DARPA'S U-Haul in the Sky

Relying on deep-water ports and billion-dollar airports to move its men and machines keeps the Army stuck in molasses mode. It can take weeks -- even months -- to get a division ready to fight. Take the 4th Infantry Division, for example; it missed out on the first months of the Iraq war, waiting for its gear to take the slow boat in from Turkey.

link to story and pic.
john

www.stevequayle.com...

It's about time.
I love the isea, and it will work. But I hope that they at least have a layer of kevlar around the airship so no small arms fire can take out a billion dollar Blimp.

1000 tons, WHEW thats would be impresive to see!
They could take a few notes from HAA (High Altitude Airship) and the CargoLifter Airships. There building on that can lift 160 tons, and there a commercial company so the military could deffinatly make a 500 ton one.

They pic of it looks cool to. Hope as a JIC (Just in case) that they make those bottom compartments unhook and drop with a parachute, in case a missile would hit it. Although i'm sure they would have the main blimp gas chambers be seperated and fire retardant so an RPG wouldn't take her down.

It's nearly impossible to shoot down a blimp, especially one that carries an inert lifting gas like helium. Blimps have such a low internal pressure that the internal gas takes forever to leak out even through relatively large holes. A blimp could take small arms fire all day and it wouldn't come down.

Im sure they will have some Kevlar or some material very durable I mean you don't want 1.800 troops going down. Also it says it can hold 1.800 troops lets take the average weight maybe around 170lb x 1.800 damn that is alot not to mention their gear or does their gear get transported the old fashion way and not in the blimp?

Looks like the Germans got the same ideal. The German company Cargo Lifter. Is making one that can lift 160 tons.The CargoLifter CL 160 will be able to move payloads that are too large even for the military's biggest heavy-cargo transport plane, the C5

To house this gigantic blimp, CargoLifter has designed one of the largest, self-supporting hangars in the world. The enormous hangar, under construction in Brand, Germany, will be 1,181.10 feet (360 meters) long, 688.97 feet (210 meters) wide, 351.04 feet (107 meters) high and will cover 889.57 acres. To understand the enormity of this hangar, imagine a structure that could completely enclose the Louisiana Superdome, an arena that holds 125 million cubic feet (about 3.53 million cubic meters). The CargoLifter hangar, which will hold 194 million cubic feet (5.5 million cubic meters), should be finished by the end of the year.

They already started to build this hangar and have a pic in the link of it huge


www.howstuffworks.com...

Hopefully this blimp works out better then the Germans last one

According to AWST, Homeland security is also ooking at them for stationary radar centers. The border patroll already usues them, but given thier huge lift capacity, you could get a huge phased array over the CONUS and spot stuff from quite a ways off.

Yup thats the one I was referring to.

BTW, the hangar is built and there now working on the airship, before you go talking about it at least read the date that that link was posted on.