
The Soviet Superplane Program That Rattled Area 51 (2011) - jalanco
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2011/06/ekranoplan/?viewall=true
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hristov
I believe ekranoplans will come back. The biggest issue the Soviets faced with
their ekranoplans should be addressable with modern technology. That issue is
stability. The problem is when you have waves under the wings they create
different pressures and air currents under the wings, which makes the airframe
unstable and may cause it to flip to the side or dive into the water. That is
why the soviet ekranoplans had enormous tails.

However, this is something that should be addressable nowadays. One should be
able to design a system where a ladar scans the water surface ahead and a
computer uses that information and various control surfaces on the wings to
compensate for waves below the wings. It sounds very complex but it should be
doable.

Of course, the ocean can produce waves that are much too big for ekranoplans
regardless of what stability technology one uses. But another modern advantage
is that we can now know the state of the ocean everywhere at any time, so a
solution for this is that the ekranoplans simply should avoid areas with large
waves.

These vehicles would be perfect for fast transport if fuel prices were lower.
The problem is that with today's high fuel prices, the demand for fast but
energy inefficient transport is not enough to justify researching new aircraft
types.

But this also has good military potential. It is fast and yet it can carry
much more weight than an airplane. It can carry enough armor to make it immune
to anti-air missiles, yet it is fast enough to escape anti-ship missiles. It
can carry all the active anti-missile technology of a warship, but not be a
slow sitting duck like a warship. It can carry a powerful ship borne radar,
yet move together with fighter formations. It can carry attack troops to
beaches at high speeds and then land in the water right in front of the beach.

So .... a lot of potential.

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astine
Stability was also the limiting factor in flying wings back in the 50s and
60s, and the B2 proved that electronics can solve that problem. So stability
seems like a solved problem to me.

Military use seems like the most obvious use for these vehicles to me. One of
the biggest obstacles to an invasion of the United States for countries that
aren't Canada or Mexico, is transporting a large enough forces across the
ocean rapidly enough. Even if China (for example,) were to defeat the US
fleet, They'd still have a heck of a logistical problem getting troops on the
US mainland. A super fact freighter would solve that problem. and conceivably
enable a flanking attack. The same would be true of any transoceanic war.

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jacquesm
If you're afraid that China will invade the USA then you should study history
a bit more. That doesn't mean that it can not happen at all but the chances
are slim. The USA invading China probably has much higher chance of happening.

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dchest
The grandparent poster used China-USA war as an example; nowhere did he said
he was afraid of China invasion.

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jacquesm
Note the 'if' at the beginning of the sentence.

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astine
Of all the countries on Earth, there are only really two that could mount a
full scale invasion against the United States and hope to win, China and
Russia. Neither is likely, but it would have to be one of them for us to
consider this scenario.

Also, you're right that China invading the US is probably very unlikely, but
probably not for any historical reasons. China and the US rely on each other
too much as trading partners at this juncture for a full scale war to be wise.
Also, much of China's wealth is wrapped up in US debt, a war with the US would
endanger their savings. The biggest contention between the US and China at
this point is the independence of Taiwan, which _could_ lead to war, but not a
mainland invasion of the United States.

Then again, if you do look at history, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was
motivated by passive aggressive attempts by the United States to 'contain'
Japan during the Second World War. Specifically, the United States blocked the
import of oil to Japan. If the United States tries too hard to contain China,
China might feel compelled to break the US's hold on the Pacific. This isn't
like though, and a full scale war coming of it is also unlikely.

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cstross
They had (and still have) plans for bigger Ekranoplans. _Much_ bigger:

[http://www.beriev.com/eng/Be-2500_e/Be-2500_e.html](http://www.beriev.com/eng/Be-2500_e/Be-2500_e.html)

(Beriev Be-2500. Remains a paper study, until they can find a backer with US
$10-15Bn to fund development ...)

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jacquesm
That looks like an extremely scaled up version of the Saab Viggen. Wow.

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adolph
Here's a great set of pictures of the rusting ekranoplan:

[http://englishrussia.com/2010/03/12/ekranoplan/](http://englishrussia.com/2010/03/12/ekranoplan/)

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amiramir
The Boeing Pelican was a proposed ground-effect aircraft for heavy lift over
long distances. It exploited the same aerodynamic effect but was optimized for
cargo rather than as a weapons platform.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pelican](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Pelican)

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tomflack
I'm extremely curious about what "basic maintenance" the Lun receives
currently, and why. Anyone care to speculate?

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jacquesm
Judging by the interior photos of the craft at least part of it was powered
up. Probably just an APU but still, it's not entirely trashed.

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brianbreslin
So what strikes me as more interesting is the potential for this as an
alternative to conventional ferries and cargo runs for short haul stuff or vs
trains up and down the coasts.

