Re: Battle blimps

At 5:09 PM +0200 4/18/02, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:
>
>Above a certain height, there are not that many clouds. And even in
>cloudy heights, you may well have days of sunshine. Plus, clouds may
>well indicate turbulence, which is not too nice for a blimp. A rigid
>Zeppelin should cope better.

True.

>And if the blimp relies on optical or infrared sensor for recce, it
can't do much from inside a cloud.
>

Granted. But you could do a number of things. Airships can change 
altitude pretty well given a decent amount of ballast and dynamic 
lift.

>
>And their anti-radiation missiles would have a juicy guidance beam.

Nice thing about ARMS vs Airborne emitters. You can turn things off 
and inertial guidance doens't do much for you.

>I'm not saying that a battle blimp could not be useful. Just that it it
>won't be invulnerable.

Nothing is invulnerable. An aircraft that is sitting over a Carrier 
battle group or over a Surface Action Group with lots of advanced 
SAMs is rather hard to get to.

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