Unfettered by the misconceptions stifling our government's utilization of lighter-than-air (LTA) technology, private enterprise is moving forward with pressure, semi-rigid, and rigid designs. The next few years will see more airships aloft than at any time since World War II; the application of new technologies will deliver performance once thought impossible. Modern mechanized ground handling equipment already has greatly reduced personnel support. Manufacturers are not competing with existing transportation technology but are deciphering previously unsolvable problems. Likewise, without usurping jets planing atop the air, or missiles punching holes in the air, we should realize there are military applications for vehicles that simply displace air to ply our atmospheric ocean.
Coast Guard
More than 1,000 people owe their lives to blimp rescue, a tertiary self-perfected mission of the World War II antisubmarine warfare airship. Numerous studies have shown that the maritime patrol airship would be faster than a cutter and cheaper than a C-130 while emulating both. More than 50 years ago, Coast Guardsmen assisted a study that proved an airship could land on and operate from the water's surface; Britain's new hover-skirt landing gear airship will be amphibious. Interoperable with any waterborne or beachhead asset, buoyant craft are naturals for joint operations and are particularly well suited to the challenges of operations other than combat. An airship was first to cross the top of the world more than 70 years ago, and non-rigids crossed both the Atlantic and the equator. There is no environment too harsh to monitor fishing grounds or track polluters, no place airships cannot act as command posts for oil spill or maritime disaster management and recovery. Onboard sonic transducers capable of coagulating dangerous smoke particles are but one proposal to use airships to perform, not merely direct, crisis response.
Airborne Early Warning
Airplanes are ill suited to 24-hour watchstanding because they are constantly gulping fuel and rushing forward. During the concept-proving Project Lincoln "airships manned an Airborne Early Warning (AEW) station off the New England coast continuously for ten days. Weather was the area's worst in years with combinations of ice, snow, rain, and 60-knot winds." ZPGs of ZW-1 worked national missile defense for years. The last airship delivered to the U.S. Navy was a radar picket ship, the EZ-1A Vigilant, which was once flown 21,000 pounds heavier than its rated 22,366 pound useful lift. With its 40-foot radar antenna and typical 75-hour mission, the last Vigilant was suggested for reinflation to serve as a prototype (Y)EZ-2A in 1987. By the 1960s, the most experienced designers of radar picket airships had drawn up two-million-cubic-foot giants with fin propulsion and pressurized cars rivaling today's E-6 Mercury airplane. External suspension offered many hundred-thousand cubic feet of electronic-soothing helium in which to mount the most sophisticated sensors imaginable, extending these giants' reach well beyond that of probable attackers. The need to detect small, stealthy missiles against sea clutter has only become more acute. Impractical for airplanes, the required long-wave 1,000 square foot antenna lofted to 10,000 feet would extend today's 25-nautical-mile radar horizon out to more than 120 nautical miles. Phase differences from antennas placed bow and stem would enable interferometric processing, yielding three-dimensional data on a single pass. Emission deceptive remote sensing would be supported by basing unmanned aerial vehicles on the picket dirigible. Airship response need not be limited to target illumination, chaff and flare decoys; airships launched standoff weapons more than 80 years ago.
Antisubmarine Warfare (ASW)
The submarine's only natural enemy is faster than a nuke boat, undetectable by its sonar, and invulnerable to homing torpedoes. Journalistic assessments of the World War II antisubmarine airship ignore its victories against underwater adversaries that were never credited even when it used acoustic homing torpedoes. Said one 1950s diesel submariner: "Planes, destroyers and helicopters are just the normal occupational hazards of our profession. But once a blimp pins you down, he can stay with you until the end of time." In Operation Whole Gale of February and March 1960—the last operation for which airships were available—six ZPG-2s logged a respectable 1,644 hours in some of the worst Northeast gales and snowstorms recorded. One crew established today's record of 93 continuous hours on ASW station. Modern subs can shoot back, but airships are mostly fabric and composites, and their few radar reflecting materials could be shielded. Already low in infrared signature, exhaust condensation-water recovery apparatus is a natural infrared shield and its heat could provide additional disposable lift. A lucky-hit ballistic missile would likely pass through both sides; today's airship is so damage tolerant it would likely suffer only graceful degradation.
