It's my understanding that zeppelins fell out of use because the airplanes learned to fly higher, and shoot incendiary bullets. Poor zeppelins.

For a more recent fiction example of zeppelins being repurposed for combat and their survivability versus ground fire check out a section near the end of Peter F. Hamilton's "Judas Unchained." Basically an insurgent group infiltrates a base for zeppelins used in terraforming, reprograms their flight paths and loads fuel-air bombs in a few of them while using the rest as decoys. They use this tactic to attack a well-defended fixed, but not fortified, position.

Incindiary/tracer rounds don't do much if the zepp is filled with an inert gas.

The reason the zepps fell out of favor was that they were being fueled with hydrogen and not helium as helium was considered a military asset. Had the Hindenberg (the death knell of the airship) been filled with helium instead, we could very well see airships as the cargo haulers that supertankers/carriers are now - and they'd be faster.

I'm still totally buying one when I'm rich.

Right, but the zeppelins at the time weren't filled with inert gas. I just meant the historical situation, not the 'current' one.

I think you can get a Zeppelin NT for like 7 million USD?

Hydrogen + Incendiary Bullets + Flammable Skin = Recipe for disaster.
Helium + Incendiary Bullets + Inflammable Skin = Not so much a problem.

Aha! Flammable = inflammable!

Besides, apparently we'll run out of helium long before 2070.

Yes, but I believe if they were, it would have made a fundemental difference in the development of aviation technology. That's all.

I'm hoping we make a return to it, really. It could be used as a multirole bomber/gunship, even. Drop the bombs to soften the AAA, then use the guns to suppress targets. You can even slap a designator on there so guided weapons can come on in and say 'howdy'.

I think they're much more suited to cargo/carrier/surveillance operations. Even with the defense of extreme altitude, missiles are just better. Still, *with* air-superiority, they'd be a good platform for guided bombs.

And gentleman adventuring. This is what interests me with airships.

Well, naturally.

US, Isreal, Germany, Suadia Arabia, Korea (south), Taiwan, Kuwait all use Patriot and that's just off the top of my head.

EDIT- NEtherlands, Greece, JApan, and Egypt too apparently.

Here and more

Wiki

I doubt it in 2070 they've master hydrogen fusion so we'd have helium plants allover the world

Fabric is still flammable. (Also this is a minor point but incendiary and tracer rounds are two different things.)

Both=fun though and that's all that matters. Tracers are trippy how sometimes the flame shoots off into space. The first time I fired with them I was like WTF

Yes bout both would ignite hydrogen its rather prone to combustion then near flame/sparks. Well assuming it isn't some wacky chemical tracer not that I think any currently exist.

Oooh, good point re: fusion, Dumori.

Which is why I seperated them. Tracer rounds, as with smoke grenades, can still start fires. Helium is also a fire retardant, and they aren't using flammable fabrics in airship construction anymore.

I'd still rather be in a flying thing made of metal than one made of fabric and filled with gas when being shot at with bullets.

I suppose being shot at with missiles it wouldn't make much difference.

The zepps they want to make would be unmanned, so it's not as much of an issue.

Zepps would be harder to hit with a heat-seeker and small-arms fire doesn't do anything to them, if the testing is to be believed.

I'd rather being the zeppelin if I'm being targeted with missiles. Pass through and maybe cause a slow descent or be consuming in a ball of fire.

The only time you would use a weapon like this is when you have air superiority, so the risk of fighters would be small if not nil.

In a modern battlespace, you have "air traffic" controls, i forget their exact name, that track all the aircraft in an area. So you would have observation UAVs, that find and track targets, air support UAVs, which would respond to support requests and air superiority UAVs, which would patrol the airspace and respond to any intrusions by enemy fighters. While enemy fighters would be a low level threat to these zeppelin battle wagons, ground fire would be the biggest threat. With gunfire not being able to reach them, missiles would be the primary threat, in which they would counter with ECM.

You need to think of most battlespaces as an ecosystem, each organism serves a different but needed function and if one organism is not there then the whole system could fall apart.


If you don't want a whole battlespace then an updated AC-130 would work just fine. Make it a civilian cargo hauler with hidden turrets that pack a howitzer, panther cannon and a couple heavy machine guns.

Although this is the kind of fluff that players will almost certainly never see (and hence does not require stats), the AC-260 is going to be super-duper-fucking-ridiculously upgraded to-the-gills with all manner of Radar Invisibility/SOTA ECM/ECCM and lock-on countermeasures as well as armored & smart-armored to the nines. Jammers/flares should help throw off missile fire and the smart-armor should take care of any AA-Flak that can hit it at cruising altitude. And it's carrying drone-racked Nimrod UAVs just in case. Basically as much cool shit that I can fit into 30+ Body worth of modification slots.

Plus it is going to be protected by a pair of Lockheed A-3100 VTSOL fighter bombers to intercept aerial threats.

And keep in mind, all of this is just for REDUNDANCY as they are not expecting to be met with any serious AA/SAM/AtA type resistance at all. It is not, in other words, a battle space.

