[by John MacNeill]
Goo goo g’joob!

DID has covered the US military’s rising interest in aerostats, blimps and related programs, including the Walrus heavy-transport blimp (that’s “heavy” as in “1-2 million pounds”) which may be able to offer a faster and more versatile substitute for sealift. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has now awarded funding to two contractors for the first phase of the Walrus program.

In this article DID explains the concept, details the contractors and contracts involved in this initial award (including a few updates), and lays out the program’s structure… or at least, what used to be its structure.

DARPA notes that a key goal of the Walrus program is to establish clear and credible solutions that provide confidence that earlier airship-era limitations will be overcome. In particular, an early focus of the program will be the investigation of advanced breakthrough technologies that will support the development of innovative lift and buoyancy concepts that do not rely on off-board ballast.

Concept & Key Technologies

(click to view full)

The Walrus program will develop and evaluate a very large airlift vehicle concept designed to control lift in all stages of air or ground operations including the ability to off-load payload without taking on-board ballast other than surrounding air. This is obviously rather important when offloading up to 2 million pounds of personnel and military equipment in remote areas. In distinct contrast to earlier generation airships, the Walrus HULA (Hybrid Ultra Large Aircraft) will be a heavier-than-air vehicle and will generate lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring and gas buoyancy generation and management.

The Walrus operational vehicle (OV) is intended to carry a payload of 500-1,000 tons (that’s 1-2 million pounds) up to 12,000 nautical miles, in less than seven days and at a competitive cost. Given these enormous capacities, they would mostly be used to deploy full-scale fighting units (for example, the components of an Future Combat Systems Army Unit of Action) quickly, getting them to their site with a minimum of equipment reassembly work required. The ideal is that transported forces should fully ready to fight within six hours.

Initial conceptions call for the Walrus to operate without significant infrastructure and from unimproved landing sites, including rough ground having five-foot-high obstacles like boulders, shrubs, et. al. Additionally, Walrus should be capable of performing theater lift and supporting sea-basing or even persistence missions like communications and surveillance.

DARPA says that advances in envelope and hull materials, buoyancy and lift control, drag reduction and propulsion have combined to make this concept feasible. Technologies to be investigated in the initial study phase include vacuum/air buoyancy compensator tanks, which provide buoyancy control without ballast, and electrostatic atmospheric ion propulsion.

The Contractors

The two contractors receiving Walrus Phase I awards are:

• Lockheed Martin Corp. Advanced Development Programs in Palmdale, CA ($3 million). More commonly known by its colloquial name “Skunk Works,” it has designed and produced legendary aircraft like the U-2 and SR-71.

• Aeros Aeronautical Systems Corp. in Tarzana, CA ($3.3 million).

Another contractor, meanwhile, notes that:

“Millennum Airship Inc. was notified by DARPA on June 13, 2005 that we were not one of the two selected contractors. However, both our ITAMMS and Vacustat technologies are unique and important to the viability of this program. We have been contacted by both winners, Lockheed Martin and Aeros Aeronautical Systems, about possibly integrating our two technologies into their systems. Currently, we have been invited to Lockheed Martin for a meeting on October 24 to further examine the combined opportunities.”

Program Structure

SkyFrieghter
(click to view full)

The Walrus program will develop an operational vehicle concept design and required breakthrough technologies and will conduct risk reduction demonstrations of these new technologies.

During the program’s first phase, a 12-month analytical effort, the two contractor teams will conduct trade studies to determine which OV design concept most satisfies the operational tasks and optimizes design capability. Phase I will explore various vehicle configurations (rigid, non-rigid and semi-rigid), and will conclude with a concept design review of the OV and the supporting technology development plan for risk reduction demonstrations including the ATD vehicle.

DARPA will select one contractor team to enter the second phase, which will be a demonstration effort spanning three years. During phase II, the program will refine the Walrus’ design needs, identify its potential military use through modeling and studies, develop breakthrough technologies, and conduct risk reduction demonstrations of components and subsystems.

DARPA also notes that demonstrations will include flight tests of a Walrus Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) scaled aircraft. This is a fancy way of saying that they plan to flight-test a “significant-scale” lifting airship in 2008 with a payload capability of around 30 tons, about 50% more than a Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules. These risk reduction demonstrations, including the ATD vehicle, are designed to establish a low-risk technology path for proving the Walrus concept and achieving the operating goals.

It isn’t entirely clear whether this scaled-down Walrus would fall under under the $10 million advanced technology demonstration (ATD), or under a larger contract. The LA Times reports that DARPA will award a $100 million contract for a prototype airship in 2006, and notes that if Walrus works out, the total contract could be worth up to $11 billion over 30 years.

Additional Readings

• Unfortunately, Congress killed the WALRUS program by refusing to fund it. No explanation provided to DARPA, even though the investment was minimal and even the scaled-down demo vehicle alone would have solved some important military problems. See DID’s April 4/06 article WALRUS Hunted to Extinction By Congress, DARPA?

• See DARPA Release [PDF format] and DARPA Program web page.

• Gizmag – The Walrus: the US Army contemplates building an aircraft the size of a football field

• Millenium Airship, Inc. Skyfreighter. See also their ITAMMS technology for thrust/lift.

• Dedicated LTA builder World SkyCat also failed to receive a DARPA contract. Their site is highly worthwhile, however, especially for all the variants of HULA craft they propose (and justify) for specialized uses, and their incorporation of operating cost figures. The economics of SkyGas and SkyPipeline were especially interesting, as commercial demand would push per-unit HULA costs down and ensure open production lines (and hence additional military procurement options) much more consistently than reliance on pure military orders.

• US Air Force Journal of Logistics (Volume XXIX, Number 3/4, Fall/Winter 2005) – Back to the Future: Airships and the Coming Revolution in Strategic Airlift [PDF]

• DID (Feb 17/05) – Aeros Dreaming Big With Walrus Project

• DID (Oct 21/05) – US CBO Gives OK to HULA Airships for Airlift. the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan analytical arm of the US Congress, “likes the heavy-lift airship concept because it could do more than the airlift aircraft and surge sealift capabilities currently used when U.S. forces deploy.” DID went and found that report, which offers some interesting conclusions…

• DID (July 6/05) – USAF Looking at “Near-Space” Blimps. Interest takes the next step via a positive formal report to the USAF.

• DID (Apr 26/06) – USN, DARPA See Blimps & HULAs Rising

• Book: The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed by John McPhee. Fascinating book. This isn’t the first time someone has floated a similar idea. In the 1930s, a group of visionaries also attempted to develop a hybrid blimp/aircraft with these kinds of capabilities. Its early and secret experimental development took 12 years time, and $1.5 million dollars that came came from private individuals. Much of it was raised by the minister of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Trenton, New Jersey, who initiated the project. See also: Amazon.com

(Originally published on August 30, 2005. Updated as new information has become available.)