skycat 1000 airship

Following the experiences of the Gulf War (1991) and since in the Balkans ( 1999), strategic airlift features as a top priorty structure improvment for the US,UK, and NATO as a whole. In the gulf, where units were split between airliner, air freight and sea freight to get to the theatre, the task of re-consituting into fighting formations was described to congress as a "a nightmare." In the Balkans, the politicaly delayed announcment of the despatch of troops to the area, some 150,000 - 175,000 left the allies criticaly short of strategic lift, not helped by the poor airfield infrastructure in the forward area. Poor fuel stocks at the theatre airports meant that the C-17 strategic airlifter, capable of carrying loads in excess of 70 tonnes, averaged only just over 40 tonnes into the theatre because it had to carry exit fuel. The speed of skycat is less than the C-130 but the tonnage of the skycat is much larger. Speed follows the the hare and the tortoise model, that when a transport steam is considered, as is the case of any large deployment, once the pipeline if filled the speed becomes largely irrelevant. Only the tonnage delivered by day is important and skycat can do as well as any of the on-line strategic airlifters and at a much lower cost, in acquisition, direct operating costs and in aircrew terms.The larger skycat's would lend themselves to distant and long standing patrols, over the horizon, carrying a large number of cruise missiles in the form of a recently mooted arsenal ship concept. Not so invisible as a submarine bu in other ways more flexible with greater speed to deploy, or to withdraw and a ver much greater war-load, a particular disadvantage of the present generation of subs.
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I hope this idea works out it will increase the payload and speed we can deliver troops and equipment. And it will also take some of the load of our transport aircraft.

url=http://globalsecurity.org]globalsecurity.org[/url]

I'm a huge supporter of any and all airships, there not as fast as a jet but what the lack in speed they more then make up for in thier cost, range, payload, altitude, endurance, etc.

Airships basically ended when the Hindenburg crashed, but I think its time for there return.

and i'm not just talkin military, 2 words "Border Patrol", they would be excellant for stoping the flow of illegal immigrants to the US.

and they would be a very safe platform, if something goes wrong you glide back to earth, and not a 550 mph slam into earth kinda way.

They could put UAV's to shame, the only thing we might still need a UAV for is time sensitive info.

I like the Lockheed concept for the HAA (High Altitude Airship), which should start test flights in 2006, is will go around 70,000ft and could stay up for months because of its floar panels on the top of it.

That picture you have posted looks very much like one I have in a magazine from the 1980's that is called 'Hi-Spot'. Is this project related to it in any way?

Originally posted by waynos
That picture you have posted looks very much like one I have in a magazine from the 1980's that is called 'Hi-Spot'. Is this project related to it in any way?

Its has some similarities, like unmanned, made by Lockheed, Airship.

(High Altitude Surveillance Platform for Over-the-Horizon Targeting)

The Hi-Spot concept was around the 70's & 80's, but thats all it was a concept, a full scale test was never done.
While the HAA has some of its roots started there, but this one will be built.

Lockheed was the obvious choice because they have been building blimps for awhile now, from the GoodYear to the future HAA.