New Gen AirShips - Hybrid Air Vehicles, UK

[BobbyT]

A very interesting story about a UK company that's been given a US Military contract to build new generation air ships. They reckon they'll be able to carry 1000 tons in the not too distant future if all goes well:

Airships: Pioneering Brits heralding dawn of new Zeppelin age | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1357747/Airships-Pioneering-Brits-heralding-dawn-new-Zeppelin-age.html?ITO=1490)

I think they have huge potential for military use, air transport and eventually passengers but I can't get over how they'll cope with some of the weather I've certainly experienced around the world. They obviously got around this earlier last century but safety records were not what's expected these days in aviation.
I was after any more info or discussion on this topic from those interested or in the know.
I wouldn't mind a punt on HAV shares when they eventually float.. Parden the pun!

[The Helpful Stacker]

Does anyone remember the airship trials by the AAC in NI?

How did that go?

[green granite]

They reckon they'll be able to carry 1000 tons in the not too distant future if all goes well:

That was predicted 30 years ago when Airship Industries first started up.

[t43562]

The latest little bit of news from them is here:

http://hybridairvehicles.com/pdf/HAVRelease24Aug2011.pdf

The text of it is:

Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd today announced the commencement of its Commercial Heavy Lift
programme with its launch customer Discovery Air Innovations.

LONDON, United Kingdom and Pointe-Claire, Quebec, Canada – 12th August 2011 – Discovery Air
Innovations (DAI), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Discovery Air Inc. and Hybrid Air Vehicles Limited
(HAV) have signed an agreement under which DAI will be the first customer for HAV’s Commercial
Heavy Lift programme.

Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd is a pioneer and world leader in the design, manufacture and support of
innovative Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) aircraft products, known as Hybrid Air Vehicles. The company has
brought together a long legacy of LTA design and delivery experience and combined it with modern
technologies to create a major new, cost effective, low carbon emission aerospace business,
focusing initially on the surveillance and heavy lift markets.

Based in Cranfield, UK, the HAV team has more than 1,000 years of combined aerospace experience
in building and certifying LTA aircraft. Recent improvements in technology, such as advanced
fabrics, control technology and simulation have enabled the team to build a hybrid air vehicle that
has significant advantages over the original airship concept. The “hybrid” principle utilizes both
aerodynamics and lighter-than-air technology to generate lift - about 60% of the lift is aerostatic
(from helium buoyancy) and the remaining 40% is aerodynamic, generated from the vehicle’s shape.
Additionally, powered lift is used during take-off and landing by vectoring the thrust from four
ducted propulsors.

The result is a range of revolutionary products with global market potential. In 2010, partnering
with Northrop Grumman, HAV Ltd. won a $517 million U.S. Army contract to develop the Long-
Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) for deployment into theatre in 2012. This vehicle is
able to operate above 20,000 feet (MSL) with up to 21-days endurance.

Discovery Air is a specialty aviation company based in Canada, with operations around the world.
Their service offering includes cargo transport, rotary wing, fire services, logistics and military
aviation services. DAI President, Paul Bouchard, has stated “HAV’s heavy lift and cargo market will be
a tremendous addition to our range of aviation services. With a cargo capacity of 50 tonnes at
speeds up to 100 knots (185 km/h), we believe this capability will enable economic development of
remote, stranded resources with a low environmental impact. The ability to deliver cargo
point-to-point without the need for a runway, will mean the infrastructure costs of our clients are reduced
substantially.”HAV’s heavy lift and cargo vehicles have a payload capacity ranging from 20 to 200 tonnes, with
future development potential of up to 1,000 tonnes. The helium-filled hull creates aerodynamic lift,
which when combined with the vectored thrust engines enables vertical takeoff / landing (VTOL), as
well as precision hover. The hovercraft landing system’s “suck down” allows for multi-surface
operation and load transfer - on land, water, ice and snow.
The hybrid air vehicle is also one of the most environmentally-friendly modes of transport. Its
flexibility reduces or eliminates transshipments and fuel consumption is equally impressive, saving
up to 75% on equivalent payload alternatives. The ability to launch, land and load from gravel
airstrips, water, snow or ice surfaces with no preparation or specialist handling equipment saves
end-users both time and investment in infrastructure. Ground loading offers roll-on-roll-off
capability, while the precision hover allows pick-up and delivery of cargo from ships or other austere
locations.

The Heavy Lift Programme is currently in its detailed design phase, with construction planned for
2012. The first vehicle is scheduled to enter commercial service in 2014.

For further details please visit Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd - For Persistent Surveillance and Heavy Lift Logistics (http://www.hybridairvehicles.com)

[Thud_and_Blunder]

Interested readers might like to use their Interweb Search Engine of Choice to see what a trawl for "shortage of helium" throws up. I remember reading not long ago (in New Scientist, story then picked up by the Independent) how many quids it would cost (dozens) for one of those fairground/party balloons if the US Govt didn't artificially fix the price of the gas (couldn't work a joke on 'inflation' there, sadly) so low.

[Lima Juliet]

Helium is the new gold in Afghanistan with lots of tethered balloons needing refilling (and emptying of lead!) every fortnight or so.

Anyway we discussed this last year at http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/400804-usa-army-airship-afghanistan-isr.html

Airships are 'snake oil' that get invested in every 10-20years and find they need too much infrastructure and can't deal with medium level winds. I await the cancellation of the program when they (re) discover this.

LJ

[MightyGem]

How did that go?
Slowly. :E

[The Old Fat One]

LJ

What rubbish!!

Airships and UAV are the answer to everything. Maritime Patrol, Close Air Support, Airborne Early Warning, Heavy Lift, Global Warming, The Credit Crunch, Teenage Acne, Non Specific Urethritis....

I believe they have developed a UAV that can play left wing for England and an airship has been widely touted to win the next X Factor. Oh no...that already happened.

[iRaven]

Nice one LJ - enough said in the thread in the link you posted. This says it all really from the ex-exec of what became Hybrid Air Vehicles:

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)

[dakkg651]

I thought I'd read somewhere that the only supply of Helium was in yankeeland and it was running low.

If true, surely the Americans would either make it prohibitively expensive or simply keep it for themselves.

Hasn't technology advanced sufficiently since the R101 and Hindenburg era to allow safe usage of hydrogen with it's greater lifting power?

I wonder how much an aluminium piano would cost nowadays? :hmm:

[Modern Elmo]

Hasn't technology advanced sufficiently since the R101 and Hindenburg era to allow safe usage of hydrogen with it's greater lifting power?

Don't think so.

Furthermore, it's not only a question of safety. The need to refill, at least partially refill the gasbags with helium or hydrogen before each takeoff is a big drawback.

In regard to the helium problem: the only airship proposals I can take seriously are ones which don't require helium to be dumped in order to descend and land.

There have been proposals -- Russian, I think-- for airships that would chill and compress their helium to descend, so as to -reuse the helium.

Also, Lockheed and others have mooted hybrid large aircraft/airships which would not dump any helium and would remain somewhat heavier than air even when empty of cargo.

The “hybrid” principle utilizes both aerodynamics and lighter-than-air technology to generate lift - about 60% of the lift is aerostatic (from helium buoyancy) and the remaining 40% is aerodynamic, generated from the vehicle’s shape.

Make that about 65%-70% aerodynamic lift and 30%-35% aerostatic, and the proposal might be viable.

[Corporal Clott]

Even Helium won't save you with a fire in an airship...:sad:

http://images.smh.com.au/2011/06/14/2427243/729-blimp-main-420x0.jpg

This sadly happened this year. Witnesses reported hearing the pilot screaming as it went in - horrific!

Airships? No thanks! :yuk:

CPL Clott

[500 above]

At least he got his pax out.

RIP Mike. A top bloke.

[Corporal Clott]

500 above

I read that. That he swooped down whilst on fire to get his pax out, who duly jumped. Sadly, the loss of the pax's weight meant that the airship went up again with him in it. In my opinion the guy deserves a George Cross as he could have just bailed when close to the ground and left his pax to it.

I never new him but I do admire his courage.

CPL Clott

[TURIN]

Make that about 65%-70% aerodynamic lift and 30%-35% aerostatic, and the proposal might be viable.


Here ya go..



http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/anderson/thunderbirds/gallery/images/340/thunderbird2.jpg

[jamesdevice]

Thunderbird 2 was a pure lifting body design, no lighter than air component at all.
The plans show that main thrust was from a nuclear reactor which used liquid sodium (or maybe Sodium-Potassium alloy) as a heat exchanger to superheat the air flow through the ramjets. Liquid fuel rockets were in the two tailpipes and provided extra/initial takeoff thrust, while there were four turbofans in the tail cross section for low speed cruise. (i.e. below 2000mph). Max speed was 5000mph

The VTOL lift was provided by another set of liquid fuel rockets

You may laugh, but its as credible as a functional LTA machine

[Landroger]

I thought I'd read somewhere that the only supply of Helium was in yankeeland and it was running low.

If true, surely the Americans would either make it prohibitively expensive or simply keep it for themselves.

Hasn't technology advanced sufficiently since the R101 and Hindenburg era to allow safe usage of hydrogen with it's greater lifting power?

I wonder how much an aluminium piano would cost nowadays?

A lot does come from the USA - it is actually a by product of oil exploration/production. At one time it came out of the ground so fast, it was necessary to fit silencers to the He vents.

However, we get most of our LHe - liquid Helium - via our suppliers who get it from Algeria. Even so, you are right, it isn't getting any more common and its price has risen steeply over the years I been using it.

LHe is weird stuff and even though I have used hundreds of thousands of litres, I have never seen it. It never comes out of the end of the pipe, only as vapour. It has incredibly high surface tension and will climb the walls of any container to an extraordinary degree. It can also boil locally, that is to say, unlike water where the whole volume of water must be raised to 100C before it will boil, Liquid helium can boil in one small part of its volume. This will usually cascade into a generalised state of boiling if the pressure is not maintained.

It goes without saying that if is incredibly cold - about 4K or -269 C.

Roger.

[dakkg651]

Landroger.

Thanks for the interesting info.

Love to know what you use hundreds of thousands litres of He for.

You're not one of those saturation diver chaps per chance?

[Tourist]

From New scientist:

Sign in to read: Nobel prizewinner: We are running out of helium - opinion - 18 August 2010 - New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727735.700-nobel-prizewinner-we-are-running-out-of-helium.html)

Nobel prizewinner: We are running out of helium

18 August 2010 by Clint Witchalls (http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Clint+Witchalls)

Robert Richardson worked on the superfluid properties of helium – now he worries that we are squandering our supplies of the gas
Most of us think of helium as something to fill balloons with or that makes your voice go funny when you inhale it. Why does it matter that helium supplies are running low?
There are some substitutes, but it can't be replaced for cryogenics, where liquid helium cools superconducting magnets for MRI scanners. There is no other substance which has a lower boiling point than helium. It is also used in the manufacture of fibre optics and liquid crystal displays.
The use of helium in cryogenics is self-contained, in that the helium is recycled. The same could be done in other industries if helium was expensive enough that manufacturers thought recovering it was worthwhile.
Surely industry must be paying more and more for helium if it is in short supply.
No, the price is dictated by a calendar. The US government established a national helium reserve in 1925, and today a billion cubic metres of the gas are stored in a facility near Amarillo, Texas. In 1996 Congress passed an act requiring that this strategic reserve, which represents half the Earth's helium stocks, be sold off by 2015. As a result, helium is far too cheap and is not treated as a precious resource.
Oil companies such as Exxon have invested heavily in extracting fossil fuels from shale, which may also contain helium. Could this come to our rescue?
The so-called Eastern oil shale in Kentucky and Ohio, which is also a source of natural gas, contains only trace amounts of helium, not the relatively large 0.5 to 2 per cent found in natural gas reserves in the American West. The same is true of North Sea gas and wells in Europe.
Say we do run out of helium - can't we just make the stuff from something else or purify it from the air?
There is no chemical means to make helium. The supplies we have on Earth come from radioactive alpha decay in rocks. Right now it's not commercially viable to recover helium from the air, so we have to rely on extracting it from rocks. But if we do run out altogether, we will have to recover helium from the air and it will cost 10,000 times what it does today.
The shortage of helium has been talked about for a while. Are things really getting that urgent now?
Maybe in Europe there has been a conversation, but not in the US - and the US supplies nearly 80 per cent of the helium used in the world. The problem is that these supplies will run out in a mere 25 years, and the US government has a policy of selling helium at a ridiculously low price.
What should the US government do instead?
Get out of the business and let the free market prevail. The consequence will be a rise in prices. Unfortunately, party balloons will be $100 each rather than $3 but we'll have to live with that. We will have to live with those prices eventually anyway

[t43562]

LEMV readied for November flight (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/lemv-readied-for-november-flight-363466/)

"LEMV is now running more than a month behind its scheduled first flight, which was revealed in June at the Paris Air Show. The delays have not been publicly explained.
The hybrid airship is now in a hangar, with all 19 sections inflated and sensors integrated, according to sources with knowledge of the programme."

[diginagain]

Does anyone remember the airship trials by the AAC in NI?

How did that go?

