Hybrid Airship Redefines Accessibility: The era of limited or no access to rugged, untamed wilderness, mountainous terrain, and remote territories with no infrastructure is behind us. A new day has dawned.
A New Class of Aircraft
Lockheed Martin spent more than 20 years developing the technology behind its Hybrid Airship, a whole new class of aircraft capable of hauling heavy cargo and personnel to the most remote and undeveloped reaches on the planet. At its core, the Hybrid Airship is first and foremost a hovercraft, which allows it to be extremely efficient and to access the most difficult locations over any type of terrain. It operates equally well over land, water, and ice.
Being able to fly anywhere isn’t what makes this aircraft so special. Rather, it’s the ability to land virtually anywhere that puts this craft in a league of its own. It has an air cushion landing system (ACLS), developed by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California. The ACLS resembles massive inflatable doughnuts, called hoverpads that attach to the bottom of the airship’s body.
The hoverpads create cushions of air upon which the airship can taxi across land – or skim across water for that matter. When it’s time to park the airship, the hoverpads grip the ground securely by creating a light suction pressure and “fingers” drape to the ground to help maintain an airtight seal. When the airship takes off from a remote location, there is no long-term damage to the terrain.
The Lockheed Martin team built and flew a prototype of the Hybrid Airship, the P-791 more than 10 years ago that demonstrated all the technologies that make up the airship today. The developers started working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) then to forge a path for making this a reality. Now, the airship has an approved FAA Certification Plan and is set to go into production.
The Hybrid Airship has a payload capacity of 20 tons of cargo with a complement of 19 passengers. It combines lift from a helium-filled envelope with aerodynamic lift from the airfoil shape of the envelope. At its cruising speed of 60 knots, it travels at three times the pace of an average cargo ship, which means it could circumnavigate the globe in only 30 days.
What’s left now is for the world to wait and watch this new class of aircraft establish itself and show what it can do.
For more stories like this one and pertinent operational updates from all over the world, visit UAS Blog regularly.
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Mitch Launius
Instructor Pilot for 30 West IP
Mitch is the CEO of 30 West IP where he is also an instructor providing pilot training on international procedures. With an illustrious career of over 34 years in the cockpit, Mitch has acquired over 13,000 hours of flight time flying worldwide, with over 9,000 hours of this in Challenger and Gulfstream aircraft. He is an experienced safety officer and was also an IS-BAO project manager for a fortune 500 flight department. He has presented on Safety and Operations topics at the NBAA International Operators Conference and the Canadian Business Aviation Association Convention and is currently on the NBAA International Operators Committee and serves as the North Atlantic Regional Lead. Mitch is also a member of an FAA working group on General Aviation International Authorizations and Tabletop Exercises (GIATE). He was recently selected to represent IBAC as a member of the ICAO Personal Training and Licensing Panel (PTLP) and was also recently named as a 2020 recipient of the NBAA Tony Kern Professionalism in Aviation Award for his contribution to the business aviation community.
Henry ‘Duke’ LeDuc
Director Of Operations, Americas, UAS International Trip Support
Duke has been a dearly respected member of UAS Americas team and the UAS global family for more than five years. A safety-oriented, FAA-licensed aircraft dispatcher, he oversees all of the operations of the elite UAS Operations Team. With twenty-five years of experience in aviation overall with more than fifteen years of experience in international flight planning and VVIP trip coordination, he is responsible for the development of the dispatch training program and involved in the strategic development of UAS Americas. With a myriad of rich aviation experience behind him, he has extensive experience in worldwide operations with both corporate and charter environments, including seven years as Operations/Dispatch Manager in an industry-leading, Fortune 500, IS-BAO Stage III Certified corporate flight department. Duke is frequently asked shares his knowledge at major industry events and is currently serving on the NBAA’s International Operators Conference (IOC) Planning Committee.
Dudley King
President and Founder, FlightBridge
Dudley is the Founder and President of FlightBridge, which he established in 2011 and has been focused on technology solutions for the private aviation industry since 2006. Since he graduated from Dartmouth in 1988, he has worked with an array of companies listed anywhere from VentureWire to the Fortune 100. A rare blend of executive, entrepreneur, and consultant, Dudley’s executive roles have included acting CIO positions for several companies and tech advisory services to CEOs trying to rebuild their technology organizations or looking for an external, professional point of view. Highly skilled at deeply understanding his customer’s business challenges and drawing from a long and varied experience in information technology services, Dudley excels at designing technology solutions to solve their problems.
Dr. Paulo Alves
Global Medical Director, Aviation Health, Medaire
Paulo has extensive experience in medical advisory in the aviation industry. As a cardiologist, he provides technical guidance and analysis for MedAire’s MedLink medical advisory service and is MedAire’s liaison with civil aviation regulators and industry associations. Paulo worked with Varig Brazilian Airlines for 23 years, 10 of which were spent as General Medical Manager. A member of the MedAire Medical Advisory Board, Paulo is also President of the Ibero-American Aerospace Medical Association, a member of the International Academy of Aerospace Medicine, a member of the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Safety Committee, a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA), and a Fellow of the Civil Aviation Medical Association. Throughout his illustrious career, Paulo has held industry leadership roles including Chairperson of the AsMA’s Air Transport Medicine Committee, President of the Airlines Medical Directors Association, President of the Brazilian Society of Aerospace Medicine and was a member of the IATA Medical Advisory Group from 2002 to 2006.
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