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An airship obviously has significantly different operating characteristics than an aircraft. Some operating characteristics are better, some are not, and some are just different.
The Requirement
The last major study of US airlift requirements. Mobility Requirements Study 2005 concluded the United States requires an airlift fleet capable of transporting 54.5 million ton-miles per day (MTM/D). Recent developments indicate the requirement will be even higher, perhaps up to 60 MTM/D. According to General John Handy, commander of Air Mobility Command (AMC) and Transportation Command, even meeting the lower requirement requires a C-17 fleet of 222 aircraft, 42 more than the 180 currently under contract.1 With the Air Force fighting the possible cancellation of the C-130J as well as a significant cutback in the number of F/A-22s, the purchase of 52 more C-17s seems unlikely, much less the number required to meet 60 MTM/D.
Is the C-17 the best way to overcome the airlift shortfall? This article proposes an alternative aircraft-a hybrid aircraft, costing about the same as a C-17, but potentially three times as productive and costing one-half to one-third as much to operate per tonmile.
An airship obviously has significantly different operating characteristics than an aircraft. Some operating characteristics are better, some are not, and some are just different. Those characteristics will be discussed in this article, but the bottom line is that an airship is probably a viable and affordable alternative to buying additional C-17s and should be considered for filling the airlift gap.
Airship 101- A Brief History
The Flight of the Luftschiff Zeppelin 59
In 1917 a German aircraft departed Bulgaria on a 3,600 nautical-mile flight carrying 30,000 pounds of medical supplies and ammunition for a beleaguered army unit in Africa. When it landed 95 hours later it still had 64 hours of fuel remaining-enough to have flown to San Francisco had it taken a great circle route west instead of flying south. Nonstop flights from Bulgaria to San Francisco carrying that large a payload could not have been accomplished by a B-29 thirty years later. In 1917, it was closer to the realm of science fiction.2
What type of aircraft was this and how was it possible in 1917? It was the German Luftschiff Zeppelin 59 (LZ 59), a...