Very well, apparently, although there were complaints from certain sectors of the populace about the covert markings, and Durex wanted royalties.

[LowObservable]

NorthGrum cancelled its LEMV press conference at the AUVSI show in August at the last moment, and did not brief at the Association of the US Army show this week in DC.

So what we have is a radically new air vehicle,
designed by a UK team,
that includes some people from a defunct company that flew a small-scale mock-up,
with an envelope fabricated by a textile company in the US,
integrated by NG's surveillance radar division,
managed by Army missile defense people,
and planned and funded on a very tight schedule.

What could possibly go wrong?

//weeps softly, bangs head on desk

[Buster Hyman]

Personally, I think Lighter Than Air vehicles are over inflated...

[The B Word]

Oh Buster, you let yourself down with that comment...

:ok:

[Corporal Clott]

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/jhe/lowres/jhen3l.jpg

[t43562]

Not sure which thread to put this on but I have to pick one so here goes:

21st century airships may join Navy fleet - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9079047/21st-century-airships-may-join-Navy-fleet.html)

The story is obviously mainly hot air but it indicates that some sort of pitch has been made without any indication of how it was received.

[Just This Once...]

Ah more airship snake oil. Comes around every few years before someone gets the job of pointing out how vulnerable they are, then it all goes quiet again.

I bounced off the corners of DEC(DSR) as it was then when someone pitched a wonderful idea of having MBTs and 100's of infantry plodding across the globe at 40 to 80kts before the bleeding obvious was pointed out.

[green granite]

They might Make good MPAs. :E

[Lima Juliet]

Hybrid Air Skyship 3000 Airship Industries Vehicles - coming to visit a poor unsuspecting kn0b in a MoD Capability branch job soon. Jeez, you can almost set your watch by the regularity :ugh:

http://saleskick.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/snake-oil2.jpg

Warning! Warning! :eek:

[Corporal Clott]

Still it will make an interesting update to this book :ok:

http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/888028-L.jpg

[Lima Juliet]

Take a look at http://www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y2012/Army/stamped/0305205A_4_PB_2012.pdf

In it you'll find the line:

The LEMV Prototype is expected to achieve 21 days endurance in 20 knots continuous winds...operate at a maximum altitude of 20,000 feet...

:eek: what a crock of expensive cr@p :eek:

In my humble opinion of course :ok:

[Jollygreengiant64]

Why are airships that much more vulnerable than, say, a marine ship? Much in the same way that marine ships would be protected by the RN, would the airships not have fighter escorts/CIWS/AMRAAMs?

In the case of some of the designs proposed over the years, payloads of 1000 Tons are achievable, If you believe those figures. Surely the value in these aircraft is in their use as AIR SHIPS? Faster than maritime shipping, and much bigger payloads than conventional aircraft. Not of much great benefit in the 'present' wars, but then what is? Something like these would give you the option to bring back a lot of the stuff that will be inevitably left in the middle east when we leave. Call me old fashioned, but I've always believed options were a good thing.

There may always come a time when expedient shipping of a task force comes necessary in a short period of time, especially when the future of warfare is revolving around the notion that future conflict will involve smaller clashes with less prominent militaries.

These vehicles were never really destined for the battlefield after the invention of the Fighter.

[Milo Minderbinder]

JollyGreen
The problem is that these machines are being envisioned for high risk roles as replacements for AEW platforms, for MPA use, for use as pickets in a similar way as HMS Sheffield and Coventry were...
In the air for weeks, away from any chance of fighter support (unless you were to hang F-35B off them with a skyhook, but I don't think anyone has proposed that ....yet...)

If you just wanted to use them as simply cargo vessels, then yes there may be a case. Maybe a fleet would come in handy when we finally want to evacuate Afghanistan given the Pakistani road blockade. But you have to consider the slow speed, the height restriction vs the local mountains, and most importantly, for all the hype, no-one has yet demonstrated a way for a large lighter than air vessel to overcome the issue of loss of mass due to fuel burn. No one has yet come up with a pump that will liquify the gaseous helium enough to reduce lift significantly as mass decreases.Even these hybrid ships are going to hit that brick wall when they try to do it for real

[Rocket2]

Perhaps before anyone places an order then they read this:

Why the world is running out of helium - Science - News - The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html)

[giblets]

Think the aircraft would be a great solution RN or RAF. In both its' proposed roles would give great capability.

Could be used as an AEW for the RN, to replace the Sea King, 5-21 days endurance, 20,000ft ceiling, and much cheaper to operate

Might even be possible to base one on Mt Pleasant.

As a heavy lifter too. Can imagine on a Operation Corporate type mission, being able to bring heavy last minute items to the fleet would be invaluable. Or dropping off heavy munitions to Gioia del Colle in the recent Libya conflict.

[Jimlad1]

" Can imagine on a Operation Corporate type mission, being able to bring heavy last minute items to the fleet would be invaluable"

Given the 80Kph speed and issued raised by people far more clever than myself, perhaps it would be easier if we relied on these boring things called 'ships' and 'cargo planes' to acheive this effect?

[giblets]

Believe it is 80Knots, not Kph (or 150KPH), so triple the speed of one of these 'ships', which also have to go around land (depending on the destination somewhat relevant).

As for cargo planes, although the USN navy got a C-130 down on a carrier, I'm not sure I would want to be doing it all the time!

Will also cost 1/3 of commercial air cargo.

[fin1012]

...but in the future small-scale campaigns that will soon be all that we are capable of, these could be incredibly useful, particularly in the maritime environment. Why does everyone always go straight to right of arc high end warfighting? Air brings so much more to the party than just combat power. These things could revolutionise the ISR and Mobility roles and could save the RN from all sorts of embarrassing situations. Agreed, in contested airspace I wouldn't want to be in one - but we tend not to get too involved in that sort of thing nowadays and that isn't how we would use them. To be honest, I'm still on the fence over this capability, but I would far rather see it succeed and be useful (and cheap) than fail. We don't have to wait long to find out the truth - we should be able to see how they cope with and contribute to Afghanistan fairly soon.
:8

[Milo Minderbinder]

giblets, fin1012

You're both missing a couple of key points
First if you used these as cargo movers, you hit the fundamental problem that for every tonne of freight delivered, you have to pick up a tonne of ballast - or else your vessel is going to float away. You may be able to pump up 500 tonnes of water if carrying out replenishment at sea (assuming you have collapsing tanks to store it in|) but I suspect finding that much water in the middle of Khandahar may cause problems.

The other point is that if the Navy couldn't protect Sheffield and Coventry from attack at sea level, what chance have they of stopping something at 20,000 feet? You would need a T45 or carrier on station to protect the airship

And where does it go in a hurricane?

[Lima Juliet]

Seeing as the average winds on route to the FIs could be 50-70kts headwind, then you're probably quicker by boat anyway. I also remember seeing Mt Byron's golfball laying at the bottom of the Mount having been subjected to 100kts+ gusts of wind - it would funny to watch a blimp working in the South Atlantic's somewhat harsh weather system :)

Finally, I contest that this is significantly cheaper than traditional fixed wing air freight. Yes, in terms of fuel it might be cheaper, but you have to add in all the extra costs:

1. Helium is getting 'kin expensive.
2. Wherever you regularly operate you need access to Helium.
3. You need a mahoosive hangar for repairs or getting out of the weather (or poke off elsewhere when the storm threatens).
4. Outlay in buying and setting up another aircraft type (remember we canned the Harrier because we couldn't afford to support so many FJ types?) - also, I suspect that this would be a very small fleet of blimps and that attracts high running costs.
5. You either need to ditch Helium after dropping off mahoosive loads (see para 1 on Helium cost) or you have to carry ballast back and forth with the reduction in performance and increase in cost.

The quote from the previous CE of Airship Industries in the first posts is as true now as it has ever been - snake oil it is. If it was such a great idea then we would have been using Helium ballons in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s - the technology was there, but we didn't bother because the idea is looked at on a 10 yearly basis with the same conclusion "too slow, too expensive to support and not worth the effort".

LJ

[giblets]

These aircraft are not airships, 40% of lift comes from the shape of the craft, as well as having directional fans. So the ballast thing is much less of an issue. I am guessing that they can move the shape of the ship to reduce the lift in cruise mode.

Darpa has also successfully demonstrated a system (known as COSH) which compresses and decompresses the Helium to reduce/ increase buoyancy.

Though I am sure in Kandahar they might be able to source some sort of heavy material, like earth, presume they have some of that there.

As for the wartime aspect, as fin1012 stated, you probably would not use it in contested airspace.

[Lima Juliet]

There's no probably about contested airspace- it would be a sitting duck and if carrying the massive load, potentially a loss that could lose a conflict (remember the Atlantic Conveyer lost nearly all of our heavy helo lift and critical stores). So why buy it if you can only use it on low wind days, with no enemy forces lurking about, with a Helium supply chain, with a large hangar to support and at a quarter of the speed of a C5 or C17?

If its endurance you want then the fixed wing Rutan Voyager flew for 9 days at 100kts and circumvented the Globe - it doesn't need Helium, runs on petrol and it has a 110ft wingspan so it doesn't need a special hangar. It carried 2 blokes, their food and water, their kit and that could be a big ISTAR payload.

Or the Rutan GlobalFlyer that Steve Fosset flew around the world in just shy of 3 days with an average speed of ~300kts. So who needs unweildy lighter than air vehicles for endurance?

LJ

[Jollygreengiant64]

Many of these problems would be sorted by treating them as ships. I'm sure the only way they will come to fruition in a transport role is if they are SIGNIFICANTLY bigger than even the heavy conventional lifters. Traditionally Airships have been operated by the Navies of the world, and I'd always propose that something of that scale ought be operated by the RN, for obvious reasons, if not tradition.

As with most maritime vessels, a great deal more forward planning would go into the operation of an airship. If the weather was to get particularly bad, It could always bugger orf to happier climes. Big hangars other than for maintenance seem wasteful.

The ballast issue is just trivial. Dirt/Rocks/Other cargo would be your simple answers. How many maritime freighters do you see with no containers on the top? More or less none. In this financially concious age, the RN/RAF airships could drop the troops off, then take on the civilian freight coming the other way- Partially paying for themselves. Logically the efficient way to use these vehicles would be for them to be fully loaded on every leg.

For airships to be of any use in the real world, they would have to carry significantly more cargo than any existing aircraft and be faster than a ship even in bad weather. 100/200 tons of payload is hardly what I would describe as significant, considering that a 'fleet' of 8 C-17's could deliver that kind of package in a day if it was called for. A payload of a few thousand tons however would fill the gap between sea and existing air transport.

When you think that Concorde died and the A380 flew, you see where the benefits of mass transport like this exist.

[Just This Once...]

I'd love to fight the war that has troops and tanks going in one way and civilian freight coming the other!!

[fin1012]

I can think of all sorts of circumstances where kit we've got now wouldn't do very well in a hurricane. The UK's air ASW capability is provided by RW at the moment - guess they aren't going to be much help some of the time then. I'm ex Nimrod (hence the handle) so I'm realistic about what even FW can achieve in 80kt winds and SS6+. It became traditional that at some point in every JMC the weather would become so bad that ships would run for the Minches and MPA wouldn't fly. SSK's and SSN also struggle to do their jobs in those conditions, so everyone takes a break until conditions improve. I don't recall the Nimrod fleet being scrapped because it couldn't do ASW in a hurricane.

Having already made the point that you wouldn't consider using these in a contested air environment, I'm a little nonplussed by the immediate replies along the lines of 'yeah useless in a contested environment - it would just get wasted' We've already agreed that so why repeat the point? Mind, the ACC owns the risk, if he felt certain HAV tasks were important enough he might think it worthwhile dedicating defensive assets for the short time needed - in the same way as he would protect, say tac mobility, or conventional ISR. I repeat, beyond possibly the first few days of future campaigns we simply will not be operating in a contested air environment (well, not for long anyway :) )

I agree that Rutan achieved amazing things, but that platform could not, for example, replenish a ship at sea, operate off water, snow or a swamp, or carry some of the large aerials that would allow future HAV to do some interesting things (like the entire skin acting as an aerial etc). Most readers seem to think that HAV equals airship which is just not correct. Ballast is not the issue it is for lighter than air craft, aerodynamic lift is part of the design. Yes, Helium is an issue, but partly because the US stopped managing it as a strategic asset between 1996 and 2005 because they had too much to store it economically. There is plenty to go around if we are sensible and as long as we are producing natural gas (it is a by product of the extraction process). Like all resources, cost may become an issue.

I had to do some research on these platforms a while ago and while there are obvious limitations I think they have considerable potentially for certain tasks. There is also a growing amount of work going on at the moment to address the issue of realism in UK defence. This involves a lot of soul searching and an honest appreciation of what we can afford, what capabilities we really have, what we really need and what an 80% solution actually looks like. For the first time that I've seen in my 29 years, there is a sense in some areas that we might be learning the lesson that we cut our cloth according to resources.

So. being the hypocrite I am, I repeat my earlier points despite castigating others for the same failing: (:D )

These platforms have no utility in several potential scenarios, they may have great utility in several others. They might even be the sole means of providing some capabilities.

