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More views from my cubicle.

By The Armorer on November 4, 2005 | | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (1)

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

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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...

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

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26 Comments

By Cricket on November 4, 2005 7:21 AM
Well, why not camo the thing to blend into the sky? And you are having entirely too much fun at work.
 
By FbL on November 4, 2005 7:41 AM
John, you are becoming absolutely insufferable these days! ;) *Runs out of Castle holding Navy flag high and singing the Navy Hymn*
 
By Ryan Gill on November 4, 2005 7:53 AM
Hmm, reminds me of a certain concept floated around 150 years ago for battle field observation. One other factor with a big gas bag like that is that you need a lot of holes to make it drop out of the sky. Put a few rounds in it and it'll just slowly float tot he ground.
 
By RSM on November 4, 2005 8:40 AM
No wonder you were bragging about Benning. Dang you.
 
By Larry J on November 4, 2005 8:50 AM
Some projects are looking at developing very high (>60,000 feet) unmanned airships to serve as comm relay and ISR platforms. From that altitude, they could relay comm or perform radar sweeps for a radius of about 300 miles. Winds up there are almost nonexistent and the platforms could stay on location for weeks at a time. You could put one 50 miles inside your territory and still provide services for 250 miles into the badlands.
 
By homebru on November 4, 2005 11:52 AM
The wind is the enemy. Under the wrong circumstances, the blimp/aerostat/baloon is simply uncontrollable; in the sky or on the ground. The wind comes up and the bag is blown into the next county or country. This leads to the real problem with using aerial comm repeaters. You can\'t count on them for 100% availability. Which means that you must be prepared to either do without the circuits that the b/a/b provided or use alternate circuits. And if there are alternates, why bother with the b/a/b in the first place? Sure, the b/a/b are neat on CAVU days with less than 10kt winds. But does trouble come more often on beautiful afternoons or during rain/snow/sand storms? Excellent for eagle eye pictures of football games, though.
 
By John of Argghhh! on November 4, 2005 12:37 PM
Good points, Homebru, but we're desperately seeking ways to reduce the load on the satellites from tactical comms, while still having the reach we need. The answer is probably a mix of systems, where reconfigurable packages get put on larger UAVs for comms when an airship won't handle it. Reality is, we can build scenarios where nothing works - we have to find the happy median.
 
By David Cress on November 4, 2005 2:40 PM
These Brits seem to be going out of buisness, but the StratSat would be a great choice. http://www.atg-airships.com
 
By Dale on November 4, 2005 2:48 PM
This is obviously only practical when you *own* the air. Fortunately the Air Farce provides not just air dominancy, but air supremecy.
 
By kat-missouri on November 4, 2005 3:17 PM
First...any chance you all need a secretary or other sort of assistant? I'd like to get paid to do that too. Second, is there a reason why we haven't made much progress in developing stronger more reliable short wave radios? Third, any chance they are working on using local infrastructure, like cell phone towers to enhance comm abilities?
 
By ry on November 4, 2005 4:43 PM
Prediction: If this ever gets fully developed teh AF will claim it. Just like they claimed fixed wing aircraft for CAS was theirs. And how they tried to take the aircraft carriers away from the Navy in days of yore.
 
By John of Argghhh! on November 4, 2005 5:54 PM
Gezackly, and then except for the Tactical Controllers, they tootle back to the comfy racks and air conditioning...
 
By John of Argghhh! on November 4, 2005 6:02 PM
Kat: 1. Sadly, no. 2. If I answered that question, I'd have to cut off your head and put it in a safe. 3. No, I don't believe so, at least not for operational traffic. If we put our comms on those towers we'd have to secure those towers, physically and electronically. We prefer to let the bad guys use those towers... which traffic we monitor.
 
