More views from my cubicle.

What's that noise? A UAV? No, doesn't sound right. What the flock (of birds) is that?

That is an airship. Acting as a comms relay, one of the concepts the Army is examining as a way to reduce the load on the satellites, and facilitate comms on the current battlefield. This is obviously only practical when you *own* the air. But these gasbags are remarkably survivable in this environment. Flying at 5000 feet they are safe from most small arms fire, only the .50 cal sized weapons have the reach - and not a whole lot of accuracy at that point. Shoulder-fired missiles don't have much of a heat signature to lock on to, and while this particular airship is manned, in the future they won't have to be.

This one is normally used to carry the cameras over sports venues and the like. Here, it's got a radio rack in it, some antennas on it, and it's providing line-of-sight communications relay services. And, compared to the helos we were using last year, it's cheap, and can stay on-station for over 10 hours. And given it's size, you can mix and match antennae easier, with less chance for interference issues.

They've been used over in Iraq already. If you think about it - put an EO/IR sensor package on it, it's a very quiet UAV with a long loiter time, too. As long as you own the air, anyway. After that, it's biggest enemy is wind. Like helicopters, it can operate in very austere environments - unlike helicopters, it doesn't have a large logistical/maintenance tail (just this stuff and two trailers), nor is pilot fatigue as big a factor. Limits are; air supremacy, weather/altitude considerations (max ceiling for this particular bird is 5000 feet above mean sea level - in other words, can't fly this one in Denver... which is at 5,280 feet. Payload is an issue, too - I was going to get a ride in it, but they figured out that hauling this vast bulk aloft would cost them too much altitude... dammit.

Launch and recovery is fairly simple too - again assuming you don't have a lot of wind. It doesn't take a whole lot of people unless there is wind. Anyway, just one idea among many... but who knows, perhaps Airship Pilot will be back in the Army Aviation community MOS structure...

Anyway - I'm getting paid to do this... neener-neener-neener!