I understand (from open source - I haven't looked at this for 'work' for nearly a year so am not in the loop any more) that the LEMV programme is about 3 months late and has either just started flying in Afg or is about to. On my planet, from order (Jun 10) to first flight in about 18 months is simply stunning. I cannot think of any other similar size/complexity air platform that has done anything like that in the last 20 years.

So, very shortly we will get real performance and operating data from real operations in Afghanistan. Lets look for the positive, ditch some pre-conceptions and look at the real data when it comes in. If it works as some hope, there will be a great British success story to tell that doesn't involve the usual suspects.

Before anyone accuses me of being a shill for HAV or NG I am not. I just had cause to look at this a year ago as part of another project and became intrigued by it.

Standing by for the inevitable flames :}

[BEagle]

This utter crock is a total sham!

Its protagonists have completely overlooked the issue of wind. At many times of year, this POS would barely make any headway on many occasions.

Forget the ridiculous claims - these gas bag things are a total waste of time as far as serious military applications are concerned.

It carried 2 blokes, their food and water, their kit and that could be a big ISTAR payload.

Leon, one of them, the petite Jeanna Yeager, was hardly a 'bloke'.

[Milo Minderbinder]

"40% of lift comes from the shape of the craft"

So 40% of lift is from air movement over the craft, indicating it won't be able to hover at full load. Which rules out the idea of ship replenishment - there is no way its going to land / take off from a carrier if it has to be moving to generate lift. No room unless you take another look at Pyecrete and iceberg carriers

As for the idea of loading it with rocks as ballast - I can really see that happening: quick delivery of goods to some base in Afghanistan followed by hours of JCB work to fill it with stones.....

[fin1012]

BEagle,

'Its protagonists have completely overlooked the issue of wind. At many times of year, this POS would barely make any headway on many occasions.'

Evidence please.

Where, when and for how long. Then we can have a useful debate. I have seen one met study that suggests these systems would have limited utility in Afg and a number of other places, yet the US Army is in the process of testing one now, in Afg. Either they have taken a massively foolish punt or our operating assumptions are wrong. We will know soon enough. Perhaps only being available for 28 days out of 30, or having to operate for a couple of days at suboptimal altitudes is good enough, or not the problem some think.

'these gas bag things are a total waste of time'

As I have already tried to explain, comparing HAV to a gasbag is simply wrong - and assertions such as this are all the harder to understand when even a simple google search throws up loads of relevant detail.

Finally, it's disappointing to see what could be an interesting argument descend into baseless assertions and poor language. In any serious discussion the use of emotive terms such as 'POS' doesn't add anything and simply indicates an inability or unwillingness to construct a reasoned argument.

Milo

My understanding is that the 40% of lift from the body is in the cruise and gives much greater efficiency. Take off and landing uses vectored thrust and/or helium volume management and isn't dependent on aerodynamic lift. Might still be an issue with heavy loads but I don't have the exact figures. No reason why it can't operate from a carrier or tag along in the overhead

[BEagle]

It simply isn't worth bothering to respond to the claims of the gas-bag snake-oil salesmen yet again.

One hopes that the MoD ensures that the previous "Don't waste our time with your rubbish" report is PA'd (or whatever the electroninc version is), so that it pops up every 5-10 years when the next airship idiot tries to convince the MoD that these things have any genuine value.

As for proposing the use of gas-bags in the South Atlantic........:mad:

[fin1012]

Beagle

so no evidence then

[green granite]

It simply isn't worth bothering to respond to the claims of the gas-bag snake-oil salesmen yet again.


There were similar things said about the claims of the Wright brothers BEagle

[BEagle]

...so no evidence then...

Well, actually I had a quick look at FL200 W/Vs in the Afghanistan area using NOAA statistical met in the range 50%-85% for 4 specific dates at 3 monthly intervals. There are many times of year when the W/V is significantly greater than the values the snake-oil gas-baggers are looking at. But hey, let them find that out the hard way if they wish.

green granite, the airship has already been invented, whereas the Wrights were the first to be successful with heavier-than-air flying machines. So your comment is rather irrelevant.

With all their considerable experience, if the folk at Zeppelin NT, Friedrichshafen cannot find a 'killer application' for the airship beyond advertising and (very expensive) joyrides around the Bodensee,

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a341/nw969/zeppelin.jpg

then why should anyone listen to the wild claims of these snake-oil salesmen?

[Sky Sports]

One hopes that the MoD ensures that the previous "Don't waste our time with your rubbish" report is PA'd (or whatever the electroninc version is), so that it pops up every 5-10 years when the next airship idiot tries to convince the MoD that these things have any genuine value.


So it didn't work in N.I. then? Why was that?
Was it because it was shot down? - No
Couldn't do the tasking? - No
More expensive than the R.W.? - No

The only thing that stopped the planned 3 airships replacing the 20 Gazelles was the peace process !?!

P.S. For those that keep banging on about the ballast problem, google 'Ballonets'
P.P.S. Do you honestly think the Americans thought of throwing $500M at this project without first asking, "What about wind?" "What about ballast?" "What about the threat?"

Time will tell, but I'm not betting the house on it f**king off into space the first time it drops off a big load!

[fin1012]

BEagle,

Great, real data, can you post a link. TVM

Edit, Just pulled 1984 data as a random sample and actually it was much more benign than I'd expected. (No doubt that will turn out to be the lowest year on record for upper wind speeds) A lot of time the wind looks to be around 35 - 40 kts at the altitudes I think HAV would operate. I guess the fact that Hermes/Watchkeeper and Reaper type platforms, operating at not too dissimilar speeds and altitudes, seem to be able operate without too many wind limitations indicates that it is not such a problem. Post 2015 withdrawal from Afg and the US swing to Asia, we need to be more interested in conditions around Europe, Africa and the near Middle East as that is probably where we will be operating.

[Vizsla]

The Aerostats at least do what is written on the packet and serve a purpose

[BEagle]

Great, real data, can you post a link. TVM

No, sorry. The data I use is from the NOAA global stat met database embedded in an AAR mission planning system. I created a short route around the area in question, changed a few dates and cruising levels and found that the wind was well in excess of 20 kts at many points.

Against an enemy armed with anything more lethal than sharpened guava halves, gas bags would be a sitting duck. Or rather, turkey.

Radar-equipped aerostats do indeed do a good job for the US DEA though.

[Agaricus bisporus]

If the Rutan Voyager was capable of the extraordinary feat of "circumventing the world" (sic) I doubt that a gasbag would have the least trouble in circumventing a mere hurricane...
I think we've got it sorted!

[green granite]

green granite, the airship has already been invented, whereas the Wrights were the first to be successful with heavier-than-air flying machines. So your comment is rather irrelevant.


Oh dear BEagle stop being deliberately obtuse, despite the first aircraft being flown in 1903 the war office, apart from a flirtation with Cody in 1908/9, resisted all the snake-oil salesmen as you call them until 1911 when they formed the first 'heavier than air' squadron hence my comment was perfectly relevant to the current situation with the Hybrid Air Vehicles. The only real proof of a concept is to build it and see it it can perform to the specifications promised, if it can then it's money well spent if it can't then at least the knowledge gained will prove useful in the future. If you don't then you'll never know.

[Wwyvern]

green granite.

Sorry to be pedantic, but the Wrights were not the first to fly an "aircraft". They probably flew the first "aeroplane".

Sir George Cayley built a full sized glider (an aircraft) and had a 10 year old boy fly in it for at least one flight in 1849. A bigger version had his coachman fly in it for at least one flight in 1853. There is no report of whether he stayed in Cayley'd employ thereafter.

Cayley also designed and built a gas bag flying machine (an aircraft) in 1816, but I don't think it was manned.

Never thought my Cranwell thesis would come in useful after all these years.

[The B Word]

For data, I posted this about 18 months ago...

Right, just to finish off the "there's no wind in Afghanistan" debate, I've been to the Met Off and got the following data from their MIDAS database on average wind speeds:

Location: KANDAHAR
Lat/Long: 3133N 06551E
Elevation: 1010 Metres

300MB/30000ft

Month Wind(Kts) Temperature(C)
Jan 270/60 -41.3
Feb 270/63 -39.8
Mar 270/51 -39.7
Apr 270/41 -37.9
May 270/41 -34.5
Jun 270/28 -26.3
Jul 270/14 -23.5
Aug 270/16 -24.5
Sep 270/24 -28.1
Oct 270/44 -34.5
Nov 270/51 -39.3
Dec 270/52 -39.9

Now these are "average winds", so I'm expecting about +/- 30kts on a daily basis as the normal for these wind ranges over the 28-31 day months. Also, as I stated before, "the 'Seistan' or 'the winds of 120 days' that can blow up to 100mph for up to 4 months between May and Sep in Eastern Iran and South West Afghanistan, all at ground level", will account for the months of May to Sep when the wind isn't blowing at height.

Luckily for the Americans they have much money to waste on this, which is another mad-cap and already proven unwise venture such as this. We, however, in the UK do not. I understand that Mr Gerald Howarth MP may have been already been briefed on the HAV/LEMV and been given the Company "Sales Pitch" (which gets the wind prediction quite wrong or ignores them!). If that is true, then please Minister, leave this scheme well alone as there is a long and distinguished line of others that have been taken in by the airship notion over the past 40 years.



Says it all about wind for me - it'll be lucky to fly for 6 months a year and even then the endurance will be about 2-3 days rather than 21 days. Why, well read below. Plus for the "give it a try" brigade, err, we already have...and it didn't perform as expected...

I can add some information...

The U.S. Navy had been interested in LTA technology since the early 1980s. This led to the Patrol Airship Concept Evaluation (PACE) ca. 1983, and some tests of a Skyship 500. In 1985, NAVAIR commissioned design studies for an AEW airship to work with surface action groups. Boeing, Goodyear, and a Westinghouse/Airship Industries team made proposals. These studies were for vehicles running ~3,000,000 cubic feet.

In 1986, the program was redirected toward an Operational Development Model - basically a proof-of-concept vehicle with an E-2 radar suite. Boeing dropped out, Goodyear bid a ZPG-3W with turboprop engines, WAI bid the Sentinel 5000. WAI won. A mockup of the gondola was built at the Weeksville, NC, hangar.

The USN pulled out in 1988, IIRC. Part of the A-12 eating all of Naval Aviation. But DARPA was interested in the airframe as a carrier for low-frequncy radars and pressed on with the program as funding permitted. Development went slowly, and the fire in the Weeksville hangar in 1994 (IIRC) pretty well killed the program off.

The performance numbers are off...the endurance was 60 hours, not 60 days. But it was planned to refuel at sea, making a 30-day patrol practical.

The politics of the program were very interesting. Within the Navy, the problem was that the YEZ-2 did not have a pointy nose or fire belching out the back. Not to mention that it was a direct challenge to the E-2, and a possible challenge to the P-3...and in the platform-centered communities of that era, this was politically very dangerous.

On top of that, WAI made some politically tone-deaf moves. Most of the subcontractors were in the UK...useful for the Airship Industries design team, bad for Congressional support. The Goodyear design might have been more successful, despite being technically outclassed, on that point alone.

Have a look at the posts here about it 2 years ago - I see no evidence to change my mind. http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/400804-usa-army-airship-afghanistan-isr.html

I'm with BEagle on this one :ok:

The B Word

[Milo Minderbinder]

SkySports
The Ballonets are there to prevent overpressurisation of the gas bag. As the craft rises and air pressure decreases. you have to dump air FROM the ballonet to stop the main gas bag overinflating. If you pumped more air IN, then you run the risk of the whole thing going "pop" as it rose

[green granite]

Wwyvern perhaps to be really pedantic, kites should also be included somewhere as well since they are heavier than air and use air flow for lift, but I apologise for not using the term 'powered aircraft'. :)

I was aware of Sir George Cayley's glider. The account I read had the coachman resigning, but who knows for sure as these tales tend to get embellished over time.

[Milo Minderbinder]

er, excuse me, but the first powered (though unmanned) flight was by John Stringfellow in 1848

Chard Museum (http://www.chardmuseum.co.uk/Powered_Flight/)

[Tourist]

Why are the 30000ft winds of any interest to us?

Do you think that that is where it would be?
Seriously?

Having spent rather more time than I would like orbiting over Afghan, I can tell you that I rarely saw winds above 30kts.


I don't know if it will work, but I spent many hours thinking that it should be a balloon doing my job.

Luddites is the word I think I am looking for.

[Lima Juliet]

Tourist

I've also stooged about at that altitude in the R1 and C130 in AFG. In fact, the winds were a major drama for the chaps jumping out of the back at significant height - the forecast was almost 180 degrees out from the actual! I've also been on the ground waiting for a MQ-1 to turn up with its ~130KTAS - add on the headwind at the time and it wasn't even making 1nm/min (<60kts groundspeed).

I thought Luddites resisted new technology - lighter than air is hardly new is it? :ok:

LJ

[fin1012]

HAV are not lighter than air. These are not airships in the conventional sense. Why is that so hard to understand.

[Lima Juliet]

Straight from the front page of the Hybrid Air Vehicles website...

The Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) Team have re-examined the basic principles behind lighter-than-air science and applied modern technology and science to this 100 year old concept

...see Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd - For Persistent Surveillance and Heavy Lift Logistics (http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/)

Seems pretty easy to understand from my perspective! :ok:

LJ

[Lima Juliet]

From the same website; I don't understand why they are so keen to showcase what appears to be a catalogue of failed trials, failed companies and their attempts to market a flawed concept...!

http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/images/aboutuschart.gif

[fin1012]

yep same page that says that buoyant lift is typically 60%.........as you say simple to understand...

[Milo Minderbinder]

When you see in that timeline a howler like "Hydrid air vehicle..." it does beg the questions of (1) how good are they at attention to detail and (2) what else have they got wrong?
That chart is part of their sales / marketing brief. If they can't get that right, they can't be trusted to represent their product correctly.

[fin1012]

Milo,

OK, OK, I give in. That typo has made me realise that this concept must be fatally flawed.....

You're not a staff officer in Air Command are you? As a Flt Lt in CTTO I wrote a Link 11 concept paper for 11/18 Gp which was pretty thought provoking and needed them to wake up and take certain actions. It came back with 3 incorrect apostrophes circled and a note castigating my punctuation - but no useful comment on the content. Taught me a lot about staff officer mentality.

As I noted in an earlier post, I have no agenda and no connection with this particular platform other than an interest in air power and an open mind. I am now withdrawing from this discussion until we see the results of the LEMV programme - at which point we can judge it on real world performance rather than the quality of the marketing literature. If it turns out to have no operational value I'm sure you will let me know....

[giblets]

Most of the previous 'failed projects' were because of other reasons rather than technical, as stated the Northern Ireland ones suffered due to the peace process, the USN navy, again funding cuts.

The whole argument about not going into the warzone was touted by lots of people who didn't understand what was so great about the cargo capacity of the KC-30. That's what those shiny C-17's are for right?

If you took a timeline of the flying wing, I'm sure it would look identical, a couple of successes in there, with plenty of projects that never made it past the drawing board due to financial reasons ( or most likely, people don't like the idea because it's not two wings fixed to a tube).
Needless the say the flying wing has some HUGE advantages over 'conventional' pointy aircraft.

[Tourist]

What I don't understand is why some people are so vehemently against them. If they work, then great, if not then oh well.

I do find the idea that just because nobody has got them to work yet then we should never try again very stupid.

They have been trying unsuccessfully for nuclear fusion for a long time, but it might just be worth the effort eventually.

The first attempts to found a colony on the Americas failed, but they worked out eventually.

[giblets]

The first attempts to found a colony on the Americas failed, but they worked out eventually.

Shouldn't that be in the Falklands thread? :)

[Lima Juliet]

If you took a timeline of the flying wing, I'm sure it would look identical, a couple of successes in there, with plenty of projects that never made it past the drawing board due to financial reasons ( or most likely, people don't like the idea because it's not two wings fixed to a tube).
Needless the say the flying wing has some HUGE advantages over 'conventional' pointy aircraft.

No, because there's the Vulcan from the 50s (I know it had a tail, but it was mostly flying wing but they didn't have the FCS tech needed to do without the tail), then in the 80s the B2 and then recently the RQ-170 Sentinel flying wing. At the prototype phase there are a number of "X planes" including the X-47, TARANIS, NeuroN and others. It wasn't financial reasons that the flying wing never got going, it was purely technical - now that's sorted, then they're starting to come into service (aka B-2 and RQ-170).

The peace process didn't finish NISP - it was a technical fail as it used way more fuel than planned...

Does anyone remember when the AAC tried using an airship over Ulster, sometime late 90s/early 00s? (Can't remember exact year, getting on a bit you know....)

Yes, and if I recall correctly, it used so much fuel just to stay in one place it was deemed as non-viable.

Thats the picture we got from chatting to the guys operating it from Ballykelly when it returned very late one night, apparently quite literally running on fumes.

LJ

[Sky Sports]

The Ballonets are there to prevent overpressurisation of the gas bag. As the craft rises and air pressure decreases. you have to dump air FROM the ballonet to stop the main gas bag overinflating. If you pumped more air IN, then you run the risk of the whole thing going "pop" as it rose
Wrong - The ballonets are used to (1) compensate for helium expansion/contraction and thus maintain hull pressure, (which is surprisingly low), (2) trim the airship in flight (3) ballast the airship along with the water and lead shot ballast.
You never run the risk of the whole thing going "pop" because the pilot can balance the helium and air pressures using the valves in the hull skin. Should he try really really hard to "pop" the "gasbag" the valves operate in automatic mode. The same goes for the ballonet fans, the pilot is not allowed to let the hull pressure drop too radically. If the hull pressure drops, the ballonet fans kick in automatically raising the pressure in the ballonets and as a side affect increase the weight which brings the airship and crap pilot slowly back to earth.

The peace process didn't finish NISP - it was a technical fail as it used way more fuel than planned...

Wrong again - The high fuel consumption was known about very early in the project - years before it was deployed operationally. This was a result of all the military modifications that were carried out to an off-the-shelf passenger airship. The armour plating alone ruled out an effective endurance. If it were known that it would ultimately be armour plated, a much bigger "gasbag" would have been used at the build. The Ballykelly "fumes" incident arose from a tasty job generated by the mission equipment.

[Lima Juliet]

The high fuel consumption was known about very early in the project - years before it was deployed operationally. This was a result of all the military modifications that were carried out to an off-the-shelf passenger airship. The armour plating alone ruled out an effective endurance.

Sounds like unfit for purpose and a "technical fail" to me...:rolleyes:

Certainly not the peace process...:=

Surely, the gas bag was not the issue? As the gas bag only provides bouyancy for what you want to carry - if its too heavy it will sink? As the addition of the armour still allowed NISP to leave the ground, then what is wrong with the size of the gas bags? Unless you rely upon the tiny amounts of thrust from the ducted fans? The fuel is used to move it around and I would have thought the bigger the gas bag then the more susceptable the blimp is to wind - which in turn means more fuel to keep on station? I can't see any other way around this as it is simple laws of physics? Now in the HAV's case, I could understand as the aerofoil shape produces some lift if it is thrust forward (which again uses fuel), but NISP wasn't a lifting body shape was it? But if it is heavier then it will take more oomph to move it, but the gas bags either make it float or they don't in NISP's case.

Sorry, but I think it is you that is wrong on your latter point.

By the way, here is a nifty pic of NISP Skyship 600 and the ballonets...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Climbing_and_descending.jpg

[Lima Juliet]

PS

The Ballykelly "fumes" incident arose from a tasty job generated by the mission equipment.

I'm guessing here, in that you're saying that it ran out of gas doing a surveillance task when people believed it had far more endurance capability than it actually had?

[t43562]

Army's LEMV Surveillance Airship Flies (http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3A27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3Ab16d951c-82be-42df-a54e-48ff6318442c)

And here is a bit of amateur video of it:

x_fmy3xwjbM

[chopper2004]

Doesn't look that big from the video and even on par scale with the helo flying past. I expected it to be a little wider as with the artists impression.

Is this bigger than P791?

Best of luck to them

Cheers

[t43562]

I don't know the P-791's dimensions but it also has a payload of 20 tons. Both companies are apparently working on 50 ton models for a Canadian customer so you may see larger ones if things go well.

[t43562]

R1G-L7qvTKI

[iRaven]

Well done NG, you've flown a balloon in a similar manner to those that have flown for 100+ years :D

Whoopie bloomin' do! :ugh:

The program will be scrapped inside 2 years when they learn the lessons of all those that have gone before...

iRaven

[t43562]

This sequence shows the LEMV coming in to land.

pOIEO6h1fy0

[Trim Stab]

I pity the poor fecker who has to fly that - 3 mins from short finals to touchdown, with no fast-forward button.

Not to mention having to suffer the septic nerds yelling "yeehooo" every ten seconds or so. Have they no dignity?

[Lima Juliet]

I note that they are flying on pretty still days - what's going to happen when it's 20G38kts+ ? :eek:

...hello, is that the scrap man? I have a load of old mecchano that I no longer need...

:p

[t43562]

Airship Programs - Not So Bouyant, Says GAO (http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a0a5d56ff-8271-4ebe-8cb9-78a5e2a848c4)

[BEagle]

Are airships back? Our guess - maybe not...

Never a truer word. The bolleaux spouted by airship snake oil salesmen needs to be robustly challenged at every opportunity.

[Lima Juliet]

Here is the official US Govt report:

http://www.gao.gov/assets/650/649661.pdf

LEMV is a technology demonstration project, expected to develop a hybrid prototype airship for ISR purposes in a forward combat environment. The project was initiated in response to an urgent need request. The Army is supposed to complete system level development and testing within the United States within 18 months after contract award (June 2010) and be ready for transport to Afghanistan for a joint military utility assessment and follow-on demonstration. The required on-station duration time is 21 days at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Pending the results of the joint military utility assessment and other reviews and evaluations, the Army will determine whether or not to pursue a program of record.
According to the program office, the LEMV hybrid airship is scheduled to undergo 33 manned flights totaling approximately 500 hours. The Army successfully launched and recovered LEMV during its first flight in August 2012. The initial date for deployment was January 2012; currently, the deployment date is indefinite. LEMV development is behind schedule 10 months (representing about a 56 percent schedule increase) due to issues with fabric production, getting foreign parts through customs, adverse weather conditions causing the evacuation of work crews, and first time integration and testing issues. Also, LEMV is 12,000 pounds overweight because it has weight issues with sub-systems, such as tailfins, exceeding weight thresholds. According to the program, the increased weight reduces the airship’s estimated on-station endurance at an altitude of 20,000 feet from the required 21 days to 4 to 5 days, representing at least a 76 percent reduction However, current plans, according to program officials, call for operating the airship at 16,000, feet which should enable on-station duration time to be 16 days with minimal impacts to operational effectiveness (other than about a 24 percent reduction to on-station endurance). The biggest risk to program development is the ambitious schedule of 18 months. The Army identified a fiscal year 2012 funding shortfall of $21.3 million resulting from the need for additional engineering and production support to mitigate and resolve technical issues at the LEMV assembly facility.

I hate to say it...:E

...I F***ing well told you so! :=

LJ

PS See you back on the forum in 15 years time when some bright spark 'invents' the concept of airships all over again. :ugh:

[iRaven]

Message for Governor Romney:

"Try asking Mr President why he has wasted $Ms on 'experimental' airships - doesn't he know that the nature of conflict has changed? Not only do we not use bayonets and horses anymore - we shouldn't try to use airships as well!!!" :ugh:

Yup, the snake oil salesmen at Cardington have done it again :D (at least for another 10 years, anyway).

iRaven

[chopper2004]

What caught my eye of the article preview, was they put a pic of the LEMV

Idaho scientist seeks to launch aerial Bigfoot search with blimp - Yahoo! News UK (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/idaho-scientist-seeks-launch-aerial-bigfoot-search-blimp-021426238.html)

[chopper2004]

What caught my eye of the article preview, was they put a pic of the LEMV

Idaho scientist seeks to launch aerial Bigfoot search with blimp - Yahoo! News UK (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/idaho-scientist-seeks-launch-aerial-bigfoot-search-blimp-021426238.html) :E:cool::ok:

[Courtney Mil]

With good range and short landing perfomance, these will be the back-up plan when F-35B goes wrong. We're gonna need a bigger boat.

[walter kennedy]

Modern Elmo hits the nail on the head with <<In regard to the helium problem: the only airship proposals I can take seriously are ones which don't require helium to be dumped in order to descend and land.>>
The obvious advantage of airships is that the aircraft itself can be neutrally buoyant - needing no power other than a little for trim, altitude change, and modest speed - the catch is the weight of fuel to be consumed in a flight and that anything other than relatively (to the aircraft itself) insignificant payloads are carried - heavy payloads would require a lot of thrust (and therefore fuel) to lift or unload or large adjustment of gas (dumping or compression, both I would suggest impractical).
The Zeppelins carried (correct me if I'm wrong) a small mass of passengers relative to the mass of the airship, from prepared point to prepared point, and used readily available hydrogen. They would be very vulnerable to adverse weather (eg icing R101 - can you imagine de-icing kit for a large airship?).
Moving hundreds of tons to FAFs - I don't think so.
Long range recce (a role with fixed payload) at modest speed - definitely.
Another investor con, I reckon.

[Ian Corrigible]

hello, is that the scrap man?
Sadly prescient...

SMDC: "Hello, is that Hybrid Air Vehicles? This is the U.S. Army...yes, those folks who spent $297 million on that balloon thingy. Long story short, we don't need it, so how about you give us $44 million (http://insidedefense.com/201306032436313/Inside-Defense-General/Public-Articles/dod-deflates-lemv-plans-sale-of-300-million-hybrid-airship/menu-id-926.html) for it?"

HAV: "Hmm, that's a bit steep. How about $301,000?"

SMDC: "Sold (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-blimp-fire-sale-20131023,0,3497521.story)."

I/C

[500N]

As they say, deals like that come along once in a lifetime.

Those in Australia will remember Alan Bond / Kerry Packer Channel 9 deal
and buy back.