By homebru on November 4, 2005 6:17 PM
John, So the problem is really the comm channels, not the ability to float a blimp. I thought that the sky was already full of potential communications mount-points: tankers, ACW, even fighters on CAP. Worst case, an old Lockheed P-3 Orion can loiter for hours using only two engines. (Assuming minimal interference from suicidal Chinese pilots.) Any one (or many/all) of these could carry an underwing pod full of computer-controlled communications relay gear. And it wouldn\'t have to be the size of a 500-lb bomb, either. Radio amateurs regularly have NASA orbit their home-built multi-channel relay satellites which are less than one cubic foot in size. Seems to me that we already have mount-points for the airborn, 21st century A/N-GRC comm van, we just need to update the coordination between them. Like cell phones do except use a radio command channel instead of landline. So if we could put milspec-ed cell phone relay centers in standard wing pods...
 
By homebru on November 4, 2005 6:33 PM
ry, I predict that the Air Force will let the Navy take the lead in space exploration. Especially after the last shuttle mission. The Navy has so much more experience in sending a man over the side to caulk a seam on the bottom.
 
By Boquisucio on November 4, 2005 6:45 PM
Grumble - Grumble. This Token Spik, has Blimp Envy.
 
By kat-missouri on November 4, 2005 7:07 PM
LOL...okay, don't cut my head off, although, it would give me an excuse for not posting once in awhile...LOL Good point on the local infrastructure. Then again, maybe we need to go back to "code talkers". Wouldn't that screw the AQs up...;)
 
By John of Argghhh! on November 4, 2005 7:10 PM
Homebru: I think you are too focused on fixed wing assets. This is just one thing being tested - but given the operating costs of fixed wing vice the airship, and other considerations, in an Iraq environment, at least, they would appear to have utility. You are describing the FCS "cloud" comms onstruct, where everything is in comm with everything else... the problem comes with line-of-sight. I'm living this. There are no good answers, yet - and everything you have suggested is in the mix.
 
By SangerM on November 4, 2005 7:49 PM
Just for the commentary: The Army already uses steerable microwave R/T equipment on one of its airborne systems which has an on-board network that links in realtime with ground stations. That same platform is used to relay stuff from the ground to other places on the ground. Basically the system is self-contained, in that all it needs to do the job is part of the system (not counting GPS, which used to be done by inertial nav systems- INS, and probably could again, I suppose). I know this is a specialty item, but it one example of innovative solutions. As for balloons, there have been "Aerostats" across the southwest for more than a decade. These are tethered systems with lookdown capability, used to track lowflying aircraft coming across the border. Don't know if they are still in use, but as said elsewhere, this isn't a new idea. And finally, re: potential problems, this is always true of every system used to fix an immediatel problem. The Army has had Quick Reaction Capability (QRC) programs forever, in which a system was fielded with as-good-as-it-can-be technology or features, because the need was deemed more important than making it perfect. The Trailblazer RDF system was a prime example. It was shelterized for the back of CUCVs, but those sucked, so they put them on the back of 2.5T trucks (gave us LOTs of room for the cables and antennas and crap), which worked ok, and would have done for a war, until the magic-masted, tracked carrier version came along. Pretty junked up system to start, and it broke a LOT, but it worked sometimes, and that was better than nothing. Which is the key here: Given this or nothing, this is better. Not perfect, not always good, but when it's good it's very good. Just some perspective... V/R
 
By homebru on November 4, 2005 8:02 PM
John, Not quite an FCS cloud. More of a repeater/relay cloud. Imagine a sky-based cellular network. Endpoint stations (helmet, vehicle) talk with each other (walkie-talkie mode) or with the nearest/best access sky-based repeater. That repeater uses a different band of command freqs to talk with another repeater that talks to the distant endpoint station. Repeaters wouldn\'t have to be sky-based, of course. All the commpod needs is power and an external antenna. It could be on a command vehicle or a heavily defended mountaintop. Or on anything that flys. Yeah, even a blimp. By moving to a repeater/relay cloud with the repeaters (mostly) in the sky, line of sight problems are minimized. Anyway, all my radio-relay training was forty years ago. I bow to your involvement in state-of-the-art.
 
