My Love of Blimps Doesn't Make Me Blind to Common Sense

Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence VehicleI love blimps. It's just that simple.

I love the big airships that fly over sporting events and I never get tired of standing on the ground, looking up at them like a tourist or an idiot--take your pick. I think they are nifty and should definitely be used to haul fat people across the country. If you built 200 blimps and made it so they could haul 200 people each, and then set it up so that they would cross the country from aerodrome to aerodrome, hauling only the people too fat to fly commercial aircraft, I'd call that heaven on Earth because I'm tired of sitting next to fatties on planes. The airships could have Lazy-Boys in them, and serve food round the clock (it would take six hours just to go a few hundred miles in one, I would guess). The efficiency would more than pay for itself. The bathrooms would have to be really, really sturdy. But I think it would be a big success.

I'm pleased that the United States Army loves blimps as well. Too bad no one called their uncle Norman, because I could have sorted this out for them:

The Army’s newest aircraft looks more like a Thanksgiving Day parade reject than the latest weapon against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle is expected to provide commanders with real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information, all from 20,000 feet.

The $517 million, five-year contract to build up to three blimplike LEMVs was awarded to Northrop Grumman by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command. While company officials wouldn’t provide a solid launch date, they said the first one should be floating over the skies of Afghanistan in about 18 months.

The airship is the size of a football field, with a shell made of a soft fabric. While still in the testing phase, the craft would carry around 2,500 pounds of gear such as video, radar and sight sensors and stay deployed for 21 days. It can be piloted or function as an unmanned vehicle operated from a ground station.

Sounds pretty nifty, doesn't it? Well, hold on, Cletus:

The Army plans to operate the LEMV in the unmanned mode while deployed downrange. It doesn’t carry any defensive weapons so it will have to be based in a relatively secure location. At a top speed of 80 knots, it could be “vulnerable if it’s in the wrong neighborhood,” according to company officials.

Let me guess--it's "unmanned" because it's going to be shot the hell down almost as soon as it deploys, am I correct? But, wait a minute--if it operates at 20,000 feet, why can't it be manned? No Afghan Taliban with a squirrel rifle is going to be able to knock it down, right? Well, unless it's tethered to the ground and has to go up and down to transfer personnel on and off the airship, right? So, if the thing is too vulnerable to put people on it, what good is it?

Basically, because of the threat of shoulder-fired Surface to Air missiles, or MANPADs, the airship has to be flown into the theater and suspended high enough to keep it from being shot down. Then it has to be "brought down" after 21 days for refueling and refitting. So, the idea that it "solves" a lot of problems is kind of a misnomer because--and I'm speaking as someone who possesses what I like to call common sense--the enemy is going to know when this thing is flying and when it is not flying. Once they figure out what it is and what it does, they will know when they can move around and communicate and when they have to go silent and try to mask their activities. 

In effect, for all of the money spent on this machine, it's a great big unmanned babysitter that sits in the sky and, when it is operational, won't collect much of anything useful and, when it is down for maintenance and refueling, will be a sitting duck wherever it is parked and our enemies will know it's not operational and will do business as usual. It's extremely vulnerable to a MANPAD if it ever sniffs at an altitude below 6,000 meters, so wherever they station it, they have to clear out the area around that location for several miles in all directions. If they base this vehicle anywhere in Afghanistan, it becomes a sitting duck for anyone who can get close enough (roughly within a few kilometers). Bear in mind, our troops in Afghanistan suffer attacks on a regular basis because the enemy is not afraid to get within a hundred meters and start shooting.

As much as I like airships, this one I don't much think is very useful.

Posted via web from An American Lion is on Posterous