Comments on: Pentagon Plans Airship UAVs

By: Greg Bishop

Greg Bishop — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:17:23 +0000

Wow, a lot of replies with really good info. Thanks all!

By: crgintx

crgintx — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:42:41 +0000

Given my warped ex-military mind, the flying vee shaped airships are likely to have a multipurpose role or reconnaisance,Communications, Command & Control aka 3C, and offensive/defensive capability. Recon is a natural for this type of aircraft. The military likely has created the craft with radar absorbent skin to hide it from enemy radar, a lower speed that will likely hide it’s accoustic signature from listening devices and active visual camoflage to hide it from any aircraft trying to find it. Fill it full of passive sensors and you have a very cheap spy satellite system that could blanket and area the size of say Afghanistan at the fraction of the cost of spy satellite and it could be repaired/replaced very cheaply. The C3 could give realtime, multiple imaging data(optical,infrared and synthetic aperature radar) to intellignece and command centers for determining enemy troop movements and strenght and target acquisition. If current lift capabilities aren’t exagerated, a single ship could easily carry as much ordinance as 10 B-52 bombers with nearly indefinite loiter time or given that it could operate from much higher altitude, it could launch satellites or anti-satellites at a fraction of the cost of land based launch systems. It could also act as a mother ship for dozens of other smaller aircraft. Think that the gov’t was really wasting all those billions on the ill performing anti-ballistic missile programs or were they simply hiding the cost of the stealth blimp project which really worked?

By: drew hempel

drew hempel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:36:33 +0000

That’s how I first spotted the craft — I saw the lights on the horizon and they were doing inexplicable maneuvers. I stood there with my sister and she got bored having seen the same type of lights in Taos and a bit further north of where we were in Minnesota, along the St. Croix river. I watch the lights and think: Not a helicopter, not a tower light, not car headlights. Then I see a craft approaching me from the horizon — it came over the forest from the northwest, then over our neighbor’s driveway, then right over the hill at the top of my parents’ yard and then over the tree. So I knew the distance we really close since I could get a size comparison with the different heights and the size of the craft was larger than the crown of the oak tree — so maybe 50 feet? It was humming loudly but it didn’t seem to be floating or gliding — the craft looked solid and metal. It seemed to be relying on the humming noise in order to maintain both lift and thrust. Whether the lights were part of the propulsion system was hard to tell — but I don’t think the lights were just direction beacons.

By: strange rob

strange rob — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:32:11 +0000

Speaking of bright LEDs: Cheap and efficient white light LEDs new design described in AIP’s Journal of Applied Physics Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/aiop-cae040709.php

By: red pill junkie

red pill junkie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:12:48 +0000

Thanks for the answer, Drew.

By: euphemystic

euphemystic — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:50:49 +0000

Here’s a youtube clip about the plasma light I mentioned, it uses argon not xenon as I wrote… except my post hasn’t appeared yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTGsM9pplUs

By: drew hempel

drew hempel — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:35:27 +0000

Just three lights on each corner, red, green, yellow.

By: euphemystic

euphemystic — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:36:06 +0000

Re: “…why do UFO’s even have lights?”

That’s not a good subject for a post, that’s a good subject for a thesis or a book! Why do people see lights?

By: red pill junkie

red pill junkie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:15:13 +0000

Very interesting, Greg!

By: euphemystic

euphemystic — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:14:18 +0000

Just to clarify, there is a big difference between a supercapacitor and an ultracapacitor. Ultracapacitors are the holy grail of electricity storage but haven’t been made yet and are a game-changing technology. Therefore EEStor is understandably a very secretive company, yet they have signed contracts with a Canadian car company and Lockheed Martin. Just google “EEStor Lockheed Martin”. Zenncars, http://www.zenncars.com has press releases about EEStor at its web site, bottom left. A big ultracapacitor can power a small town from solar energy. EEStor has made lots of incredible claims about its new technology but If this pans out then hydrogen fuel cells will be seen as quaint.

Re: bright lights, I saw a new plasma (there’s that word again) light that was simply a tiny, pill sized glass ampule filled with xenon, I think, and had no external contacts. A strong EM field was used to excite the atoms inside through induction and produced light twice as bright as a street light using only about 250 watts.