By Justthisguy on November 4, 2005 8:24 PM
Hoch, SCHIFF! Zeppelin, MARSCH! (cue Graf Zeppelin March, AKA "The Conqueror", by Teike)
 
By John of Argghhh! on November 4, 2005 8:42 PM
Well, in all our defenses, *my* recommendation was to let Verizon/Sprint/Cingular figger it out. Sanger - the only problem with the tethered balloons in Iraq was... things like helos and UAVs kept flying into the tether...
 
By SangerM on November 4, 2005 10:32 PM
Yeah, that can be a problem... Too bad they can't paint the cables in something that glows on visual aids, the way the electronic puck leaves trails in TV-viewed hockey... Sort of an "only we can see it" emmitter. Either that or LOTS and LOTS of those little bottles of Testor's glow-in-the-dark paint...
 
By SangerM on November 4, 2005 10:46 PM
BTW, speaking of flying: Today, I saw lots of airplanes practicing for this weekend's show, and lots more on the ground F-117, J-UCAS, B1, A-10s, JSTARS, all manner of C-130s, C-17, C-5A, an F-4 in flight (many passes, VERY loud), the new AF Huey (T model, to be their fixed-to-rotary transition trainer for the next 15 years), P51+F15 in side-by-side flight, a LOT of very cool stunt flying, Thunderbirds doing their arrival show (I don't like the TBirds as much as I do the Blue Angels, but that's just me), and one flyover--right over my head--by an F-15 that set off every car alarm withing a 1/4 mile of where I was standing. It was that loud! And it was hilarious to hear 30-50 car alarms go off all at once. I got many pictures, some not so good, but a couple of really nice ones of the F-15+P51 flyover. Tomorrow is going to be better!!
 
By ry on November 5, 2005 3:15 PM
That's it. Next year Sanger I'm journeying to Texas. I haven't been to an airshow in ages and now you've got me salivating like Pavlov's dog.
 
By JG on November 7, 2005 12:50 AM
The tethered aerostats are still flying on the border (TARS). See: http://www2.acc.af.mil/library/factsheets/tars.html These aerostats are designed to survive 65 kt winds. Tethers are a problem for powered flight in the area. For 250K to 450K cu. ft. aerostats, the tethers will have a tensile strength of 20K to 50K lbs. Not good for a fixed wing or a helo rotor. For the last thirty years, they have been Kevlar based. A number of methods have been used to add radar reflectors or illumination to the tethers quite successfully – until you inhaul and try to get the tether on the winch. If you ever run into a pilot who has tried to shoot one down after a breakaway, you should get a good story. I know of one incident where all the cannon rounds where expended and it didn't phase the aerostat. So he launched a sidewinder. Evidently there was enough of a heat signature to track and blow it out of the sky. Unfortunately, the components of real value are what generate the heat. A breakaway can turn into a real disaster as it becomes a free flight balloon. Before it comes to rest on the ground, it can travel many miles dragging its tether. They have a tendency to take out telephone and power lines. Also as it deflates and loses its aerodynamic form, it behaves more like a spinnaker, which with a good wind can pull a fully loaded 18 wheeler at whatever speed the wind is blowing. When dealing with the lighter-than-air folks, you will encounter two types. Helium heads and ballonatics. Both believe all problems can be solved by a lighter-than-air solution. Helium heads can be controlled once they understand certain behavior can get them killed. Ballonatics however are adrenalin junkies. Flying an aerostat or balloon in fair weather and moderate winds is boring for them. They tend to launch just before a fast moving weather front, or retrieve long after the storm clouds are overhead. You do realize that a tethered aerostat has a striking similarity to Franklin’s kite and a wet tether is a conductor. Balloonatics are to be avoided. Now that I have rambled on, I know a remotely piloted airship has a significant advantage for long duration missions, either for patrol or as a fixed location platform system.