(zeppelin) balon with awacs / ecw / bvr missile is possible ?

First a Zeppelin is a large low altitude airship having a rigid frame that contains a large number of gas filled ballonets and is covered by a fabric skin. This airship is a non-rigid airship that will fly at a high altitude ( about or above 20 km ) in air with low wind speed. Such airships keep their shape by maintaining a very slight over pressure.
An airship is difficult to defend but on the other hand airships are notoriously difficult to shoot down. But you want to keep reasonably far away from enemies. They might send shrapnel rounds in its direction until it is destroyed. And equipping the things with long range and very heavy missiles isn't practical.

It's a very convenient counterinsurgency aircraft because it can endlessly hover beyond insurgent weapon range, gather intelligence and conduct small scale precision airstrikes instantenously. After this thing has been introduced, we should ask the Taliban what they think of it.
Detecting this device can be very difficult if the material has a high enough luminescence for electromagnetic waves like radar and visible light while it hardly has any IR signature. This vehicle can have better stealth than the F22 Raptor.

@delft
equipping the things with long range and very heavy missiles isn't practical.

but how about equipping it with awacs or ecw ? i believe that making unmanned zeppelin-awacs-ecw would be possible and i bet fighter pilot will think twice before shooting a large zeppelin baloon painted with rainbow and written on it something like "National Tourism" or something.

other than that i still believe that using zeppelin-awacs/radar will help detecting stealh aircraft somehow


@kurt
COIN aircraft ?
i think ballon is somehow too slow for that role, even arming an ww2 dive bomber aircraft such as havilland mosquito makes more sense than zeppelin-coin.

Originally Posted by blacklist

@delft
equipping the things with long range and very heavy missiles isn't practical.

but how about equipping it with awacs or ecw ? i believe that making unmanned zeppelin-awacs-ecw would be possible and i bet fighter pilot will think twice before shooting a large zeppelin baloon painted with rainbow and written on it something like "National Tourism" or something.

other than that i still believe that using zeppelin-awacs/radar will help detecting stealh aircraft somehow


@kurt
COIN aircraft ?
i think ballon is somehow too slow for that role, even arming an ww2 dive bomber aircraft such as havilland mosquito makes more sense than zeppelin-coin.

You have a serious misconception. A zeppelin can be in place above the area where fighting will take place and it can even move as slow as ground vehicles. This thing can go to altitudes of 15-20 or even 50 km and watch what is going on and move accordingly. Any missile it sends downwards needs some wings in order to be able to use the kinetic energy from the large potential energy in order to cover an area. Current COI airplanes need their speed because they lack the ability to be in place.

AWACS and heavy missiles mean a larger device that is more valuable as a target and easier to detect and locate. Why don't you go for passive detection and air to ground radar observation during bad weather? A kind of satelloon (ballon satellite) that is cheap and regional with some rods from God that can contain rockets with the ability to cover long distances in thin atmosphere before going down on a target. But down try to bomb anyone more sophisticated than the Taliban with that device and as soon as you turn the signal beacon on you should expect some countermeasures and an airship is worst at evasive maneuvers or other tricks to fool incoming missiles.

This airship has a length of 240 ft or 72 meters. If it was designed to fly no higher than Hindenburg its mass might be about 12 tons. In order to reach its operating altitude of 60000 ft its mass is limited to some 1100 kg for the hull, fins, propulsion system and all other systems. Even a ship as long as 300 ft flying at 70000 ft would be limited to a total mass of 900 kg. You can imagine that it might carry a very light very low powered but very large and so still powerful radar, or radio communication equipment, but that no ordnance of any kind can be carried.
It needs to fly at that height to find the low wind speeds that allow it to have the power necessary to avoid being blown away and be large enough to collect the solar power necessary for propulsion and all its services.

Originally Posted by delft

This airship has a length of 240 ft or 72 meters. If it was designed to fly no higher than Hindenburg its mass might be about 12 tons. In order to reach its operating altitude of 60000 ft its mass is limited to some 1100 kg for the hull, fins, propulsion system and all other systems. Even a ship as long as 300 ft flying at 70000 ft would be limited to a total mass of 900 kg. You can imagine that it might carry a very light very low powered but very large and so still powerful radar, or radio communication equipment, but that no ordnance of any kind can be carried.
It needs to fly at that height to find the low wind speeds that allow it to have the power necessary to avoid being blown away and be large enough to collect the solar power necessary for propulsion and all its services.

Thanks delft, so this device sucks at transporting ordnance. Could it operate as a flying base for a glider with rechargeable batteries and some grenades it can drop on persons? A kind of airborne carrier for light drones that enables to do drone surveillance work anywhere far away from a base at low costs. The weapon aspect will likely suffer, but 2 missiles with a grenade size warhead should be enough to kill the top bad guy.

