New Gen AirShips - Hybrid Air Vehicles, UK

[Flash2001]

How would the gas bag respond to an ER warhead?

After an excellent landing etc,,,

[BEagle]

Or to napalm?

[West Coast]

Probably the same way any other transport type aircraft would.

Crash.

[LowObservable]

ER? Neutron bomb?

Napalm? If we are talking airstrike, how well does an A400M withstand a cluster bomb?

[dragartist]

Cambs RAeS 11th Sept

Just noted that David Stewart of Hybrid Air Vehicles will talk on the subject at Cambridge Royal Aeronautical Society Thurs 11th Sept starting at 19.00.
I am guessing that all the questions will be answered. Dr Hugh Hunt may also be around that evening - he has some expertise on shooting down Zeppelins.

[t43562]

talk

I've just been to the HQ version of this. The Head of Partnerships and Communications Chris Daniels was there along with, I think the technical director but I didn't bring a pen and pad, stupidly, to write names down.

From what I can remember and in no order (please remember that I am not qualified in any way and if I have misheard something they said then I won't know I'm repeating rubbish):

• They smiled a bit because someone from Lockheed Martin was there (their competition for LEMV was the P-791).
• They discussed the path to certification - via CAA experimental prototype and then moving on to EASA. They say they have been allowed to read over certification that was done in the US for the FAA.
• The airships can do VTOL at the cost of extra fuel.
• They can hover - the rear engines can deflect their thrust vertically down and the front engines can turn.
• They had to get it reclassified as non-military to be able to get it back to the UK. Fortunately the State Department agreed that with all the Northrop Grumman stuff taken out, it was all UK developed IP and they were then free to take it back to the UK and also to talk about the data they had collected.
• The skin is made with several fabrics including one developed for sails in the Americas cup. This material keeps its shape well and that makes the aerodynamics work.
• They have a lot of patents on their way of fastening all the bits to the hull. There are no rigid components inside.
• There are places for sensors that mean that no sensors come into contact with the ground when it lands - whatever that means.
• The first prototype - the Airlander 10
  • Has 2 roughly man-sized bits of ground handling equipment. It needs a mast. It also needs 2 ground crew because it doesn't have a suction skirt.
  • Is overweight but they know exactly what to do to sort that out for #2.
  • Has an unpressurised cabin as it was only the unmanned operation that was supposed to be high.
  • #2 will have has a 5-6 day endurance with pilots and every thing need to keep them happy. 21 if remotely piloted.
• The Airlander-50:
  • Has a hover skirt that can provide 10 tonnes of down force
  • Can get another 10 from it's larger engines.
  • hence it can stay on the ground without needing to move to face the wind in fairly high winds (note that I'm not saying what those are).
  • carries 3x2 standard shipping containers.
  • It can stay on the ground 40 tonnes light. if you want to unload then last 10 tonnes then you have to refuel it or put some new cargo in from the opposite side as you take it out. (unloading happens front and back).
  • Can be built by 2019.
  • will do 110 knots.
• The hangars at Cardington are by no means ideal - they're just the only choice at the moment.
• There are air currents and wind tunnel effects in the hangars but the airships can be moved in and out in a < 15mph wind because they are quite big.
• Solar panels can be stuck on top - not that they are spending too much time on this kind of thing at the beginning - but it would be a useful way to achieve lower emissions or increased range or let them have more power-hungry equipment onboard.

That's my brain dump for the moment. I'll edit if I remember any more.

[LowObservable]

Thanks Txxxx....

What will it take to do the second Airlander 10, in terms of money and time? (I'm guessing that the first "Airlander 10" is the ex-LEMV.)

As for the 50 - many sillier ideas have been prototyped and some have been put into production,

[t43562]

I don't know what they need in terms of development money to get to a 2nd Airlander 10. As I understand it they have done a lot of that work already and their worries and concerns are related to certification.

They have apparently hired a very great expert in certification who will guide them through it.

