Sadly? Welcome to the 21st century buddy... a "lighter than air" aircraft would serve no purpose for us.
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Balloon pilot?
- Thread starter CommodoreMid
- Start date
Sadly? Welcome to the 21st century buddy... a "lighter than air" aircraft would serve no purpose for us.
That has been debated many times and probably will be again in the future.
It would be great for coastal patrol and anti-drug ops - this was the consensus when I left active duty and was the position of U.S. Southern Command. The problem was that no service wanted to fund it.
There was also a lot of ongoing debate about using them for ASW. Long loiter time, lots of room for all kinds of sensors and enormous sonobouy storage capability. It could easily keep up with the BG too.
Without getting OPSEC, how good could that really be for anti-drug ops. As I understand it we nab a lot of the runners because they don't realize we are there. A balloon is pretty obvious...
"Sadly" as in... an era gone by. An expression of reminiscince.
ie: "Sadly, the Navy retired the idea of a fighter-only aircraft."
or
"Sadly, most car manufacturers have given up on the massive powerful engines in search of more MPGs."
A blimp parked at altitude has a hell of a radar horizon, ESM horizon, etc. Plus it would have room for the controllers needed to run the intercepts, the extra crew for multiple shifts and crew rest facilities to support them . Kind of like an E-2 or AWACS that doesn't have to worry about gas. It could stay onstation for long periods of time.
The druggies know our AWACS, ships, helos, P-3s are out there now. They see and track them too. This is really no different, just more cost effective.
Yeah but how long would said blimp take to get on station is a good question. Works great for ADIZ kinda ops where you could just base them here and fly them out 90 miles and be done with it. But what if you suddenly needed to sent blimps to ..... Africa for example. Then what?
No different than sending a ship, probably faster.
Interesting
I believe that they are currently using tethered balloons for customs/border protection. I've seen a restricted area on a chart that referred to cables extending to 12,000 or 15,000 feet for a radar balloon right along the Texas border. This was about 5 or 6 years ago, though, so my memory might be foggy.
edit: Apparently they do exist, but unfortunately (or fortunately if your primary grades are as bad as mine) they are unpiloted. http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3507
edit: Apparently they do exist, but unfortunately (or fortunately if your primary grades are as bad as mine) they are unpiloted. http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=3507
Correct.
Ships probably weather storms a bit better then a Blimp. Remember thats how the Navy lost several of its large airships. Plus that would be a long time to be stuck in a flying balloon without any of the advantages a ship would offer (size, crew, ect).
The problem was studied and answered on more than one blimp assessment whenI was still on active duty. The technology is a lot better than the old days. Plus just like any other aircraft that needs a support system, so would the blimp. But instead of a land base (for AWACS / Air Force) or a CVN, it was shown that crew rotation and resupply could be easily conducted using existing logistic ships and even surface combatants. Plus they could probably get access to land bases too.
I seem to remember that losing ships to bad weather at sea was also a lot more common during the time the Navy last had blimps.
pdx
HSM Pilot
One of the points was that the blimp could have the crew rest facilities that a ship offers. I think it's a great idea too. It would only be effective for certain operations, but it has lots of advantages.
I would think storms would be the most range limiting factor. If one builds (especially over water), there is not much option to run away and land. Still, I would think most drug patrols are close to shore operations.
I swear there was something in Proceedings recently (although I may be wrong) talking about bringing back ship based derigiables/blimps, but they would be unmanned. As for the ADIZ blimps, gtxc is right on, but they're not just along our borders. They're all over the carribean and are also ship-borne. When the weather gets nasty, they reel them in. As HAL has said, their a great asset to have available in your bag of tricks.