Have You Seen DoD's Blimp-Like Airship That's Making Aviation History One Small Hover at a Time?

TUSTIN, Calif. (TheBlaze/AP) -- The massive blimp-like aircraft (although not technically a blimp) just barely flew in a test last week, but engineers still consider it progress toward an aviation feat that hasn't been done before.

The Aeroscraft airship, a high-tech prototype airship, is seen in a World War II-era hangar in Tustin, Calif. , Thursday, Jan. 24. (Photo: AP/Jae C. Hong)

The fact that the hulking Aeroscraft hovered for just a few minutes about 12 feet off the ground in a military hangar, according to the engineers who developed it is a step forward in aviation. The Department of Defense and NASA have invested $35 million in the prototype because of its potential to one day carry more cargo than any other aircraft to disaster zones and forward military bases.

"I realized that I put a little dot in the line of aviation history. A little dot for something that has never been demonstrated before, now it's feasible," said flight control engineer Munir Jojo-Verge.

The airship is undergoing testing this month at Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin, and must go through several more rounds of flight testing before it could be used in a disaster zone or anywhere else. The first major flight test took place Jan. 3.

Aerospace engineer Munir Jojo works in the cockpit of the Aeroscraft airship. (Photo: AP/Jae C. Hong)

Watch AP's report:

The biggest challenge for engineers is making sure the airship will be able to withstand high winds and other extreme weather conditions, Jojo-Verge said.

Worldwide Aeros, the company that developed the aircraft, said it also must secure more funding for the next round of flight testing, but is hopeful the Defense Department and others will step in again as investors.

The company says the cargo airship's potential to carry more cargo more efficiently than ever before would provide the U.S. military with an advantage on the battlefield and greater capacity to save more lives during natural disasters.

The lighter-than-air vehicle is not a blimp or a zeppelin because it has a rigid structure made out of ultra-light carbon fiber and aluminum underneath its high-tech Mylar skin. Inside, balloons hold the helium that gives the vehicle lift. Unlike hydrogen, the gas used in the Hindenburg airship that crashed in 1937, helium is not flammable.

The huge cargo-carrying airship is has shiny aluminum skin and a rigid, 230-foot aluminum and carbon fiber skeleton. (Photo: AP/Jae C. Hong)

The airship functions like a submarine, releasing air to rise and taking in air to descend, said Aeros mechanical engineer Tim Kenny. It can take off vertically, like a helicopter, then change its buoyancy to become heavier than air for landing and unloading.

"It allows the vehicle to set down on the ground. And then when we want to become lighter than air, we release that air and then the vehicle floats and we can allow it to take off," Kenny said.

Watch the aircraft move in this promo video from the company:

The project has set abuzz the old hangars at the Marine Corps Air Station in Tustin. The structures were built to hold blimps during World War II. Now workers zip around in cherry-pickers, and the airship's silvery surface shines against the warm tones of the aging wood of the walls.

Work is almost done on a 230-foot rigid airship inside a blimp hangar at a former military base in Orange Co. (Photo: AP/Jae C. Hong)

"You could take this vehicle and go to destinations that have been destroyed, where there's no ports, no runways, stuff like that. This vehicle could go in there, offload the cargo even if there's no infrastructure, no landing site for it to land on, this vehicle can unload its whole payload," said Kenny.

Next, Aeros wants to build a full-size 450-foot-long vehicle that can carry 66 tons of payload.

--

Related:

• 'Days of Unblinking Stare': Army's Football-Field Size Spy Blimp Makes First Tests in New Jersey
• This is the $150 Million Futuristic Military Blimp That Went Down in Pa.