Someone asked what it would cost to buy "one" and I wasn't clear whether they meant the -10 or the -50 unfortunately. That figure was quoted approximately $40 million. I suppose the -50 has 3 hulls stitched together rather than two but 3x the volume. So in the world of wild guesstimates it might be 1.5 to 3x more than the -10 if we assume that the quote referred to the -10.


They were also asked about Helium. Apparently:
1) Even with 100 airships their use would be a blip compared to the uses of Helium today in things such as medical scanners and so on.

2) The price has been stabilising because these devices are getting better at not losing Helium in their lifecycle even as supply has become a little more constrained.

3) A lot of natural gas production produces Helium which no-one has bothered to capture because of the somewhat artificially low price of it thanks to the large American stockpile that has been available.

4) Fracking does not offer a supply.

[Lima Juliet]

Why bother! The Herc can carry 20t and the C17 closer to 50t. You don't have to suck it to the ground and/or burn precious gas keeping it on the ground. No need for a mast like the 10 tonner. They can both land on rough strips and get there at 2x and 3x the speed. They're not a complete 'sitting duck' like a blimp and they are a lot smaller in size to spot than a blimp as well.

So 5-6 days manned - wasn't that what BAESYSTEMS came up with their dabble with airships in the 80s/90s. That's progress then!!!

I'd rather throw the Ł400M at capabilities that stand a chance of actually making sales for the UK rather this croc of 'snake oil'!

LJ

[Lima Juliet]

I thought I better post this again...

The tired old carousel of Lighter-than-air (LTA) continues to revolve, on average once every twenty years or so. Is that an Aereon or a Megalifter? In a poor light a Skyship looks much like a Dynairship. Whatever virtues LTA once possessed have now been overtaken by the enrmous reduction in payload size and power consumption and the ready availability of uav's of all sizes, from Globalstar downwards, with which to deploy them. Time on station has been a red herring for years, the area to focus on being "on station" LTA has never been any good at this, a twenty knot headwind reduces your speed of advance by 40%, and is likely to result, if prolonged for anytime, in the vehicle being as likely to be found in Alabama as Afghanistan. In the trophosphere the situation gets worse! The main attraction of LTA lies in the fact that those seeking investment in such crackpot schemes know that investors have no reliable database of what the build or r&d costs for such turkeys ought to be, it's rich picking time for the snake oil salesmen when an air ship project hits town. Luckily, the tired old carousel at DARPA and similar institutions revolves at about the same speed, whenever anybody at such government offices wants a little extra cash for themselves, why not flag up a new "Walrus" or "Skycat"? It like goldfish, a short attention span means you can re-introduce the same nonsense time and again and wait hopefully for the cheques to drop through the letterbox! It is just possible that a conventional blimp of about 100 metres, approximately similar to a "K" class but with advanced glass cockpit and lightweight diesels, could make headway in the coastal surveillance/anti piracy field, but its a small r&d task, no money in it for the speculators you see. I know what I am talking about, invest at your peril! John Wood (Ex Chief Exec and co-founder of Airship Industries)

[LowObservable]

LJ - I think you have made your views known before.

You have a point on the ISR side, although Mr Wood overlooks the fact that heavier-than-air UAVs undergo a startling increase in price as the payload goes up. That said, it is hard to compete with something like a Super Heron.

As for the transport mission: it comes down to operating and acquisition economics - and nobody has said anything about Ł400 million. The 50-ton Airlander 50 sounds like it operates on four PW127s, which will cost less than four PW F117s. The LEMV was designed and built on a $154m contract - not sure how much of that was sensors/mission systems, but they were included.

[t43562]

I think the contention, which I might be repeating, is that these aircraft have low operating costs. The comparison I heard was to a helicopter or a light aircraft. That seems to me to be quite a wide range of possibilities but at least it's below C-130 and C-17. I think the idea is that this is good relative to the payload.

[t43562]

Select to team up with Hybrid Air Vehicles - Hyperspectral Sensor.

