Iraqi Conflict Brings Increased Interest in Military Airships

Speed, Huge Payloads Are Attractive But Experts Remain Wary of Uncertain Costs

The comeback trail for military airships is getting wider and smoother in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The conflict underscored once again the military's need to rapidly transport huge volumes of defense materiel long distances at rapid speed, especially to landlocked areas. The sight of the 4th Infantry Division's equipment awaiting off-load in the Mediterranean made some defense strategists more determined than ever to infuse the Pentagon's logistics chain with greater speed and flexibility. The unit was assigned to northern Iraq, but Turkey refused access rights to the United States.

Army Lt. Col. Michael Woodgerd said "40 to 50 C-17s would not have changed the fate of the 4th Infantry Division. Airships could have made a difference."

Woodgerd works on ultra-large airlifters and other lighter-than-air issues for Arthur K. Cebrowski, the Pentagon's director of force transformation. They view airships as a potential transforming technology that could place a sustained competitive advantage in the hands of U.S. forces. In a Sea Power interview in June, Cebrowski said the Navy soon would come under "tremendous pressure to improve high-speed lift." In addition to very high-speed ships, the solution will be found "in work on airships. Probably, but not necessarily, hybrid airships."

Other high-ranking Pentagon strategists are touting the values of lighter-than-air vehicles as a means to speed up the Defense Department's transportation system. Vice Adm. Joseph W. Dyer Jr., commander of the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), told other members of the Navy's senior air staff that a lesson of the Iraqi war is the need to reduce the build-up time prior to a campaign. Speaking at the Naval Aviation Symposium 9 May 2003 in Pensacola, Fla., Dyer said he is assessing lighter-than-air craft as a means to rapidly deploy forces to world hot spots. Other possible solutions, Dyer said, are seaplanes or Wing-in-Ground Effect craft that resemble flying boats and travel over the water on the air cushion created by their own hulls and wings.

NAVAIR has done some preliminary work on a conceptual family of hybrid aircraft called HULAs, or Hybrid Ultra-Large Aircraft. Envisioned for several military missions, especially long-range heavy lift, the HULAs would be lighter-than-air vehicles with a payload of several hundred tons. NAVAIR is discussing the concept's feasibility with the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Airships also are being developed for other defense tasks, such as border surveillance and telecommunications relay. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is developing the High-Altitude Airship (HAA), an unmanned craft for surveillance tasks linked to border security missions that would operate at about 70,000 feet. The Aeros Corporation, Tarzana, Calif.; Lockheed Martin's Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems-Akron unit, Akron, Ohio; and Boeing's Unmanned Systems Unit, St. Louis, Mo., have contracts to further develop the HAA concept.

The comeback of lighter-than-air vehicles in the military began, sort of, in 1985 with the launch of an aerostat at High Rock Grand Bahama Island by the Coast Guard and the Customs Service. Today, the Tethered Aerostat Radar System created to search for drug traffickers is run by the Air Force and comprises about a dozen radar aerostats at sites from Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., to Puerto Rico. Purists would not consider them true airships, however. The last flight of a genuine U.S. military airship occurred in 1962 when the Navy disestablished its lighter-than-air unit at Lakehurst, N.J.

The resurgence of U.S. military airships depends in large part on the fate of programs like the HULA and HAA. Typically, conceptual efforts like these lead to traditional defense procurement programs to fulfill a military requirement. Cebrowski's Office of Force Transformation favors a different approach: the creation of what Woodgerd calls "a value network" to encourage and accelerate the development of lighter-than-air vehicles by government and industry. The utilization of the vehicles would be based on the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) program, and the Voluntary Intermodal Sealift Agreement, which permit the Pentagon to mobilize civilian aircraft and ships, respectively, in time of war.
Therein lies a hitch, however. Industrial use of airships is minimal and limited primarily to advertising. That is why Woodgerd wants to bring together government and commercial organizations that share an interest in lighter-than-air vehicles, or simply in the things that airships can do. Large construction firms and gas and oil companies, which move huge payloads, could be among the Pentagon's partners should some sort of sharing arrangement materialize, Woodgerd said. Currently, industry interest in airships is limited to feasibility studies on moving large payloads over difficult terrain, such as in the Arctic or Siberia, said an industry source.

Nonetheless, the tremendous potential of lighter-than-air vehicles continues to entice military strategists. Airships would not need airfields for their operations. The loading and off-loading of weapons and materiel would be radically reduced. And airships could bypass choke points and even operate from sea bases.

Equipped with airships, military forces could move tons of materiel at approximately five times the typical speeds attained today, Woodgerd said. Current modes of transportation, principally sealift, require 32 days to ship six Army Apache helicopter battalions from Ft. Campbell, Ky., to Saudi Arabia. Using airships, the first helicopter attack battalion would be ready to fly in 13 days, according to Woodgerd's calculations. Three attack battalions would be ready for operations in 26 days, he told Sea Power, while the remaining command and support units would be on-scene in 32 days. He bases his comparison on the use of 20 notional airships with the capabilities of the Cargolifter 160, named after the German company that designed it. The airships would be deployed in CRAF-style phased airlift.

Woodgerd, who began working on airship issues in early 2000 at the Center for Army Analysis, said the airships of old "reached their technological end-point in the 1930s, but the technology has advanced" and it is now possible to build much larger, safer airships. It remains to be seen whether the benefits outweigh the costs in military and commercial markets. *