Blimp aerial tanker?

I was talking to a friend today and he was telling me about Lockheed Martin developing an aerial tanker using something like the hindenburg. Any thoughts?

like in the movie Stealth? I guess that would be fine for a low intensity zone.

Really? That'd be cool. Finally some recognition for the unique abilities of airships. I'm guessing it'd be one huge mother of a ship, carrying 500-1000 ton payload. Still, how slow can the planes go, to get refueled by an airship? Okay, it'd be low altitude as the airship couldn't go high but still, even in greater air density, the airship would probably have to go 180-200 kmh at least. You can imagine what fuel consumption that'd be for an aircraft with some 100 times greater frontal air resistance than a 747.

That sounds quite much like a sci-fi movie to me. But there has been quite a lot of (unmaterialaised) projects on cargo carrying aircraft/blimp hybrids, so why not?

This probably would take at least fifteen years to get into series production though, but stranger things have after all come out of military aviation

the u.s tried to make blimp aircraft carriers before, but failed. blimps were also uded for pacific recon in ww2. a blim transport will never take off thogyuh.

I don"t think they are developing it as an aerial tanker. There is currently much talk about using near space, altitudes between 20 miles and the edge of space, because it has been neglected and there is much potential for airships to perform theater wide recon at these altitudes. They would be much cheaper than satellites, reach higher altitudes than U-2s or other high altitude aircraft and have loiter times of weeks or months. I expect to see such a system in US service within twenty years, if not sooner.

In the movie Stealth they have like a obrittal sattelite that is used to fuel US fighters.

Actually the US used two blimps as carriers between the war, USS Akron and USS Macon, they carried Curtiss F9C Sparrohawks. Bothe served well for some time, but later ended their careers in two crashes, after which the USN abandoned the idea.

As an aerial tanker i don't really see it has much of a future right now. Airhips are just too much of an easy target to be used anywhere near a danger zone. But as strategic transports they seem to create a niche that no other transport mean can compete with. Imagine a craft carrying 500-1000 ton payload anywhere in the world, without refuelling, able to land on unprepared ground, where even rugged airlift transports like hercules couldn't land. All that at some 120-150 km/h, and still far less fuel spent per ton per kilometer than a C5 could deliver. Once again though, usage will probably be only in areas completely uncontested by enemy. Actually i see first usage in commercial, civilian areas, before armies get on the bandwagon. Timeframe for all that? 20 years sounds reasonable.

blimps have a tendency toi explode or crash without an enemy nearby, so its a stupid ides. imagine if someof thet fuel ignited...