[t43562]

I think that's great news because it gives the HAC a chance to develop improvements and demonstrate the vehicle.

Naysayers do like to crow but to me it seems rather like being a music critic who can't compose music. Countless billions have been sunk into a lot of the technologies to get them to work that seem "safe" now but they were not always. Stopped prematurely they might have seemed like a bad idea too.

[jolihokistix]

Ballast problems? Worth reminding ourselves of the R101 disaster in 1930.
R101 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R101)

[BEagle]

"We learned quite a bit from the technology," said John Cummings, an Army spokesman. "In the end, it was determined not to pursue it."

Indeed. It didn't work......:rolleyes:

Let's hope that this will be the last time that some airship snake oil salesmen promote the idea of their gasbags for military forces.

Perhaps the grunts have also discovered the effect of W/V on TAS? oo-rah...:bored:

[Haraka]

Not to mention G/S Beags :E.....:8

[LowObservable]

There may be more to this story to come.

[Lima Juliet]

Why? Are they going to fly it at Cardington on Monday?

Those 70kt winds forecast will sure increase the groundspeed!

:eek:

[BEagle]

Not to mention G/S Beags

Well yes. When W/V is applied to TAS, G/S results.....:rolleyes:

So dim-witted US Army types, who don't understand that the alleged 'cruising speed' cannot be achieved with certainty, might perhaps need to think again about the ridiculous claims for blimps made by airship snake-oil salesmen...

[Haraka]

Perhaps the grunts have also discovered the effect of W/V on TAS? oo-rah...

http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/wbored.gif Sorry Beags: Just clarifying an (unintentional) ambiguity.

W/V not of course actually having an effect on TAS, rather the outcome of the combined effects of W/V and TAS on the resultant G/S.

If you see what I mean...;)

[t43562]

US Army sells cancelled LEMV airship to original designer (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/us-army-sells-cancelled-lemv-airship-to-original-designer-392226/)

Still, the Army is interested in what the Cardington-based company does with the hybrid airship. “Should they fly again, we will receive data from their flight,” Cummings says.

[Lima Juliet]

I wonder if they bought the helium to go with it?

BBC News - Is it right to waste helium on party balloons? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24903034)

[t43562]

wAlMPEn7-9A

[t43562]

I can't verify the source (a chap called Trevor Monk) but I have no particular reason to disbelieve it:


The Long Endurance Hybrid Air Vehicle (the HAV 304) is now just leaving the USA packed up in around a dozen ISO containers, and will arrive in Liverpool in a week's time. A week after that it should be in Bedfordshire. We'll let everyone know in due course where it will be, and of course there will be plenty of milestones next year when it gets air inflated, shown off to the public for the first time, helium inflated, re-put together and then first UK flight later in 2014...then on its way to type certification. Watch this space!

[Lima Juliet]

Oh great, the snake oil salesmen are back in the UK after being shown the door by the USA...:eek:

Let's hope there aren't too many Army/Marine idiots in CAP ISTAR at the moment!

LJ

[Avtur]

Watch this space indeed... for silence. Where will all that helium come from in the UK and at what cost? particularly given the high leak rate (allegedly).

[t43562]

As I understand it there's not much 'allegedly' about the whole thing. It was designed and put together in 18 months and it's the first of its kind so it is most likely to have some problems. Read about the errors and problems in the first iPhone demo and then reflect on iPhone sales since then.

As for He availability, there are quite a few other uses for it and I was at a talk given by the Skylon people who use Helium as the heat transfer fluid from the fuel to the heat exchanger that cools incoming air. You don't want to put hydrogen through metal pipes because it makes them brittle so helium is used in a loop instead. One problem is that the system has to dump some of that Helium at one point in the flight to prevent some sort of overexpansion problem or other. Their take on it (apart from there being less desirable design alternatives) was that there are other sources of Helium that are not being tapped at the moment and that attractive prices would no doubt encourage people to bring these things online. Who knows?

I certainly haven't seen a very informative list of sources and potential production. I've also no notion of the quantity being used for cryogenics vs the amount used in Airships but presumably liquid helium is much denser than the gas so it could be a relatively large amount. So I don't feel like panicking based on so little information.

I did find this on wikipedia which suggests that we have a lot more problems with other uses of Helium than airships, perhaps:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/HeliumUsePieChart1996.jpg

As for "it will run out eventually"....well I'm sure that we'll use it as a reason for mining in space.

[Avtur]

I am usually quite thick, but notwithstanding my limitations, the boiling point of Helium is -268 deg C and the boiling point of Hydrogen is -252 deg C. To my mind they are both chuffing cold in their liquid state, and become gaseous at similar temperatures (within 16 degs C). So why does Hydrogen make metal (whatever element that metal may be) brittle, but not Helium?

I am afraid I lost the will to live after reading "cryogenics".

[t43562]

By cryogenics I meant the techniques that are uses to cool superconducting magnets in magnetic resonance imaging machines and so on. As I understand it, it's a general term that has been hijacked by the freeze-you-when-you're-dead bunch but it just encompasses the general field of the use of very cold liquids. I'm no expert and I may be using incorrect terminology but I think I'm just repeating what I've read. Helium is used in all sorts of medical, industrial and space applications many of which use quite significant amounts.

RE Embrittlement: I'm not a materials scientist or a chemist so I can only turn to wikipedia:

The mechanism starts with lone hydrogen atoms diffusing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion) through the metal. At high[clarification needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)] temperatures, the elevated solubility of hydrogen allows hydrogen to diffuse into the metal (or the hydrogen can diffuse in at a low temperature, assisted by a concentration gradient). When these hydrogen atoms re-combine in minuscule voids of the metal matrix to form hydrogen molecules, they create pressure from inside the cavity they are in. This pressure can increase to levels where the metal has reduced ductility and tensile strength up to the point where it cracks open (hydrogen induced cracking, or HIC). High-strength and low-alloy steels, nickel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel) and titanium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium) alloys are most susceptible.High strength nickel-steel alloys and titanium are exactly what spaceships/spaceplanes tend to be made of. More specifically for Reaction Engines, their heat exchanger that cools incoming air is made of very fine tubes with walls that are thinner than a hair (makes the heat transfer efficient) and to be strong enough they are made of a nickel alloy. If you ran hydrogen through them, they'd become brittle apparently. But it's the hydrogen fuel that is the heat-sink so there has to be some other fluid to transfer heat from the incoming air to the fuel. Helium is best, apparently.

Sorry for the digression.

[Avtur]

Not at all; thanks for the lesson!

[Party Animal]

Let's hope there aren't too many Army/Marine idiots in CAP ISTAR at the moment!




But just think about this. One platform that can replace Sentinel, Shadow, Reaper, E3, RJ and a new MPA to boot!! Sounds like a dream machine ;)

Errr.... Does anyone know why it didn't fly back across the pond?

[t43562]

The quote above indicates that they intend to get it type certified. Presumably one can't fly any old where without this. Again, I don't know the person who said it and I am not sure exactly how they know so take it with as many pinches of salt as you like.

[HTB]

Round about the turn of the century, I was working for that much derided campaign against aviation (parts of it actually applied their rulessensibly - but not, I suspect the interface between licensing/licenceholders/applicants for licences).

One fine day an enthusiastic gentleman had managed to wangle a meeting concerning use of airships; having nothing better to do (it was the campaign, remember) I was inveigled to participate in the meeting, along with some flt ops and engineering types (my area of responsibility lay with aerodromes). The proposal was for an airship/hybrid that resembled a large M&M sweet, but about 150ft in diameter, with four prop engines placed at the 90 degree points on the circumference.

The operation mooted was a service between Heathrow and Frankfurt airports. The presentation was a bit whacky, and between suppressed giggles from some of the CAA audience, we managed to highlight some potential operating constraints (for which read “difficulties”). Not the least was how to integrate the large, slow moving, relatively unmanoeuvrable chunk of fabric into the approach pattern for two very busy airports. Then there was the problem of where to park the Frisbee, if it was ever allowed access. However, this did not daunt our intrepid entrepreneur; Plan B was to use the large rivers that flowed through the two cities targeted. Right… The practicalities of trying to find a landing place on the Thames of the Main were discussed (and dismissed almostout of hand – Port of London Authority (and whoever controls German rivers) notwithstanding, there isn’t actually much space on the rivers to operate sucha craft, given the amount of other surface traffic that use them).

Plan C then… Hackney Marshes, or any other large open space within easy reach of the two cities (again, notwithstanding permission from the controlling authority, what about all those football pitches that would be disrupted). You can probably guess how the meeting wound up… don’t call us, because we certainly won’t call you.

The point I’m making is not aimed at the craft themselves (I’m sure there is a role for them), but for civil use there is limited (or non-existent) scope for viable commercial operating locations, at least as far as passengers are concerned (freight might be a discussion for another day).

Just another perspective to fill some gaps in the big picture:ok:

Mister B

[bcgallacher]

I am surprised that this topic has lasted so long - every few years we go through the same nonsense about breakthroughs in airship development until the current company goes out of business.They have one insurmountable weakness - the vagaries of weather,low airspeed and high winds are not compatable.You can build some high tech marvel but the fact is they fly too slow.

[Party Animal]

HTB


I was working for that much derided campaign against aviation


Do you mean to say that you were an admin officer in the RAF? ;)

[HTB]

PA

Ooh, you cheeky boy; you know full well what I mean, and it didn't involve handbrakes or houses:p

Anyway, If I had been an admin wallah, I wouldn't have qualifioed to post on here (according to the description in the thread title... nothing would leave the ground);)

Mister B

[Party Animal]

Mr B,


I wouldn't have qualifioed to post


With spelling like that, you certainly have the right credentials for being an admin blunty!! :ooh:

[HTB]

PA

Oi! I told you not to be a cheeky boy:= - fat finger syndrome (always look at the keyboard when I see daft spollong misteaks to check what the adjacent key is...:O)

Now if you really want to take the poss (see above technique), I was a nav...

Mister B

[t43562]

The brochure FWIW:

http://hybridairvehicles.com/downloads/Airship-Design-and-Engineering.pdf

[t43562]

Again I have no ability to verify or confirm the provenance of this snippet of discussion but it's the only thing I've ever found that seems to show the other side of the LEMV story:


You forget Northrop had the contract, not HAV Ltd, they were just a sub contractor and spent the funds allocated to them. Which was less than 100 million usd. What did Northrop do with the rest ?? Northrop would not even pay for the various contractors involved in the sub assemblies to fly out and finish the job correctly. It's all history now and it's a good move for the US DoD folks to allow the LEMV to return to Cardington, if their experts had thought Northrop had done such a good job they would have handed the ship to them, which is probably why RZ is so peeved.
To a question about what will be different in the UK:

because they will have the time to fit turbines and install the bow thruster which was not even delivered in time for the first flight. Also all the sub contractors are easily available in the UK for any required mods, like changing the skids for a hoverskirt. It will take time for a "New LTAV era", but the cargo LEMV will be a real good start. There are only 6 designers in the world that understand lifting body aerodynamics and flight control systems. 2 of them work for HAV Ltd, BUT none ever worked for Lockheed, which is why their P791 got binned for demonstrating hybrid dutch roll on approach and their Hale D crashed on first flight.

there are always technical issues with a prototype, particularly when forced to fly before all the systems had been fitted (No bow thruster, so out of C of G limits). The no2 LEMV would have been a lot lighter, as more time would have been available to manufacture a lighter envelope etc. No one is saying that HAV Ltd won't need more time and funding. HAV did a great job with very limited funding and did what a lot a nay sayers said they could not do, in getting a full size stable hybrid air vehicle flying in such a short time frame. What I would like to know is what Northrop did with the funds allocated to RPV flight control, surveillance and ground station equipment?

[t43562]

An airship has landed at Cardington Shed 1 - Bedford Today (http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/news/business/business-news/an-airship-has-landed-at-cardington-shed-1-1-5763798)

[Lima Juliet]

Spokesman for the company Chris Daniels said HAV is the offshoot of 40 years of development in Cardington and has been working on this airship with the US military for the past two years.

He said: “The ship is technically different to a blimp in that it is fractionally heavier than air, takes off in a similar way to an aeroplane but floats due to being filled with helium.

“It has four engines and can cruise at speeds of 60-75 knots, or 80 miles per hour and uses an exceptionally low amount of fuel.”


1. 40 years to develop? If you take that view you may as well sweep up the other 80 years of balloon development!

2. Technically, if the blimp is heavier than air then it cannot float! (unless it is on water something else more dense!)

3. Cruising at 60-75 Kts. I guess it will be flying backwards over the next 3 days then!!!

A warning to all would-be investors; the Snake Oil Salesman is back in the UK after a recent tour of the Wild West - lock away your wallets!

LJ :ok:

[Haraka]

The ship is technically different to a blimp in that it is fractionally heavier than air.

As most "Blimps", in American service at least , were usually flown "heavy" using hull lift ( i.e. with a slight positive angle of attack) for handling reasons, it is a bit of a misleading statement.

