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Old 04-16-2008, 21:42 PM   #2 (permalink)
Maxor
Military Professional
 
Join Date: 11-18-05
Posts: 325
Airships have the distinct disadvantage of being big soft slow targets.

This is even more true than of airlift planes and awacs.

there is a fairly large difference between 120 mph (about the fastest practicle for for an airship and average is more like 80 mph) and 420 mph (a fairly sound max speed for a c-130 most varients are slightly lower.)

Most solid body aircraft can take a fair amount of damage from small arms fire and not suffer serious consquences, where a derigible will have numberous lift sacs any of which is significantly impacted by a single small arms round and due to size and weight cannot be effectively armoured.

The things that may make one nice for civilian use fuel effeicancy and huge theoretical cargo weight are also nice for the military but when you look at the ease with which one could be destroyed you would have to keep them far enough from any potential danger that in most instances the huge lift capacity would be of little use. Also the more lifting capacity you actually use the more suseptable the vechile is to damage. For a high endurance observation platorm it may have some use or as a weather vechile but I don't see many future military uses for airships as we know them.

Now for future hydro planes and ekranoplans such as the caspain see monster one can project future use and advancements at least in the hypothetical sense. The possiblility of a large vechile that could fly but perhaps not be particualarly effeciant without an internal lift source such as lighter than air gas is also conceivable though unlikely since the volume needed to provide signficant lift using lighter than air gas somewhat limits aerodynamics and possible handling.
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