Communications Aerostation
More than 80 years ago, airships reached 23,950 feet, performed 100-hour patrols and 4,000-mile unrefueled missions. A Navy airship holds today's powered, unreplenished endurance record of 264.2 hours, a 9,448-mile mission completed more than 40 years ago. Unqualified successes as law enforcement command posts suggest the airship would be a secure position for a battle group's flag. In spite of thousands of hits, no blimp has ever been lost to small-arms fire. Private industry already is funding "low orbit satellite" solar- and fuel-cell powered communications and data-relay airships. Vital for today's increasingly joint operations, buoyant switchboard platforms could transfer secure communications, translating incompatible formats relayed from spacecraft, beachhead stations, airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and vessels at sea. Record-holding longevity can be further extended without dedicated support vessels: Project YGAR proved that crew relief via winch basket was feasible with any fleet element. It also has been demonstrated that any vessel could just drop a fuel bladder over the side for the airship to winch aboard.
Mine Countermeasures
When ZP-14 worked mine hunting and killing in World War II, "minesweepers, used to waiting for explosions to announce the presence of mines, liked having the blimps tell them mines lay ahead. They liked it even better when blimps told them there were no mines ahead." The prototype N-1, which sustained a peaking 9,500 pound winch load and towed for 24 hours, was used in minesweeping tests almost 50 years ago. A decade before minesweepers became the most costly per-ton ships in the fleet, a British study pegged a minesweeping airship supporting wire-guided minisubs at one-third the cost of a conventional minesweeper. A modern dirigible would be equally at home as mothership to semi-autonomous underwater craft. If we perfect a green laser that allows the eyeballing of suspicious undersea contacts, should we put it inside a vibrating cacophony with downward frothing thrust that has to guzzle fuel like mad just to stop?
Research and Development
LTA's contributions to air progress predate its creation of the airplane's structural duraluminum, developed to support ZRS construction. Helium's assertive force overcame bulk, weight, and aerodynamic lift unsuitability for countless prototype systems. Possessing a flexible antidote for gravity leads to new solutions for old problems and widens research possibilities. Evaluating fleet "darken ship" or our submarine's stealth was routine long past; blimps helped perfect guided missiles by radar tracking and providing a stable camera platform when airplanes could not keep up. More than 40 years ago, a U.S. Navy airship flew the Arctic, dropping mail to scientists a few hundred miles from the Pole. The U.S. Navy's last airship missions were for research and development, as was the government's early 1990s experimental blimp featuring a side-stick-fly-by-light control system and bow thruster.
With modern AEW, ASW, and minesweeping airships taking on a battle group's air-based defensive roles, a great deal of offensive capability could occupy the spaces vacated aboard air-capable warfighting vessels. All of this, however, could have been done a decade ago. Private industry is now breaking entirely new ground.
Sea/Air Lift
C-5 A/B airplanes can transport respectable tonnage great distances, but a cargo's bulk is incompatible with cramped fuselage tubes. Projected for less than half the cost of a 747X, the Cargolifter airship will fly a container 26x26x162 feet and weighing 160 tons. Now in development, Britain's SkyCat will lift 200 tons. Even more useful, Lockheed-Martin's Aerocraft will offer enormous bulk airlift capacity with higher speed. Small investments today could ensure that huge lifting body would become part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.
New developments awaiting buoyant tests include stern propulsion, hull cell compartmentizing, all-axis thrust cycloidal propellers, fuel cells for propulsion-independent electrical power, electrohydrostatic actuators to eliminate hydraulics, LTA solid materials, and hydrogen fuel. With these we could double the efficiency of buoyant vehicles. Restoring LTA need not be delayed by new idea discrimination or even old idea inertia. Air displacement vessels have been working in civilian life as if on inactive military reserve. It is time to recall airships to active duty.
Mr. Van Treuren served in the U.S. Navy from 1969 to 1978 before joining the space shuttle processing team. He has produced articles, books, and videos on lighter-than-air subjects.