[t43562]

ADS Advance - HAV304 back in UK (http://www.adsadvance.co.uk/hav304-back-in-uk.html)

[t43562]

I may be wrong but I think the 40-year development refers to the fact that the designers of the HAV304 have been designing airships for 40 years e.g.
Airship Industries Skyship 600 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship_Industries_Skyship_600)

.. and that they have quite a lot of experience.

[t43562]

https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1/1509645_451716421624883_1372712162_n.jpg

[t43562]

https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1/1925317_10151852685872854_1382441340_n.jpg

[t43562]

https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1/1010106_10151852685977854_987511906_n.jpg

[t43562]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t1/1896810_10151852685717854_295684477_n.jpg

[BEagle]

Yes, it seems that the pointless windbag has indeed been unveiled to the meeja.

No doubt the snake oil salesmen will be making their usual fatuous claims about how this thing will be a green solution to everyones needs.....:rolleyes:

See BBC News - The world's longest aircraft in the making (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26372277) if you wish, but there's no real point....:mad:

[Plastic Bonsai]

BBC News - The world's longest aircraft in the making (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26372277)

It's here, it's built, it's working. Now lets find out if it's any use.

I must admit the front does remind me of Eccentrica Gallumbits.

[Genstabler]

I must admit the front does remind me of Eccentrica Gallumbits.

Who is she?

[BEagle]

Genstabler wrote:
Quote:
I must admit the front does remind me of Eccentrica Gallumbits.

Who is she?

Refer to your Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy under the entry for 'Eroticon Six'.....:hmm:

[gnome_fiddler]

I can't help thinking that HAV have missed a trick by not flying the thing to Bedfordshire from the US instead of dismantling it and transporting it by boat (surely one of the mediums it's designed to replace).

[Genstabler]

Thank you BEagle. The breadth and depth of your knowledge base never ceases to amaze me!

[t43562]

There are a couple of other pics here:

Longest aircraft in the world is unveiled in Cardington today | Bedfordshire Local News, Local News Headlines in Bedford | Bedfordshire Newspaper Online (http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Longest-aircraft-in-the-world-is-unveiled-in-Cardington-today-20140228112046.htm)

[Lima Juliet]

My prognosis - bankrupt by 2015...:rolleyes:

[t43562]

Predicting the failure of people who attempt something new is a nice safe thing to do because failure is common and hard to avoid. There are lots of perfectly sensible and ordinary, even good sounding businesses that fail all the time. How much more difficult is it to do new things? And doing them in the UK? Thank goodness that doesn't put everyone off trying.

[dragartist]

t43562, You mean Like the e-Go as reported on the front of this months RAeS magazine. A fine example of British innovation

[Lima Juliet]

T43562

"Something new"? Now that makes me laugh. The snake oil salesmen have been doing this for well over 40 years and fleeced various investors of their cash - Aerospace-Developments, Skyship, Wren Skyships, SkyCat or Thermoskyships*, anyone? No, I thought not :=

LJ

* These are all the same company over the past 40 years and are now the latest - Hybrid Air Vehicles...:hmm:

[Lima Juliet]

PS Seeing as Northrop Grumman and the US Army spent $297,000,000 on it, why do you think they walked away?

They woke up and found themselves in the Snake Oil salesman's caravan with the feeling of being duped and fleeced! :p

(just like the USN with "Sentinel")

LJ

[iRaven]

Regurgitated from Post #9:

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)

18 months before it's shelved (again!)

iRaven

[Surplus]

From the BBC article, a quote from a 'high profile' investor, Iron Maiden's lead singer, Bruce Dickinson

It is 70% greener than a cargo plane, he says. It doesn't need a runway, just two crew. And it can plonk 50 tonnes anywhere in the world you like, which is 50 times more than a helicopter. (My bold)

I'd like to see you 'plonk' it at Combat Outpost Zerok, of Restrepo fame, let's see how it holds up to a hot LZ @ 7000' surrounded by mountains, in an Afghan winter.

A ridiculous claim that would make even Snake oil salesmen blush.

[ShyTorque]

Having heard about this very recently, my first thought was: "Hope it succeeds".

Second thought, after reading more about it, was: "Oh, dear....!"

(as memories of the Lilo lost on the windy beach came flooding back...).

It will need the specialist infrastructure and backup to support it, literally. Because of it's sheer size, one must ask: How? Where?

If it can fly non-stop for 21 days (and at those speeds it will need to, to get anywhere), and this seems to be the 'raison d'etre', it certainly can't come back to Cardington sheds every night.

[unmanned_droid]

I see that the technology strategy board have just given them £2.5m for 'engineering, various' (it seems to me) as part of a public/private £4m fund.

That'll get 'em over the the hump that $297m didn't.

[t43562]

As I understand it Northrop is whom one should ask how the money was spent. It's not clear at all what HAV received but they did have to build the vehicle, pay suppliers for one-off production runs and to cancel any other work they were doing so that this project could be done quickly. I would imagine that they also had to order parts for the 3 airships they were to build and what happened when that had to be cancelled?

The new ideas in this airship have not had their chance to be tested. It's pretty common in history for people to dream of things they can't quite achieve and then for new ideas and technology to make it possible later on. I admit I'm only a programmer and a civilian but this is something I see very often in my field due to the mind-blowing increases in performance that have been achieved. Lots of people said "X" or "Y" will never happen and it has so I sort of disrespect that attitude now because it is regularly disproved in my area of experience.

Essentially I like people who persist because in my experience that's what leads to success. You can roughly speaking do almost anything you think of eventually although there are usually lots and lots of people who delight in telling you that you can't. One could laugh at Leonardo da Vinci for being so foolish as to think of tanks and helicopters and parachutes in 14XX when it was "clearly" snake oil. In a sense perhaps it was for him but those old ideas got dusted off and used. What would the world be like if someone had given him the equivalent of XXX million pounds to pursue it all? Possibly not filled with helicopters but he might have realised that he needed some better mathematics, lighter materials and a computer to help him and that could well have changed the world.

So I'm very happy with this little use of my tax:
Today’s grant announcement will help HAV create a detailed model of the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft and its engines using wind tunnels and CFD simulations; a methodology for engineering the largest composite structures used in aviation; and to develop the software that will control and monitor the hull pressure system.

[BEagle]

But the inescapable fact is that this pointless windbag is trying to offer a solution to a problem which doesn't exist.

I strongly object to any public funds being wasted on this nonsense.

[t43562]

Lots of basic research gets done that has a lot less predictable practical outcome than this. Heck - there are arts projects with more funding. What's the cost of a single F-35?

[chopper2004]

@LJ, you could be right if the trials end up as a flop :p:sad:

Hybrid Air Vehicles expects UK MoD trials in 2015 - IHS Jane's 360 (http://www.janes.com/article/34754/hybrid-air-vehicles-expects-uk-mod-trials-in-2015)

:(:sad:

[The Oberon]

Reinventing the wheel again! In summer 1984, I was attached to the AEW group at RSRE, as was. It was decided to fly the Skyship 600 against one of the East coast radars to see what it looked like. I was sent to Cardington, armed with a Clansman, and another engineer went to the radar site. I spent an enjoyable day flying up and down the coast in the Skyship.


We concluded that, with more consideration given to construction, less metal and properly cowled engines, the signature would be tiny. Then someone remembered the wind problems and it all went away.

[dragartist]

I see that the first lecture of the Cambridge RAeS 14/15 lecture season is the people from HAV at Cardington. Having read all the comments on here I don't think I shall bother going. - perhaps I should so I can make my own mind up.


Sorry I did not get Oberons point about RCS. I did not see stealth as a KUR.


Perhaps t45321 has a point about the technical advances in materials, powerplants, and aerodynamics making this project more viable. I saw an interesting MDBA promo showing the airship being used as a launch vehicle for guided weapons.

[Lima Juliet]

I would have thought that low observability and RADAR stealth would be a must for a lumbering beast like this. Even if it has a tailwind it would be lucky to make 150kts ground speed whilst carrying critical items like F35 engines or an AEW capabilty - it doesn't really make military sense, does it?

Whilst we're on the subject of loads, I think a Herc can carry 20t and the C17 closer to 50t. So why they are pushing this as such an amazing cargo-lift capability, I have no idea - plus the fixed wing aircraft could have made the trip 4 times over in the time it would take a HAV to amke a single journey!

LJ

[Evalu8ter]

Leon,
Because it can carry, potentially, outsize loads that the C17 can't at 5 times the speed of a ship, in a straight line without the need for a port or airstrip...ie almost to the logistically hard 'last mile'.

Think of it more as a very fast naval freighter and it makes more sense. It's also a lot more sensible than using a RW for ASACS.....

[t43562]

I don't know the proposal but one possibility that I can imagine is that a C-17 couldn't deliver loads directly onto the carrier no matter how many times it could fly back and forth. That's not to say that an HAV could do it - I don't know.

I think the argument given for its appeal in terms of cargo is related to being able to collect and drop off point to point. There is the added claim that those points possibly lack the infrastructure that even military transports require.

I presume (because I have no right to claim knowledge) that rough-field landings aren't free of cost for large transport aircraft - there must be maintenance issues. Perhaps the equation is different for an HAV?

A consideration for the future is that the 20t and 50t HAVs are minnows compared to the 1000t version but a start has to be made somewhere.

[Surplus]

Now that would be a thing to see, an airship, which has trouble manouevering in high winds, trying to land on a carrier. Would the carrier have to run down wind in order to reduce the wind over the deck? Would a 1000t airship even fit?

[nimbev]

Because it can carry, potentially, outsize loads that the C17 can't at 5 times the speed of a ship, in a straight line without the need for a port or airstrip...ie almost to the logistically hard 'last mile'.

Think of it more as a very fast naval freighter and it makes more sense.Provided that it is going downwind and there are no mountain ranges for it to cross... oh and provided someone has had the forethought to preposition tethering devices, ground handling etc at the destination oh and fuel for the return; sounds like it needs an airstrip to me.

[t43562]

The whole proposition of hybrids is that they don't need tethers because they are heavier than air.

[Lima Juliet]

That will be until the wind blows over the aerofoil envelope and creates 20T of lift! :p

[t43562]

That indeed may be. I believe the suction hover-skirt is aimed at dealing with that. Not that I know how capable it is.

[Lima Juliet]

20T of suction is going to use a lot of power and, unless there is a perfect seal, will need to be generated for a long period. The more I hear about this, the more I think it is madness...

LJ

[Wander00]

(In a Scottish accent) It will end in tears!

[Just This Once...]

Time and again the proposers of these systems forget about how easy and vulnerable they are to hostile action. Military systems are targets in times of conflict and expecting the enemy to take pity on one of these lumbering hybrids is not a realistic hope.

[Tourist]

Yes, because if you put up a big balloon in Afghanistan it would immediately be shot down......

Oh, wait...

[Just This Once...]

Ahh a proponent of the 'next war will be just like the last one' theory.

Enjoy your job at the Treasury.

[melmothtw]

Time and again the proposers of these systems forget about how easy and vulnerable they are to hostile action. Military systems are targets in times of conflict and expecting the enemy to take pity on one of these lumbering hybrids is not a realistic hope.

Actually, the opposite is true. Both the US and UK militaries have fired rounds of varying calibres - up to and including 20 mm - into HAV-made vehicles and have even tested the effect that a SAM might have, in a bid to determine their vulnerability. In each instance, the airships survived, in most cases so well that, faced with similar ammunition in combat, the crew probably would not notice that they had been the subject of an attack.

There are several reasons for this, chief among them the fact that helium is an inert gas and so incapable of igniting even when exposed to a tracer round or missile detonation. While the hull's fabric was pierced by both the entry and exit passage of the round, the gas inside was contained under such a low pressure (1/10th of 1 lb per square inch) - and there was so much of it - that although the hull was riddled with holes it took hours to deflate significantly.

It was concluded that a SAM would pass straight through without detonating, leaving two relatively small holes. Tests established that it would take the vehicle three and a half hours to deflate with these two holes in the skin.

A warhead was also strapped to the inside of a fully inflated test hull and detonated to test the airship's behaviour if a SAM were to explode inside the envelope. The results of the experiment were somewhat surprising, blowing out the windscreens out of the testers' cars, but having the hull just going 'boing' and coming back out again. And although the casing from the explosive made a number of shrapnel holes, they were irrelevant.

Even if such holes were numerous, they would have little effect on the vehicle as the helium would not be escaping under pressure. As a result, the damaged fabric skin has a natural tendency to seal itself. Also, as there is no internal structure to the envelope (it is fully supported by the pressure of the gas), there are no parts to damage.

[Just This Once...]

I led one of the UK/US vulnerability studies which tore apart the company manufactured theories. You can only imagine how keen they were to show how inert helium was whilst ignoring vulnerable systems and the pink fleshy things inside.

About the only positive I could state is that if an enemy was dumb enough to repeatedly target the big empty space then they may have a chance. Should the enemy choose to target the other things then it would get messy.

To tease the company we even showed how simple it would be to ruin their much vaunted helium envelope, just for fun. A helicopter laying an explosive rope along the top would do the trick. At one stage people were looking into how to defend against the threat of being boarded inflight. Anyway, a burst of fire or a missile or 2 into the flightdeck is much more traditional. If you target the engines and consult the metman you may even find a load of nice equipment downwind somewhere.