Selex ES and HAV to team up for MoD airship testing - 10/21/2014 - Flight Global

Selex ES is to team up with Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) to develop a sensor package for UK Ministry of Defence testing on board the latter’s Airlander 10 hybrid airship.
Addressing the Commercial UAV show in London on 21 October, Mike Rickett, senior vice-president of air systems UK at Selex ES, said a UK industry team consisting of Selex, Qinetiq and HAV will carry out demonstrations for the MoD, which will include testing a package developed by Selex likely to include a radar and electro-optical/infrared sensor.
“This is a very large platform to be able to mount our sensors on,” Rickett says. “We’re now at the point where we’re working on this MoD programme… but the MoD is not quite sure of what it wants. It is therefore asking us to put together a package of sensors.”
.......
Selex is planning past the MoD’s forthcoming round of testing on the Airlander, and envisions the aircraft being used as a “mothership” to launch other unmanned air vehicles from, including the company’s own Falco platform. A catapult launcher has already been developed for the Falco that could be adapted to suit this requirement.

[BEagle]

I cannot believe that there are so many gullible people at the MoD being conned by these snake oil salesmen and their absurd crock of $hit gas bag nonsense.....

[Mechta]

Selex is planning past the MoD’s forthcoming round of testing on the Airlander, and envisions the aircraft being used as a “mothership” to launch other unmanned air vehicles from, including the company’s own Falco platform. A catapult launcher has already been developed for the Falco that could be adapted to suit this requirement.

A catapult sounds like an unnecessary complication. Generally, gravity and sufficient altitude are the only things needed to achieve flying speed.

If they are going to attempt UAV recoveries like this though (1:00 onwards), I want a ringside seat! :

[LowObservable]

I would not like to do that last recovery, with no landing gear. As in "none" - the F9C did not have a retractable gear. They just removed it for routine airship ops. I guess if you were 1000 miles out to sea it didn't matter.

But the real problem is that you're hooking on to a bloody US Navy airship, with nothing stronger than a Coke to look forward to. Savages!

[Lima Juliet]

I cannot believe that there are so many gullible people at the MoD being conned by these snake oil salesmen and their absurd crock of $hit gas bag nonsense.....

BEags - I doubt it is anyone in the RAF/RN but probably a gaggle of those that wear brown and smell of mud. I remember sitting on a panel for the dreadful Herti that was full of brown jobs. I was the only voice of reason and having wasted loads of time and effort, guess what? The whole thing was a disaster! I wouldn't expect to sit on a panel about boats or tanks, so what makes them think they should for aircraft? Unless of course they wear a light blue lid and then that's different. Sadly in my experience it tends to be some thrusting Wupert with a jumper knitted from the fleece of a rare Outer Hebridean goat and such odd features that their in-breeding is fully evident!

LJ

[t43562]

I did wonder about these:

Israeli military inflates aerostat demand - 9/12/2014 - Flight Global

Ok they're stationary but the Israelis seem to want them and they're not uav neophytes.

[Tourist]

Leon

What an astonishingly arrogant post.

"I was the only voice of reason"

There is a flip side to that statement.

Often, not always, but often, the one voice is alone for a reason.

Airships are not the same as aircraft, so a pilot of jets has no God given right to have a better opinion.

I know nothing about airships, however I know some people who can see great potential in various roles.
Some of those people are RN and some are RAF.
Incidentally. Where do you reckon the Selex guys are from? 10:1 they are ex RAF.

The constant refrain that "it has failed before so it is obviously ****e" is thankfully ignored by the sort of people who invent things throughout history.

Even if it fails for another 50 years does not make the idea crap. Doesn't make it not crap obviously, but only time will tell, not grumpy old duffers who are set in their ways.

Same sort of people who thought that the battleship would be around forever. The cavalry charge. Bright uniforms. The samurai sword.

[Surplus]

I did wonder about these:

Israeli military inflates aerostat demand - 9/12/2014 - Flight Global

Ok they're stationary but the Israelis seem to want them and they're not uav neophytes.

Very useful for keeping an eye on a stretch of wall (Israelis), or keeping an eye on troublesome neighbours outside of your FOB. The Americans seem to prefer the tower mounted system though. The persistence of such a platform is what makes it attractive, A UAV is better suited to other tasks.