it off, adjusting the rate gearing
ratios (if that was even an option), and waiting for it to get back up to
speed, and most engineers would know that letting common sailors poke their
fingers inside a high precision instrument is a BAD THING (TM), the computers
were designed with a fixed range of speeds that they hoped would cover all
possible targets. The only reason that any of these mechanical gunfire
computers would be programmable at all is that it makes a difference for long
range gunfire if you are north or south of the equator (latitude shaft must be
reversible).

The reason the signal processing software for the Aegis system is a tightly
held secret (I assume) is that signal processors are easy to spoof if you

On 18-Apr-02 at 19:19, Richard and Emily Bell (rlbell@sympatico.ca)
wrote:

> There actually were a few aircraft that, if pursuing a ship into the

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Poking their fingers inside high
precision instruments is what sailors do, it's their job. Soldiers drag their
equipment back to the depot. Airmen black box things and let private companies
fix it as it can be flown back from the airport. When you are at see for six
months you fix it. Techy type jobs are what the vast majority of sailors do.

And no, I'm not saying other forces can't fix things, just that sailors can
start with the machine shop on the ship (or the electronics shop) and build
what they need. If they don't know how to design it one of the officers who is
an engineer will design it.

In a message dated 4/18/02 11:46:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> books@jumpspace.net writes:

> I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Poking their fingers

I'll have to second Roger. Even on a small ship like mine, we could and did
engineer around things when there were problems. Only point I'd make is that
in some of the more technical fields, like electronics, its likely one of the
enlisted crew is closer to an engineer than one of the officers. Most officers
with engineering skills are mechanical engineers.

John Rebori ETN2 (Discharged)
USN 1976 - 1982
ex-USS Pegasus PHM-1

Ryan M Gill schrieb:
> At 5:09 PM +0200 4/18/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

Against a (relatively) slow blimp? It should be able to get you pretty near,
allowing the missile to home in on an infrared (for example) seeker.

Plus the missile could loiter for some time on glide planes or a parachute
(like the ALARM [?]) until you switch on again. You would
have a significant down-time.

Also, if you routinely switch off on any missile launch, a supply of dummy
missiles that simulate the launch signature would put it out of action.

Wheels within wheels within wheels.

Greetings

Richard and Emily Bell schrieb:
> The TV camera is not a search sensor.

But a TV camera could be converted to serve as such.

> Before you zoom in you look for some kind of dot in the sky, but if

Popular Science had a fairly detailed article about this something like 2
years ago. Some nifty tricks.

Greetings

> Richard Bell wrote:

> The TV camera is not a search sensor.

They can be used as search sensors.

IRST are very much search sensors, and they are essentially advanced IR TV
cameras. (though my collegues at Linköping would choke at the description
<g>)

> Someone correct me if I am wrong,

Done

Rgds,

> From: Glenn M Wilson <triphibious@juno.com>

> Ryan, it's one of 3b^2's 'traits' and he just can't help himself <grin>

I resemble that remark!

3B^2

_________________________________________________________________

> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de

> Against a (relatively) slow blimp ? It should be able to get you pretty

Slow and well-protected, *IF* utilized in an appropriate role.

> Wheels within wheels within wheels.

And that's not true of ANY technological arms race?

3B^2

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002 23:44:33 -0400 (EDT) Roger Books
> <books@jumpspace.net> writes:
<snip>
> letting

I can accept that in many cases. It is cheaper in some situations to buy the
repair service then to constantly retrain certain technical personnel beyond a
minimum number when (in peacetime at least,) you can send it FedEx to the
maker.

Gracias,

On Fri, 19 Apr 2002 07:02:31 +0200 (CEST) KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
writes: <snip examples>
> Wheels within wheels within wheels.

Ain't it true. Depends on the granualrity you are representing in the
rules...

Gracias,