![Image](http://www.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWeek/Ares/LEMV%20First%20Flight%20A.jpg)
Video: LEMV First Flight
LEMV First Flight Video and Photos
Let's drop a 5GW p-11B Polywell into one of these babies and see what it can really do...
I fully agree with that sentiment.More money flushed down the toilet by idiotic DOD decisions. This thing has no mission. It was rationalized by comparing it to doing recon with fighters and helicopters, but of course we all know that the best aerial recon comes from drones, which are vastly cheaper than helicopters and fighters. Look at this absurd rationalization over at wiki:
Gorgon Stare, ARGUS-IS.ladajo wrote:Or lets put an ISAR in it and see what it can really see for semi-persistant large area observation.
Army's hybrid airship program started out as a rational enough idea - long-haul ultra-heavy cargo, intermediate between naval logistics ships and USAF cargo birds. USAF hates running CAS and the cargo fleet (not glamorous), and Army hates endlessly getting the short end of the stick from the zoomies. Funding collapsed with the economy.GIThruster wrote:More money flushed down the toilet by idiotic DOD decisions. This thing has no mission. It was rationalized by comparing it to doing recon with fighters and helicopters, but of course we all know that the best aerial recon comes from drones, which are vastly cheaper than helicopters and fighters. Look at this absurd rationalization over at wiki
Yepp...I have to disagree. Airships have not been a rational idea since heavier than air flight became a working solution. People who think it's rational don't understand the immense problems caused by the requirements. Airships are completely at the mercy of the winds, and this problem is multiplied severely when the ship is near the surface.
The reason that an airship needs a circle to moor in that has the same radius as the length of the ship is that the ship is moored at its nose to a tower or mooring mast, and the rest of the ship acts like a windsock. If the ship is not free to move and change direction with the wind, it rips itself or it's mooring station apart.
People think the idea of such extremely large objects is pretty cool, and I'll agree there is a coolness factor involved, but in normal operations, and especially in war, size like this is a huge deficit. Ships that are thwarted by the s lightest breeze are not practical, nor rational for DOD work, especially when their mission is far better and more cheaply accomplished by drones we already have built and fly daily.
Airships went out of use for excellent reasons. They are utterly inferior to aircraft.
Irrelevant to the politics of funding strategic airlift. Air Force loathes airlift, but dominates fixed wing air transport thanks to the Key West Treaty - and since AF gets all the support funding that goes with that dominance, it will never give up the mission it loathes. The Key West Treaty imposes severe limitations on how Army can oppose and defy Air Force's control of aviation. The Army brass at Key West messed up BADLY back when, and Navy did not.GIThruster wrote:I have to disagree. Airships have not been a rational idea since heavier than air flight became a working solution.