Still, these things are so slow that there is plenty time for the enemy to learn on the job.

:ok:

[melmothtw]

While you could armour the gondola, you would of course be trading payload for weight. Of course, there's always the unmanned option as envisioned for LEMV.

Already in the 'real-world' HAV and others fly these airships across the States and North America on a regular basis, where they are repeatedly shot-up by every hick with a firearm. Ive been told anecdotely that they often arrive at their destination peppered with bullet holes, and to date none have been lost to such ground fire.

Of course, a large part of surviveability is being smart as to where and when you use it. There are planty of platforms in service today that you'd think twice before deploying directly into harms way, and yet they all have a role to play.

[Just This Once...]

The armour vs weight issue taxes all the slow movers. HAVs do have a significant weight lifting advantage but it is difficult to see how they could armour it enough given the lack of ability to run, hide or manoeuvre. The company did honestly look one of our team (an Apache pilot) in the eye and said when they add armour his little bullets would just bounce off.

'You do know we are reasonably good at plinking main battle tanks don't you?'

[LowObservable]

I don't think anyone is talking about flying these things into any environment worse than the risk of small arms (disperse your redundant systems and a bit of Dyneema around the soft pink bits) and MANPADS (IR aimpoint goes where?).

As for wind: I have not seen an HAV with a pressure cabin so we are talking low altitudes, where mean zonal winds can be around 30 mph max - not impossible with an 80 knot/90 mph cruise. Now use satellite weather planning to route around the worst of it.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/MZW_12mo.gif

I think there is a case for a tech demonstrator to prove out long-range cruise, operability and ground handling. Aeroscraft has done quite a lot on limited money, and HAV Ltd is working on the ex-LEMV. This actually is something that is being taken seriously in a lot of places despite the fact that there is not a lot of government money to be had, and that's a good sign.

Besides, you'll never see a heavier-than-air craft that, for some unaccountable reason, reminds you of Kim Kardashian.

http://airpigz.com/storage/2012-august/NorthropGrumman-LEMV-Airship-First-Flight-Front-View.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1344710075000

[Wander00]

I am reminded of the song that starts


"All of a sudden a ruddy great b@ll@ock came flying through the air............"

[Lima Juliet]

Looks like a flying arse - oh, it is...:ok:

[Tourist]

It is a very disappointing fact that most people seem to assume that just because something has never worked before that it never will.
Fortunately the human race has those who are not so easily put off.

[nimbev]

Fortunately the human race has those who are not so easily put off. Especially if they can get someone else to pay!

I remember Aerospace Developments and then Airship Industries making grossly exaggerated claims as to their abilities back in the 70s, ISTR it was ASW/ASUW then. No matter how many times they were told to go away they kept turning up like the proverbial bad penny.

If HAV only works in 'ideal' conditions and scenarios, what is the point of depleting ones limited financial resources on such a beast only to end up with fewer more capable platforms?

[Surplus]

Fortunately the human race has those who are not so easily put off.

Was Harold Camping involved with this project too?

[LowObservable]

If airships or hybrids had failed after receiving one-tenth of one percent of the R&D investment lavished on tilt-rotors or STOVL one might be justified in writing them off. As it is, the technology has suffered from all the ills that could afflict it: bounced around from one service sponsor to another, drip-fed money in tiny increments one minute and expected to yield 500 ton payload monsters the next.

[BEagle]

LowObservable wrote: If airships or hybrids had failed after receiving one-tenth of one percent of the R&D investment lavished on tilt-rotors or STOVL one might be justified in writing them off. As it is, the technology has suffered from all the ills that could afflict it: bounced around from one service sponsor to another, drip-fed money in tiny increments one minute and expected to yield 500 ton payload monsters the next.

Nevertheless, these totally useless windbags are simply a complete and utter waste of time, money and effort. If the snake-oil salesmen, who are trying to sell these ridiculous pieces of junk to the military, had any real belief in their project, they'd already have identified a niche market. But it's clear that they're trying to find a solution to a problem which, frankly, doesn't actually exist.

And Bruce, stick to Heavy Metal.....

[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]

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]

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!!! :ugh:

I'd rather throw the £400M 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 £400 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]

Selex ES and HAV to team up for MoD airship testing - 10/21/2014 - Flight Global (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/selex-es-and-hav-to-team-up-for-mod-airship-testing-405022/)


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! :

IWoEQRl8dCs

[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 (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/israeli-military-inflates-aerostat-demand-403639/)

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.

[Haraka]

I never cease to be amazed by the fundamental etymological ignorance regarding aeronautical terminology displayed by an increasing number of individuals rowing themselves in to the Lighter-than-Air circus.
I gave up on one such (U.S. Industry) forum having been informed by several "experts" that aerostats were balloons on cables , unlike airships " which moved under their own power" and therefore weren't "static".

[Mechta]

Tourist :D:D:D

The Israelis certainly seem to understand the benefits of persistent surveillance. What is surprising is how their 'white pumpkins with an underslung seaside windbreak' appear to fly in the face of all previous development of kite balloons. They are in constant evidence around the northern part of Gaza though and seemed to cope with wind pretty well. A very tall tower would be needed to give a camera the same field of view that they have.

Historically, British UAVs and airships have both suffered from a lack of investment, underdeveloped engines (for the application) and a lack of continuous improvement. Some Israeli UAV companies hire their systems out to provide a 'intel by the hour' service, so they get continuous feedback from their in-house operators (not to mention a front line under 100km from the factory) and make sure their products are as reliable and effective as possible. Maybe HAV will consider a similar approach?

[Courtney Mil]

Sorry for going back so many posts, but what shortage of helium? Loads of It out there and, depending on your site, 10-15% of the gas that comes out of the ground is helium. It doesn't burn so you might as well keep it. Shortage? No.

[Mechta]

Helium shortage:

Helium Shortage: Situation Update One Year Later (http://www.decodedscience.com/helium-shortage-situation-update-one-year-later/42314)

[t43562]

This is about the USAF Blue Devil II airship:

USAF Punishes Former Top General Over Defunct Airship Project | Defense content from Aviation Week (http://aviationweek.com/defense/usaf-punishes-former-top-general-over-defunct-airship-project)

[Lima Juliet]

There's a brilliant quote on that link:

I think Nevil Chute's autobiography "Slide Rule" should be required reading before embarking on another airship project.
Second verse same as first, should be better, but only getting worse...

There is a a Very Senior Officer who used to be high up in the MOD's capability area for ISTAR who now works for the Cardington gang - what is so different to him compared to the US General? Also, there are countless ex-Service individuals in a British Aerospace company that pull in their contacts within the UK military for contract bidding. I also know that this happens with the massive US Aerospace companies. So what has Gen Deptula done that others have been deemed not to have done?

LJ

[Heathrow Harry]

Nevil SHUTE actually.............. :rolleyes:

[t43562]

HAV receives UK funding to bring airship back to flight - 2/12/2015 - Flight Global (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/hav-receives-uk-funding-to-bring-airship-back-to-flight-408982/)

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) has received additional funding from the UK government to further develop its Airlander hybrid airship, as it moves towards an anticipated return to flight.
Under the government’s Regional (http://www.flightglobal.com/landingpage/Regional.html) Growth Fund (RGF), some £297 million ($455 million) was awarded to 63 projects, including HAV’s Airlander development.
“The RGF funding will enable a truly groundbreaking, entirely new type of aircraft to return to flight,” HAV says.

[bcgallacher]

Does any professional in the aviation business really believe that these things are a viable proposition? Every few years we get the same overhyped project involving airships being the next big thing,then after expenditure of millions it all fades away.

[Sky Sports]

Does any professional in the aviation business really believe that these things are a viable proposition?
Yes, some do!

[Lima Juliet]

Once the first UK-based flight test has been conducted, the aircraft will carry out some 200 flight hours over one to two months to prove its capabilities, after which customer demonstrations are planned to take place, HAV says.

...then we'll fold up for a few years until we rebrand our snake oil once again to some poor gullible investors!

Big airships = Big bucks = Big losses

Even small ones are a handful in the lightest of winds, need big infrastructure to protect them from the elements and can't compete financially, or in capability, with sea-freight or conventional RW/FW air transport.

LJ :cool:

[Lima Juliet]

“The commitment of the UK government to our business is vital, and this will ensure we fly our innovative Airlander aircraft and enter the commercial market,” HAV chief executive Stephen McGlennan says of the grant.

“To achieve this we need to create jobs, and the RGF grant immediately helps us to do this. We know the demand for Airlander is enormous, and we relish creating exports and further jobs as we lead the field globally.”

Is there really? There must be more gullible people in the world than I ever imagined...

[Evalu8ter]

Leon,
There are a number of Requirements and markets that could be serviced by the HAV. That doesn't mean that the HAV is the only way of fulfilling the need, but remains an option. In a mil context, for example, PWAS could be manned aircraft, MALE/HALE UAVs, the HAV or a satellite; the discrimiators will be sensor payload, endurance and Whole Life Costs - HAV has the right to be in the mix, but may not be the right solution. In the civ context, building roads/airstrips to access remote areas for mineral extraction is very expensive, the bigger Airlander would, again, be an option. Nobody's saying that HAV has the right to win any of this business, but they have a right to compete.

[BEagle]

We know the demand for Airlander is enormous.....

Oh really? Or do you mean that you hope that the demand for this wretched windbag is enormous?

Rearrange the following into a well-known saying: Oil, snake, man, sales.....:mad:

[LowObservable]

The way some people talk, you'd think that a relative of theirs had gone down on the R.101.

Had a reasonably large-scale, modern LTA/hybrid been built, tested and flopped operationally or technically, the case would be easier to make. However, a lot of reasonably sensible people and large companies have taken an interest in the topic, studied the problems and started to build hardware.

Most of the flops have either been due to fiscal exhaustion, or the customer walking away - and a big reason for the latter is that for the customer, the LTA is always a new area that competes for money with core activities, and consequently perishes as soon as money gets tight.

In the case of YEZ-2A, the Pentagon decided to give cruise missile defense to the Army, which favored aerostats - and that's how we got JLENS, which has the huge weakness of being very hard to relocate (lots of C-17s). LEMV could have been the best technology in the world but had a management structure that was :mad:ed-up at the outset.

There are many ideas in the history of aviation that have been given much more money and allowed to prove whether they worked or not.

[Lima Juliet]

We've been ballooning for nearly 200 years and the latest lot have been at it for nearly 50 years (same people with different company names). How much of a chance do they get? See below.

Oh, and the Yanks aren't stupid and they would have thrown money at it to make it work if it was viable, both financially or technically. They saw the writing on the wall and were licky to recover £301,000 of their millions by selling it back to the snake oil salesmen.

http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/images/aboutuschart.gif

[LowObservable]

What I see in that chart is a company supporting itself with small conventional airships (which everyone agrees are niche devices, no arguments there) while it tries, mostly with very little outside funding, to develop big airships and, later, hybrids.

The various hybrids, by the way, are all aimed at addressing the speed and ground handling issues that are recognized LTA problems.

LEMV was overweight, for sure, but the GAO's explanation that it was 12,500 lb overweight because of the tail fins sounds simplistic. It was more a case of having an airframe designer in the UK, making the envelope in a U.S. textile mill and then making the radar guys do the integration under Army management. And the whole thing cost one-tenth as much as JLENS.

[Sky Sports]

You have to agree though, if airships are a scam on the scale of the 'Nigerian diamond mine' email, then there are some pretty dumb high ranking military officers and multi-millionaire investors out there!!!

Maybe the critics are jealous because they are neither of the above!

[Lima Juliet]

Here we go again, can we look at this please...

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)

I would say he is amply qualified to comment!

LJ

[LowObservable]

Generally speaking, when someone goes from "co-founder" to firing off vitriolic attacks (I should add "allegedly" since I can't trace this back any farther than a comment on an Air & Space article), one suspects that personal feelings and emotions enter the scene.

Besides, anyone who became CEO of an airship company and was then surprised and shocked to find that such vehicles cruise at <100 knots and that there is an atmospheric phenomenon known as "wind" has to be as thick as two short planks.

[Lima Juliet]

Have you 2 bought shares in the 'snake oil'? :p

[LowObservable]

I keep my billions in Krugerrands under the mattress. Also, ethics rules.

[nimbev]

We know the demand for Airlander is enormous, Must be from the same BAe marketing team who forecast world wide Concorde sales of 400+ .

[Bigbux]

C17 and Atlas are pressurised, right?

Load 'em to the gunwales, close the doors then fill them with helium. Voila!- best of both worlds.

You just need to make sure the crew have an adequate air supply and have finished the in-flight rations before thy take off.

[Lyneham Lad]

A rather more traditional version seems to about to be launched (Flight Global):-
New Sky Dragon airship completes critical design review (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/new-sky-dragon-airship-completes-critical-design-review-409376/)

Worldwide Aeros Corp (Aeros) has completed the critical design review of its 40E Sky Dragon multirole airship, marking the start of production for the lighter-than-air craft.

