(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Airships would be of great help to Ukraine [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-03-15 Airships have several huge benefits: - They can stay airborne for days or weeks at a time. With that huge endurance comes huge range. - They don’t require a runway, which makes them inherently more survivable on the ground than an aircraft that does require a runway. They could also be made amphibious, meaning they could operate not only from land but also from rivers, estuaries, reservoirs, lakes, and even the open ocean (sea state permitting). - They can carry a large payload. The Airlander 10 in the image above for example can carry 10 tonnes. Larger airships can carry much larger payloads such as the Airlander 50 that can carry 50 tonnes and the Flying Whales LCA60T that can carry 60 tonnes. - Airships inherently have a low IR signature which means they’d be hard to detect and shoot down using MANPADS and IR-guided air-to-air missiles. - Airships inherently have a low acoustic signature. Or in other words they’re quiet, which means they’d be hard for soldiers to hear from the ground. - I’ve read that airship airbags are transparent to radar. - If an airship’s gondola is made in a stealthy shape and covered in RAM then it should be very hard to detect by radar. I’ve read that 2 feet of RAM would make any structure pretty much invisible to radar. While adding this much RAM to a fast jet wouldn’t be possible, adding it to a relatively slow-flying airship may well be. It would also make sense to make the propeller surrounds a stealthy shape, as opposed to circular, in order to thwart enemy radars. Airships could be fitted with long-range sensors such as GaN AESA radars, high-end targeting pods and IRST systems. They could also carry ISTAR drones that they could communicate with by radio or laser comms, and these ISTAR drones in turn could communicate with land-launched OWA drones, UCAVs and loitering munitions. Ideally these ISTAR drones would have laser designators to mark targets for drones and loitering munitions to attack. And these ISTAR drones would be cued by not only the airships, but any western AEW&C, MPA and ELINT/COMINT aircraft operating over the Black Sea. In order to operate in the face of Russian Electronic Warfare (EW) systems, the airships and drones should be fitted with a system like the Thales uTMA anti-jam datalink (or equivalent system) and/or laser comms that are inherently immune to jamming (weather permitting). The BAE DIGAR system would provide anti-jam and anti-spoofing GPS capability, and the DARPA HACMS system would provide anti-hacking capability. Airships could carry a large amount of ordnance. Not just the drones and loitering munitions I just mentioned, but also long-range stand-off weapons such as ALTIUS-600, ALTIUS-700, JASSM, JASSM-ER, PJDAM (Powered JDAM), SLAM-ER, Storm Shadow and SCALP-EG. Ideally Taurus too in the (not-so-distant) future. Plus the JSM, FC/ASW, SPEAR 3 and SPEAR-EW missiles when they come into service. As for self-defence, airships could be fitted with any combination of the following: - The Angry Kitten EW pod to make airships hard to detect and engage in the first place. This pod also has Electronic Attack (EA) capability. (The MQ-9 Reaper drone can carry this pod.) - The Self-Protection Pod (SPP) that the MQ-9 Reaper drone can also carry. The SPP consists of BriteCloud decoys to decoy radar-guided SAMs and AAMs, as well as a DAIRCM system to blind IR-guided SAMs and AAMs. - And if airships are equipped with GaN AESA radars and high-end IRST systems, then why not fit them with air-to-air missiles too? Ideally Meteor, IRIS-T and ASRAAM Block 6 (and AIM-260 JATM in the future). Take the fight to the enemy rather than relying on stealth and defence only. Other options would be the Flying Missile Rail (FMR) and the DARPA LongShot. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/15/2229605/-Airships-would-be-of-great-help-to-Ukraine?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/