Blue Devil Airship is Getting a Super-High-Speed Optical Laser Downlink Upgrade

shooting a big slow balloon out of the sky isn't hard, unless it can provide services without ever entering enemy airspace.

Or fly at 60 000 feet

Well, considering that the FOENEX is line-of-sight, and that the Earth only curves about eight inches per mile...

They could, in fact, provide data acquisition/processing services from quite a distance, especially if the airship is capable of any significant altitude.

Just my two cents.

this one doesn't have all that impressive of an altitude. Yet recon airship technology can allow cruise altitudes over 100,000ft. so even over enemy airspace the technology has considerable potential.

Wow, thats pretty high tech. But like everybody else said, wouldnt it be easy to shoot down?

"wouldnt it be easy to shoot down?"

uggggg! really?

this is NOT a combat blimp.

First off. lets take something like the iraq war for an example. We were at war with Iraq, and at the time only Iraq was shooting at us. So ALL the coutnries around us, the we ran support out of would have been fine to use this blimb.

BUT this not a cargo blimp. its a survelnce drone that is a" 370-foot airship, which can hover at 20,000 feet for five days"

lets look at these numbers.

longest sniper shot ever is 2,745 meter or 8120 feet. well short of the highest powerful bolt action extreme long distance rifles.

what about an RPG. no chance at all. at 600 plus feet probablty of hit is less than 50%. no way it can fly up more than 1000 or so feet.

what about the stinger? maybe! it is barely in range of a stinger! but stingers are not common like the RPG-7.
and these blimps would have mad countermeasures. ir flares and ecm devices.

from what I can find on the internet. this blimp would be $$$$ed against traditional AA guns.

BUT lets say we are going to invade iran with a full force including these blimps. Is the Iran army going to aim for the f-35 manned fighters and b-52 manned bombers that are going to take out the AA, or relatively cheap as chips unmanned blimp with a camera on it?

also think about the wars we have been in for the last 10 years! our enemy has had ZERO anti air capabilty unless you count shooting a VERY VERY low flying black hawk with a REALY REALY REALY lucky RPG-7.

this blimb could be used to track insurgent and low tech forces with no threat whatsoever.

and agian take the iraq war for example. we knocked out 100% of its anti air capabilities in the FIRST HOUR of the 10 year war.

A single Mig using a standard equipped missile or a couple rounds from a 30 mm would blow this thing from the sky in a matter of minutes, it's completely impractical.

Not completely impractical, maybe a something like a Phalanx gun? the ones on ships are kinda heavy (7 tons) but airplane engines aren't made of cast iron any more either, & considering the potential, they probably have that covered.

@ inaka_rob : The idea that you are putting out there that NO ONE can hit a 370 ft long blimp at 60,000ft is just plain nuts. Just because I don't want to does not mean I can't. If I had to; for the survival of me and mine, there is no question. In the totally undeveloped nations that we are dominating right now your statements are fairly true, but if dedicated guerrillas there had actual access to a skilled or at least semi-skilled worker base along with machining and supplies even remotely similar to what Americans or Europeans have, it would be a whole new ball game.

@quasi44, inaka_rob makes a good point. It's awfully hard to hit anything 20,000 feet up unless you have some pretty sophisticated missiles. A 370 foot blimp (3 times as long as a 737) is a fairly small target at that altitude. Even though large model rocket motors presumably could get you there, it would take some serious engineering to get it past countermeasures that are common on, say, an Apache helicopter.

Has no one else herd of a fighter jet? This thing is useless in air to air combat, anything that can hit the sound barrier would be able to sink this thing and get away before counter measures could be implemented. Also having to keep an Apache around the clock to defend it defeats the purpose of a jet that can hover in place for 5 days.

@Adamantine_Cat

I see your point about enemy aircraft, but consider this:

It is unlikely this thing would be flown into an active enemy airspace until enemy aircraft were no longer a threat.

If this thing were to be shot down, the only thing affected would be data processing. Intelligence gathering would still occur, and the data would still get analyzed, it would just happen the way it does today, i.e. each drone would send intel to base rather than the Blue Devil.

Hi Helium sniffers,
Adamantine is talking total rubbish, because the Blue Devil is not used in combat and the opposition in Afghanistan can't even shoot down a low level stationary aerostat. The internal gas pressure differential is very low for all blimps and the leak rate from even multiple holes can be tolerated for a long time before using something similar to duct tape to cover the holes.
Regards Joe (HPS Ltd, 3w dot hybridairship dot net)

All this talk about shooting it down. Am I the only one that sees the birth of Skynet here? We will be far more concerned by the killer robots storming down on us all under near optical fidelity and quantum encryption. It will all start with our generation 2 Kinects reading our lips and spying on our conversations!

For a Helium sniffing laugh try our Gasbags site:
www.hybridblimp.net

Hmmmm, so we went from Air Force 1 being the alternative base of command to Hindenburg take two. Can't wait to see how this turns out.....