A miami-bahamas GEV plane could make the trip in 20 minutes vs 2 hours for a
"high speed" catamaran ferry. But if you used it to ferry cargo from Miami -
DC (traditional flight is 2.5 hours) but you could shuttle cargo in 4 hours
perhaps (though i'm sure much more expensive than traditional cargo ships) but
faster than the 12-18 hours a train takes or a truck takes.

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thyrsus
It occurred to me that the increased efficiency might find these a niche as
rapid trans-oceanic transport, but 15 feet from the surface is too low for
waves likely to be encountered in ocean storms.

~~~
jacquesm
Another problem would be all kinds of boats and other planes in ground effect.
The see is two dimensional, unlike airspace, which makes it quite a bit harder
for a fast moving Ekranoplan or similar to weave through slower traffic. It
would be a continuous game of frogger with the occasional direct hit likely
resulting in loss of both vehicles. The sea is not a very forgiving
environment and avoiding collisions at the slow speeds normally used on the
water is already hard enough. Imagine a plane in ground effect having to cross
a busy shipping lane in bad weather.

Planes colliding is very rare but it does happen occasionally even though they
have 3 dimensions to work with. If you'd compress that traffic to two
dimensions and then add slow moving commercial vessels, sail boats and weather
into the mix I fear it won't end well.

At some considerable increase in fuel consumption Ekranoplans can 'jump' up a
bit, keep it up long enough and you won't have enough fuel to reach the
destination. This is also how they make turns. There are also hybrids that can
fly at some altitude like a normal plane that just exploit the ground effect
to increase efficiency. As opposed to those that are almost always in ground
effect.

These are super interesting craft, you can easily spend a week just reading
about them.

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gnaffle
Mid-air collisions are rare first and foremost because most flights happen in
controlled airspace with assigned flight levels, routes and ATC monitoring the
flights on radar (and TCAS as a last resort for collision avoidance). Mid-air
collisions are far more common in uncontrolled airspace where light airplanes
fly.

So the answer would be to provide controlled areas for the ekranoplans to
travel and monitor those "seaspaces" for infringing traffic.

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sokoloff
Midair collisions not near an airport are vanishingly rare. The takeaway from
that for me is that concentrating traffic (such as would happen when you take
one degree of freedom away) would materially increase the risk.

They're also rare in absolute terms, even including the near-airport ones.

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Tycho
How come the soviets were so amazing at engineering?

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monkeyspaw
Anyone know the source of the 35-50% increased fuel efficiency numbers? I'm
curious if it's a point-to-point estimate, or what. It'd be pretty amazing if
the efficiency was such to overcome the reduced drag from flying at higher
altitudes.

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ak217
I don't know the source, but I imagine they're comparing efficiency against a
conventional plane flying at sea level. There's no way this can compare to
flying at altitude - I mean, the fastest this thing can fly is far below stall
speed at altitude - but its key advantages at sea (particularly for littoral
defense against strike groups of surface ships) are that it's essentially a
ship and a plane in one, doesn't need an airfield, and can hide from radar.
(Given this, I'm actually surprised China hasn't been interested in this
technology.)

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nradov
It wouldn't be of much use to China. It can't hide from airborne radar. And it
can't operate effectively in rough seas.

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mashmac2
The ground effect increasing lift for these planes - is this similar to the
cushion of air for the hyperloop?

I'll admit I don't know enough physics to really understand this, but they
seem similar at first glance...

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nazka
The ground effect is just the effect that your wings are helped by the ground.
The air pushes on the water. It is not air/air but air/ground (so the
incompressibility of water helps you). With this effect the plane can flight
even with these small wings.

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jacquesm
Over water a plane in groundeffect will use slightly more energy than it would
over land because even though water is incompressible that is effective only
when it is completely constrained. Since water open to the environment at the
top can be pushed inwards some of it will do that and this will cause a rise
in the water just outside of the profile of the wings of the aircraft. Over a
solid surface this would not happen. Similar to how riding a bicycle with
springs costs more energy than one without.

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jaipilot747
Private R&D for an ekranoplan-size aircraft might be difficult, but if it
could work just as well for smaller aircraft, this might be an option to
consider.

Does anyone know if the ground effect is affected by wingspan?

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bigiain
The high efficiency of the ground effect starts dropping off sharply at 1/2
wingspan altitudes.

(Anybody who's flown RC gliders will be very familiar with this.)

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nazka
Thank you to share it, what a beast! Very interesting.

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nawitus
I wish Ekranoplanes were more developed. They could be used for cheap and fast
cargo transportation.

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rdtsc
They are pretty dangerous. A good number of them crashed. Some in choppy seas.
It is hard to train pilots for it. In one case, the sea was getting choppy and
pilots did what well pilots do. They pulled up to increase the altitude. That
disrupted the ground effect and the craft crashed.

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nawitus
Those problems can essentially be fixed with a modern autopilot. Nobody
claimed that progress doesn't involve work on developing the planes.