The reason for the 'over-the-top' security is simple enough. I am leaving it up to player's imaginations, but there is a very real possibility that David Gavilan Damien Knight and his support staff are actually in this bad-boy. (The plane, its armaments, and its entourage are not a player objective/target, more of a deus ex-machina. It is impossible to explain more about this without having to like summarize my entire campaign.)

Main armament is a scaled up long-range version of the Ares Firelance Vehicle Laser with things like howitzers, panthers, and HMGs as support weapons.

I would avoid having a howitzer on a plane.

Unless it's a centerline weapon that's fired on a strafing run. But it sounds to me like the Firelance is the centerline weapon that is on a turret at/near the nose of the plane.

Everything else sounds about right though.

That's essentially what the 105 on a Spectre/Spooky is. They fire it while they're banking just fine.

*shrug* The AC-130 fires a 105mm cannon; is that a 'howitzer'?

Okay, decent point (I suppose) Firelance probably replaces 105mm Howitzer.



Immense relief. I worry about these things.

The AC-130 Spectre has a side mounted 105mm howitzer. See this image for an underbelly shot of the Spectre. In fact I can see three of the four standard mounts on the left side the 105mm howitzer, the 40mm cannon, and one of the two 20mm vulcan cannons.

An interesting point on the laser - the Air Force has been working with Boeing on such a system and from the look of this photo it seems it's belly-mounted.

You sure that's a Howitzer?
That looks big I admit, but it doesn't feel like a Canon to me.
The recoil on that would play hell on the plane.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M102_howitzer I assume having it in the name satisfies the definition.

Wow you would think the recoil would be hell on flying

Go Go gadget Cannon

Here, just threw together the Ares Borealis Gunship for you. Put it in its own thread so as not to derail yours. (and I tend to keep clean links for my index thread)


Ares Borealis Gunship

Ever wonder how a broadside from a ship-of-the-line didn't have much of an effect on the ship? The guns are allowed to roll back which negated a lot of the recoil.

Yeah, when the 105 is firing, don't be standing behind the breech block.




-karma

Muchas gracias BRodda.

Ships of the Line aren't flying using vector thrust though

I suppose we could ask this person.

But yeah, the 105 has a massive slide system to absorb a lot of the recoil. Plus a giant muzzle brake.




-karma

That article disappoints the hell out of me. She's on a '60 with the Greenfeet, the -130's aren't even based out of Nellis. Rawrardgh!

That's the important point here, folks: Suppressing enemy air defence is not the Spectre's job, it is employed when other qualities are called for. You don't send your hacker against the guard elementals and then complain he's ineffective, right?


And contrary to guard elementals, the typical runner or covert ops team does not bring SAMs.



The stocks mostly deplete themselves. Stingers do not have an unlimited shelf life, especially the combined high-power battery/coolant gas containers should be dead and deflated after more than a decade in some mountain cave.


PS: Since we have quite a few US military types here, what's the official name of this "battery gas element" (that's how it's called in Germany)?

Battery Coolant Unit (BCU)

You mean the BCU, yes? Battery Coolant Unit?

Edit: Sigma wins. It also bears mentioning that the U.S. only sold about 500 units to the Mujahideen, and tried to buy back the remainder after the war.

EDIT- Beat to it.

Depends on how dysfunctional your group is, and how much money they all owe the Hacker.

Hey if that hacker can get himself a bunch of Lone Star drones packing those stun canons.. I think that Hacker has a decent shot

Thanks, also to the others

A variant option would be a rigid design and a vacuum inside.

there is also this: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w.../Airborne_laser

I heard that thing recently failed a shoot-down test. Alas, back to the lab again.

Ok, I will jump into this argument because my friends used to work on the AC-130s.

The 105 is a full artillery piece the same as the 105 howitzer. I knew people who used the brass shells as table legs. The miniguns have a distintive sound akin to a fart.

The AC-130 has a full suite of ECM and ECCM.

They are primarily stationed out of Hurlburt Airforce Base in Florida. The special forces down there have increased which has required them to take up space at neighboring Eglin Airforce Base. The C-130 variants are the MC-130s and the AC-130s. These are expensive planes so don't go cheap on an equivalent in SR.

It acts as suppressive fire, command and control for special forces and to destroy just about anything including air defenses. They fly in a circle to shoot their target and do fly fairly low (it is an eerie feeling when they target a car in the mall parking lot and fly a circle around).

I would make them unmanned myself as that gives them more room for equipment, ammo and guns. Put the best armor piercing rounds along with the largest area effect guns. So probably an HVAR equivalent of panther assault gun. Then use an automatic grenade launcher with mortar explosive rounds to simulate the bofors guns. Then the GM heavy cannon for area effect. A full suite of ECCM and ECM along with a full suite of senors (visual and things like magnetic anomoly detectors). Lasers make little sense for this vehicle as it is not intended to be a tank buster.

As a side note for anti aircraft weapons. The idea is not to hit the target kinetically, but to explode in close proximity to bring it down (excepting other missiles). The explosive shrapnel pierces the fuselage, wings, cockpit and engines of the aircraft to bring it down. Less accuracy is required and the chance of the missile not just flying through the aircraft is minimized.

The Fart of $Deity!