Airships? Yes, Really!
Hybrid airships are not the blimps of years ago. They have the potential to transform military logistics, command-and-control, and surveillance and reconnaissance.
By Lieutenant Commander Ryan P. Hilger, U.S. Navy
May 2019
Since the tragic 1937 fire and crash of German passenger airship Hindenburg at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, no one has given airships a fair shake. This is understandable—hydrogen is highly flammable. But the possibility of airships making a comeback lived on through science fiction authors. For example, in the best-selling 2017 novel New York 2140, author Kim Stanley Robinson confronts a world so utterly transformed by climate change that airships are the predominant form of transportation and housing.
The current generation of naval leaders grew up watching the Goodyear blimp fly above football stadiums. Sadly, that is still all the vast majority of people know about airships. But unlike semi-rigid dirigibles, such as the Goodyear blimp, a new generation of hybrid airships are shaped like aerodynamic lifting bodies and have quietly been making tremendous technological strides that demand renewed attention. Advanced fabrics and ballasting systems, significant payload capacities, and more have brought the airship industry to a point where it will have a transformative impact in both the commercial and national security spaces. Combined with lightweight sensors and other systems, hybrid airships have the potential to be vital assets in executing both Navy distributed maritime operations and Marine Corps expeditionary advanced base operations.
To better explain the potential hybrid airships have for today’s military, two myths first need to be dispelled.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/may/airships-yes-really
