Airships Also Seen as Weapon in War on Drugs : Military Flying High Again on Blimps

When most people think of blimps, they imagine gently floating giant balloons advertising everything from tires to film to soft drinks.

The Department of Defense has another picture: protector of warships, able to remain nearly invisible to radar while providing early warning of approaching enemy aircraft.

Blimps played this role in World War II, but the Navy abandoned its airships as outdated in the early 1960s.

Days Without Refueling

Now, the Pentagon has ordered construction of a 425-foot-long blimp that will be the largest non-rigid airship ever built, more than twice as long as a conventional blimp. The blimp will be equipped with powerful radar and will be capable of patrolling for several days without refueling. It will fly as high as 10,000 feet at speeds up to 80 knots, about 92 m.p.h.

“Everyone has been doing these paper studies of the airships for, I don’t know, ever since they stopped using airships,” said Ron Hochstetler of Airship Industries, a British blimp maker that is building the military blimp in a joint venture with Westinghouse Electric Corp.

“The only way anyone will really be able to say whether or not a wide, modern-technology airship would have benefits in the modern Navy is to actually have one that size that you go up and fly on and try out your ideas with.

“So many of the ideas are predicated on installing equipment that never existed before in the old airship days,” Hochstetler said. “We’ve all kind of new technologies that conceivably can make them much more usable.”

Airship Industries sees a new generation of blimps being used not just for military surveillance, but for spotting drug-smuggling planes, monitoring ocean pollution and taking tourists on sightseeing flights.

Good at Advertising

“Surveillance is certainly one that they are pushing very hard. It’s a machine that’s very good at that job. It’s good at advertising. It’s very good at people going for a ride to see the scenery,” said Capt. Billy E. Richardson, manager of Airship’s facility here.

“To get from A to B, no, it’s not the machine for it.”

Airship Industries, the world’s largest manufacturer of blimps, has built 13 since it was formed about eight years ago, said Mary Lee Dickson, assistant marketing manager in New York. Among them are two blimps sold to South Korea and Tokyo for police surveillance.

The $168-million prototype of the military blimp should be ready to fly by 1993, Hochstetler said.

A model of its three-deck gondola is under construction in a former Navy blimp hangar built during World War II outside Elizabeth City. The compartment underneath the blimp will contain sleeping berths for a crew of 12 to 15, an exercise room, refueling gear and other equipment.

The blimp will be able to move up or down, forward or backward, with the help of computerized flight controls and vectored-thrust engines equipped with propellers that can be swiveled to any up or down angle.

Filled With Helium

The blimp’s plastic-lined fabric hull will be filled with helium, which is non-flammable. The rigid dirigibles of the 1930s, like the ill-fated Hindenburg, were filled with explosive hydrogen.

Should the blimp be fired upon, it would remain afloat because it has low internal pressure and the gas would escape slowly. Even with a severe helium loss, the blimp would slowly descend rather than crash, Airship said.

Airship officials believe blimps’ potential has barely been explored, and say that the prototype should lead to other military and commercial uses.

“The airship can do things no other aircraft can,” Hochstetler said. “We’ve just scratched the surface.”