The Royal Navy is considering the purchase of British-built airships, which can be used for surveillance and the resupply of Navy vessels.
The modern-day Zeppelins are to undergo testing in the United States.
They can remain airborne for three weeks at a time while surveying the Taliban over a vast area, and can carry a 50-tonne load, which would enable them to transport urgent equipment parts out to ships.
Commanders are also considering using them for counter-piracy operations, because they can carry 150 commandos along with their boats.
Travelling at more than 90mph, the airship is almost three times faster than many vessels, and can go several days without refuelling.
With a mixture of 60 percent helium and 40 percent air, it is less vulnerable to enemy fire than the hydrogen-filled German Zeppelins in the First World War.
Tests have shown that bullets and even missiles can pass through the balloon without igniting the gas mixture.
The airships will cost £60 million each and can be flown remotely as a drone. (BFBS)
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poeple need to get over this hydrogen disinformation thing.
it was not the hydrogen that was the problem because the lifting gas is keep in a diffrent bladders then the air so no mixing or igniting. The problem with WWI Zeppelins was they were covered in what we today would call thermite in the form of alternating layers of iron oxide and aluminum paints.
A bullet or missile passing through a self healing bladder would no more ignite the hydrogen then a bullet passing through a gas tank in real life car (meaning not at all)
Regarding hydrogen flammability,in World War 1 fighters attacked them with incendiary bullets;very effective. Secondly,”self-healing bladders” would be far too heavy.
The currently proposed twin-hull airships using Helium for lift as well as aerodynamic lift from forward motion,(Like aircraft) thanks to shape might find it difficult to achieve the stated three weeks duration; it is very difficult to make an impermeable containment cell for helium, which readily leaks through most materials, thus balloons/airships using it require frequent “topping up”, and Helium is very expensive, currently being produced at only two locations, Akron Ohio, and in Russia.
Incidently Helium has less lifting power than hydrogen, so larger airships are necessary for a given load.
An airship of this size and shape would make a good aircraft carrier/mobile airborne UAS base,virtually immune from the likes of Taliban and other insurgents. A semi-rigid or rigid flight deck on top would enable launch and recovery of quite sizeable aircraft, in view of the quoted 50 ton load ability. The only drawback to such operations over land, especially such warm places as Afganistan and Pakistan in the Summer,would be the fierce thermals and turbulence in the area.