You can imagine that it might carry a very light very low powered but very large and so still powerful radar, or radio communication equipment, but that no ordnance of any kind can be carried.

thank you for your info. but even radar or radion equipment would very useful in case of emergency. btw i read from

Hindenburg class airship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General characteristics

Crew: ca. 40
Capacity: ca. 50 passengers for LZ 129 (later upgraded to 72), 40 passengers for LZ 130
Length: 244 m (803 ft 10 in)
Diameter: 41.2 m (135 ft 0 in)
Volume: 200,000 m3 (7,100,000 ft3)
Useful lift: 10,000 kg (22,046 lb)
Powerplant: 4 × Daimler-Benz DB 602 16-cylinder diesel, 735 kW (985 hp) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 131 km/h (81 mph)



i guess Useful lift: 10,000 kg (22,046 lb) means higher service ceiling with lower payload ?

Originally Posted by blacklist

You can imagine that it might carry a very light very low powered but very large and so still powerful radar, or radio communication equipment, but that no ordnance of any kind can be carried.

thank you for your info. but even radar or radion equipment would very useful in case of emergency. btw i read from

Hindenburg class airship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

General characteristics

Crew: ca. 40
Capacity: ca. 50 passengers for LZ 129 (later upgraded to 72), 40 passengers for LZ 130
Length: 244 m (803 ft 10 in)
Diameter: 41.2 m (135 ft 0 in)
Volume: 200,000 m3 (7,100,000 ft3)
Useful lift: 10,000 kg (22,046 lb)
Powerplant: 4 × Daimler-Benz DB 602 16-cylinder diesel, 735 kW (985 hp) each

Performance

Maximum speed: 131 km/h (81 mph)



i guess Useful lift: 10,000 kg (22,046 lb) means higher service ceiling with lower payload ?

Useful lift is a notorious imprecise measure. Do you reckon for a passenger the weight of himself, his clothes and his luggage or do you also add the weight of his accommodation, his part in the weight of the smoking room ( Hindenburg had one )? The weight per passenger was then reckoned to be about 750 kg. That is for 72 passengers 54 ton.
Hindenburg also carried at some time a motor car and a light aircraft, IIRC.

A cubic meter of air has at sea level and standard temperature and pressure a mass of 1.225 kg. Subtract the weight of a cubic meter of lifting gas, hydrogen or helium as appropriate and you have the contribution of a cubic meter of gas volume to the lift of the ship. A similar cubic meter has at 70000ft a mass of 0.070921 kg. ( Standard Atmosphere Calculator ). That is drastically less. Reducing the payload has a minimal influence on the height an airship can achieve.
I'll put a post in the cul-de-sac thread on Zeppelins.

Launch of weapons form such a platform would be problematic the recoil would sent it floating in the wrong direction, operating as a surveillance and ECW platform is very reasonable, already the US boarder partol uses such platforms as does the US military.

Tethered Aerostat Radar System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by TerraN_EmpirE

Launch of weapons form such a platform would be problematic the recoil would sent it floating in the wrong direction, operating as a surveillance and ECW platform is very reasonable, already the US boarder partol uses such platforms as does the US military.

Tethered Aerostat Radar System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Many air launched missiles are designed to fire after dropping free from pylons, so recoil is not an issue. But isn't it a huge sitting duck?

Also the large one is difficult to control. Remember most large Zeppelin operated by the US navy all crashed by itself. (USS Shenandoah, USS Akron and USS Macon). USS Macon is interesting as it's an air-ship, aircraft carrier...

Originally Posted by luhai

Also the large one is difficult to control. Remember most large Zeppelin operated by the US navy all crashed by itself. (USS Shenandoah, USS Akron and USS Macon). USS Macon is interesting as it's an air-ship, aircraft carrier...

So was USS Akron. They were sisters, built in the large airship dock in Akron in which we have also seen many other, smaller, airships, by the Goodyear-Zeppelin company.

Originally Posted by blacklist

Demostrador tecnológico del "Zeppelin-AWACS" ISIS volará en 2013

i wonder if the concept will work... yes zeppelin will be sitting duck, but at a relative peacetime this will reduce maintainance and fuel cost with equal capability... right ?

is there something else i forgot ?

Would be useful in monitoring shipping lanes where piracy is rampant. The loitering capability would be extremely advantageous.

Even Dropping the ordinance would cause issues, The whole damned thing would suddenly start climbing. An unmanned surveillance system would be best. It can loiter for a long time it's non metallic hull is naturally stealthy, it's damned quiet and slow as hell well still being very very efficient.