During the past decade’s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US military has come to rely heavily on the continuous or nearly continuous presence overhead of both manned and unmanned aircraft to support ground troops.
Unmanned aircraft that remain aloft in particular locations (or “orbits”) have been primarily used to provide timely information about activities on the ground and to attack ground targets on short notice.
Most prominent among these aircraft are the US DoD’s fleets of unmanned Predators, Reapers, and Global Hawks; however, satellites and manned conventional aircraft, including fighters and long-range bombers, have also contributed.
The demand for those so-called “persistent” or “loitering” missions has led the Air Force to substantially enlarge its fleet of unmanned aircraft, and the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to field or plan to field similar aircraft to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and light-attack capabilities of their own.
Unmanned aircraft are particularly attractive for such missions because they can be designed to provide durations beyond the physical endurance of human air crews and because they do not put humans at risk during operations in potentially hostile airspace.
In a recently published report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examines the potential capabilities of airships for ISR and airlift missions.
In brief, CBO finds that:
- If the speed, payload, and endurance proposed for unmanned airships can be achieved, the resulting craft could serve effectively in the ISR and airlift roles;
- Airships’ performance characteristics would provide some advantages and suffer from some disadvantages relative to those of the conventional aircraft currently used for ISR and airlift missions; and
- Airships would present new operational challenges such as greater sensitivity to weather conditions and the need to provide unique types of maintenance and support.
The full report can be viewed at: http://goo.gl/oJNg3 [PDF 4.7MB, 28 pages] —Defpro.com