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That's something a Navy is traditionally good for, especially the US Navy with our ridiculously huge carriers. They're great at sitting off the coast and acting
by rtkwe 3y ago
That's something a Navy is traditionally good for, especially the US Navy with our ridiculously huge carriers. They're great at sitting off the coast and acting as a logistics hub for transferring between planes and helicopters that can get into more devastated areas. The big issue with a blimp for that for me seems to be that they're very slow and can only operate in moderate conditions both of which aren't really guaranteed in a disaster situation.
- whoisthemachine 3y agoAgreed, the only disaster situations I can think of where an airship might have use are earthquake and war zones, which are often hard to reach by vehicle or plane, and may have calm enough weather to support an airship.
- rtkwe 3y agoThey'd be great at secondary recovery once they get into place but they're so slow you can't use them for the immediate recovery and life saving efforts unless they're immediately in the area.
- whoisthemachine 3y agoYeah basically only useful as cargo lift and maybe as mobile medical facilities.
- rtkwe 3y agoThey could maybe act like mini versions of the hospital ships run by the US and others for inland areas beyond the reach of ship based care. Still kind of runs into the response speed issue. In the time it takes a blimp to trundle over from wherever it's stored helicopters can deploy a lot of materiel.
- mschuster91 3y agoA Zeppelin NT can reach up to 125 km/h, that's way faster than any truck can possibly reach in a disaster zone. The only thing faster and as versatile is a select breed of cargo choppers like the Mi-26 (Russia) and the CH-53K (US), but flying choppers comes with risks on its own from rotor downwash. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_NT
- rtkwe 3y agoThey're faster but they can't lift much at all. Their payload is only 1,900 kg while a CH-53K can lift a bit over 16,000 kg.
- guyzero 3y agoThe original zeppelin & blimp program that ran out of the same hangars as this one was cancelled after a Navy admiral died in weather-related crashes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Macon_(ZRS-5) In general the US had a lot of pretty bad airship accidents, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airship_accidents
- moffkalast 3y agoThe US CVNs are probably at least as fast as an airship anyway.