Derived from the company’s Sky Dragon family of airships, the 40E offers a low-cost surveillance and security capability in addition to the traditional broadcast and tourism roles typically carried out by airships.

Don't all rush at once to buy shares... ;)

[t43562]

We're hiring! 29 new jobs up for grabs as of today (30 April): Engineering, Operations, Programme Management. If you like challenges and want to wake up excited to go to work every day, please go to: Hybrid Air Vehicles - Careers (http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/careers)

[t43562]

Return to flight funding reached:

Great news! We've just hit our £2 million target on https://www.crowdcube.com/investm…/hybrid-air-vehicles-18450 (https://www.crowdcube.com/investment/hybrid-air-vehicles-18450) Thanks to all who have invested and supported us in many ways in this campaign.
We will allow the campaign to overfund for a period to avoid disappointing those investors who have told us they want to participate, but we do finish for sure on the Crowdcube site at midnight on Thursday. And we may need to close even before then, depending on how much extra starts coming in.
So secure in our funding to first flight, and all systems go on that front now. Look out for some big engineering milestones coming up.
The Airlander Team ‪#‎PrepareforTakeOff‬ (https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/preparefortakeoff?source=feed_text&story_id=893164870721851)

[BEagle]

Oh FFS, not again!

Someone please tell me that it's April 1st! Surely no-one is going to waste time and money on the pointless gasbag?

[t43562]

Surely and verily 860 people have just, perhaps, wasted their money on it.

[BEagle]

Clearly.......:rolleyes:




.....

[Avtur]

The Government has even given them a 3.4 million pound grant to waste. :ugh:

[Tourist]

BEagle said,

"Oh FFS, not again!

Someone please tell me that it's April 1st! Surely no-one is going to waste time and money on the pointless gasbag?"


I really, really tried to resist the temptation, but somebody really has to highlight the irony of that post....:p

[LowObservable]

So you know the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg?

[t43562]

Hybrid Hopes: An Inside Look At The Airlander 10 Airship | Technology content from Aviation Week (http://aviationweek.com/technology/hybrid-hopes-inside-look-airlander-10-airship)

This does have some details I've not seen before e.g.:


The vehicle is a pressure-stabilized structure and "gets all its strength from being inflated to just above atmospheric pressure with a 4-in. water gauge pressure differential (about 0.15 psi),” says HAV Technical Director Mike Durham. Despite the relatively small amount of pressure, the strength is derived from the airship’s huge diameter. “It acts as a pressure vessel and creates a skin tension in the hull because of the internal pressure.” Skin tension is a function of pressure multiplied by radius. “We have little pressure but lots of radius. I can walk along the top of the hull and I sink in just 0.5 in., so it’s a very stiff structure,” Durham adds.


and

Without an internal structural framework, how can the pressure vessel support tons of equipment and payloads of up to 7,000 lb.? “The payload module has pickup points on every single frame,” explains Durham. “We have a cable that runs up and punches into the interior of the hull, which is a figure-8 shape with a septum diaphragm in the middle. The payload sits in a cleft underneath. The cables come up on either side of the diaphragm to which large patches are bonded. All the loads are fed into that 300-ft.-long central diaphragm from where they are distributed out along the top surface,” he adds.


and more...

[t43562]

Selex Signs Hybrid Airship Deal (http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/support/2015/06/15/hybridair-selex-agree-airship-tie-up-british-airlander-surveillance-radar/71124292/)


LONDON — A partnership deal to demonstrate the capabilities of a hybrid airship as a maritime surveillance platform has been signed by Selex ES and HybridAir Vehicles, according to an official at the defense electronics arm of Finmeccancia.
The companies are in talks with the British Ministry of Defence and other potential customers to conduct demonstration flights with the surveillance and reconnaissance platform starting next year, the official said.
Selex ES and HAV could announce they have inked a formal memorandum of understanding in the next few days.
The deal will see the British hybrid airship builder equip its Airlander 10 platform with the Selex's SeaSpray multimode active electronically scanned array radar, electronic support measures equipment, an electro optical/imaging infrared turret, a mission management system and other equipment, said the UK-based official.
With a 10-ton payload the Airlander 10 could house an array of sensors including anti-submarine warfare systems and search-and-rescue systems, said the official.
A HAV executive revealed last October the two sides were in talks which could lead to the British MoD testing the platform.
Although it has some modest updates, the 300-foot-long Airlander 10 is essentially the same HAV vehicle used by Northrop Grumman for the Long-Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) program canceled by the US Army in 2013 in the face of technical issues and Pentagon budget problems.
HAV repurchased the airship after the collapse of the LEMV program and has been rebuilding and updating the machine ahead of it flying in early 2016.
"We have put in some modifications, and will put in some more over the course of the next few months, particularly with regards to the payload module and the fins," said a HAV spokesman
The Selex ES official said the platform, with its basic ISR fit, will undertake four months of test flying ahead of conducting trials for various interested parties.
News of the tie-up between Britain's premier defense electronics producer and HAV coincides with an announcement scheduled for June 16 at the Paris Air Show by rival hybrid airship maker Lockheed Martin on progress with its vehicle.
The machines are being touted for military roles and civil uses from surveillance to transporting heavy loads.

[BEagle]

Ye Gods - how many more suckers will fall for the spiel of these snake-oil salesmen promoting their useless gas bag?

[Torquelink]

Airlander 10 could house an array of sensors including anti-submarine warfare systems

Presumably any self-respecting sub would just point it's nose upwind and leave the AirLander for dust . . or spray . . ?

[t43562]

There are some new jobs on the Hybrid Air Vehicles website, including one for a test pilot:

Hybrid Air Vehicles - Careers (http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/careers)


Flight Test Vacancies -
F1 Experimental Test Pilot – New!

[iRaven]

Redundant by 2016...:rolleyes:

[LowObservable]

You've got three months, Mr J.

http://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/463101-new-gen-airships-hybrid-air-vehicles-uk-7.html#post8345297

As it happens I saw the beast today. A bit of rebuild work is yet to be done, but I wouldn't say it's impossible for them to fly 1Q16.

I know that we'll hear a lot about snakebags and gas-selling oilmen (I think I got that right but after so many repetitions I get confused) but an endorsement from Selex-ES, who not only make sensors but build quite complicated UAVs and integrate complete systems, is not to be sneezed at.

The really nice number, from the surveillance standpoint, is $2k/hour operating cost including amortized purchase cost. That's King Air territory.

[Lima Juliet]

There is no way that $2k/hr is FULL cost. The support costs of this gas-bag will be huge - you need a lot of real estate and big hangars (like Cardington) to support it and they all add to the full hourly cost.

Ok, 2015 may be wrong, but think that Raven is right about 2016. I just can't see this selling in any great numbers.

LJ

[Sky Sports]

Concord never sold in great numbers, but it was pioneering and a thing of real beauty!

[LowObservable]

LJ - I don't know where you get "a lot of real estate" from. It needs about twice its own length to get airborne, most of which can be any flat surface. Mooring (using two trailer-mounted pieces of kit) requires a circle of less than 2X the length, which can be flat surface you can drive a truck across.

It's also quiet, removing fixed-wing noise constraints from the operation.

As for hangarage, I don't think that's the plan. The outer layer of the envelope is made from the same stuff they use to protect ocean-yacht sails and the inner layer is carbonfiber fabric.

However, your concerns are understandable. Ground-handling for a large conventional (always negative weight) ship is a pain in the tuckus, which is why Roger Munk switched to the hybrid and added thrust-vectoring and FBL controls, and modern fabrics are a huge factor in terms of strength-to-weight, sustained gas-tightness and climate resistance.

Dies ist ganz nicht Ihr Grossvaters Zeppelin!

[Lima Juliet]

Leaving the gas-bag outside? Good luck with that. I have a bit of knowledge of yacht sails and microlights (like Ikarus C42 and Rans S6) - I wouldn't expect them to last more than a couple of years if I left them exposed to the elements in all weathers.

If you're planning to have your gas-bag 'sucked down' onto a piece of concrete then that suction has to come from somewhere and that will also add to the cost. Also, is this suction going to cope with 40kts+ of wind that's not exactly freak weather these days?

One wonders why the company has bothered with the expense of restoring Cardington if it doesn't need to protect its gas-bags from all weathers?

Oh, and as for Concorde? I think they built 20 and operated 14. I'd be staggered if HAV get a quarter of those sales!

LJ

[JOE-FBS]

It's public record that HAV don't own and haven't paid to restore the sheds.

Cardington airship shed site's 592 new homes approved - BBC News (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-25924799)

[Lima Juliet]

Just had a look at the HAV website and it states:

AIRLANDER 10
The largest aircraft currently flying uses innovative technology to combine the best characteristics of fixed wing aircraft and helicopters with lighter-than-air technology to create a new breed of hyper-efficient aircraft. It can stay airborne for up to five days at a time if manned, and for over 2 weeks unmanned. It will fulfil a wide range of communication, cargo carrying and survey roles in both the military and commercial sectors all with a significantly lower carbon footprint than other forms of air transport.

Following the construction of a second Airlander 10, HAV’s next plan is to begin work on the Airlander 50, a longer and larger version with a potential payload of 60t for heavy lift operations. The Airlander 50 will be able to carry up to six 20-foot containers in its payload module, subject to a maximum weight of 50t. A 20t lift built-in crane is also included as part of the basic specification. It could also be used as a manned surveillance vehicle, carrying a crew of up to 14 people for a period of up to five days. Work on this airship is planned to begin in 2016 with first flights in 2018. - See more at: http://aerosociety.com/News/Insight-Blog/2081/Airships-a-new-dawn#sthash.8UvZbLMl.dpuf

So the weeks and weeks of manmed surveillance seems to have been cut down to 'up to 5 days'. It has a payload of 10,000kgs and cruises at 80kts (in the North Atlantic Jetstream it will be going backwards on most days!). A C-5B Galaxy cruises at 480kts ground speed and carries 122,000kgs. A C-17 carries 77,000kgs and cruises at 450kts groundspeed. I still can't see any advantage in the cargo role and the ISR role is also questionable when some fixed wing can fly unrefuelled for 12-14hrs and close to 24hrs when air-to-air refuelled - even a venerable AWACS can get close to those figures and normally its the toilet that's the limiting factor! For unmanned surveillance, the latest iteration of Zephyr is looking to fly for over 3 months, which is better than '2 weeks unmanned'. If I had the Airlander in a game of 'Top Trumps' it would be the crap card that everyone wouldn't want! Even the upgraded Airlander 50 can't beat a C-17 in cargo capability.

So quite how the HAV sales team think they're going to sell any of these is beyond me. Maybe 1 or 2 for novelty value in the tourism industry and I reckon that's about it.

For Joe-fbs, so the HAV effort is being sponsored by housing developments then? That's how they can claim $2k/hr then!!!

LJ

[CoffmanStarter]

Leaving the gas-bag outside ...

Didn't Cpl Jones have that mod on his Butchers Van :E

[Lima Juliet]

Yes, Coff, it did. At least Cpl Jones' Butcher's Van stood more chance in a contested environment!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/20/article-2206157-151C447A000005DC-249_634x442.jpg

LJ :p

[LowObservable]

The website is out of date in that respect. The 50 is some way off.

Nobody ever expected "weeks and weeks of manned surveillance". The US Army wanted 21 days unmanned. I am not sure why, particularly with a lot of specialized electronics on board.

And while I claim no special knowledge of North Atlantic weather, the Hindenburg did operate a scheduled passenger service in 1936, with an 85 mph top speed.

And you wouldn't expect them to build it outdoors, would you?

[Lima Juliet]

LO

The Hindenburg took 60-80 hours to cross the Atlantic - that's 3-4 days roughly. I don't believe it was pressurised and so would have sat outside the jetstream. But why would you want spend 3-4 days in a blimp when you can do it almost in as many hours in a fixed wing aircraft?

I remember listening to Gen Dave Deptula state when he was the 'big cheese' of USAF Intel and he explicitly stated he wanted 'weeks and weeks' of ISR and that was what the LEMV was all about. Having been sold their 'snake oil' the US military bailed before wasting another load of dollars; why? Because LEMV was 12,000lbs overweight and rather than being capable of delivering 'weeks' of ISR it was now going to be 'days' - funnily enough it was estimated at just less than 5 days, which is what the Airlander is quoting!

Trans-atlantic services of fixed wing aircraft only really started properly after WWII as the engines were all too unreliable pre-1939. Hence, flying boats that could land on if one of their 'donks' packed in or an airship that could limp on whilst the crew fixed the engine (somewhat bravely in my opinion). We don't need to do that anymore, our gas turbines are reliable and efficient. If you have a look on the internet the cost of the Hindeburg ticket was ~$400 one way which was a sh!t load of money in 1936! :ouch:

If this was such a good idea then t'Bungling Baron, Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Dassault, Saab, Mikoyan, Sukhoi, etc...etc... would have thrown their weight behind it decades before. Even now, if there was any 'brass' to be made then the big boys would be wading straight in. I tend to agree with the implied lack of faith by the big aerospace companies - the concept is flawed and even if a few end up flying it will end up being a great big expensive folly at the tax-payers' expense.

LJ