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In the aftermath of World War 2, blimps and tethered balloons found themselves phased out of the US military. That didn't begin to change until the 21st century (see DID April 2005, "USN, DARPA See Blimps & HULAs Rising"). The heavy-lift WALRUS project may have been canceled without explanation; but aerostat programs like JLENS cruise missile defense and its smaller RAID local surveillance derivative, and airships like the HAA/ISIS program, remain. The US Navy is also experimenting with aerostats for communications relay, surveillance, and radar overwatch functions - and this has become a formal program.
What's driving this interest? Four things. One is persistence, in an era where constant surveillance + rapid precision strike = a formidable military asset that some call surveillance-strike complexes. A second is cost, especially in an era of rising fuel prices. A recent US NAVSEA release offers figures that starkly illustrate the gap in surveillance cost per hour between an aerostat and planes or UAVs:
What will go into the "weather hardening", and what is to be expected from it?
An old friend of mine and career Navy man LCDR Stu Beyer used to drive blimps for the Navy back in the early '50s. They were potent ASW platforms, owing to their extended loiter time.
Back in the early '90s when my oldest son was stationed at Eglin AFB he and Stu took in the Combat Aviation Museum at Pensacola which included a then-new hands-on exhibit of an old blimp gondola.
After a few pensive minutes Stu said, "Hmmm." and reached down under the commanders desk on the 'bridge.' "Yup. Thought so." he said. "This one's mine, the old ZP-3. Chunk o' gum right where I left it." [...forty years earlier].
When Stu died back in '02, one of the things they discovered when cleaning out his house were several hundred immaculate color slides (all in glass) of naval blimp operations in the late '40s and early '50s.
Stu always said that LTAs (blimps: Lighter Than Air) were simply too good to be abandoned forever. Too bad he didn't live long enough to see their return. He was the kind of officer who could have talked his way onto one of the new ones, even pushing 90, and maybe even got his hands back on the controls.
When the time comes, I hope they'll name some of the new blimps after the seasoned old commanders of two generations ago.
One reason I am fighting the proposed razing of Moffet Field's Hangar One on spurious hazmat charges is the prospect they might once more be needed to house blimps, their previous duty after the dirigibles went away.