from Hacker News

The Soviet Superplane Program That Rattled Area 51 (2011)

by jalanco on 8/17/13, 8:11 PM with 42 comments

• by hristov on 8/17/13, 10:25 PM

  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.

• by cstross on 8/17/13, 9:40 PM

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

  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 ...)

• by adolph on 8/18/13, 1:16 AM

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

  http://englishrussia.com/2010/03/12/ekranoplan/

• by amiramir on 8/17/13, 9:52 PM

  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

• by tomflack on 8/18/13, 5:21 AM

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

• by brianbreslin on 8/18/13, 3:51 PM

  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.

• by thyrsus on 8/17/13, 9:35 PM

  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.

• by Tycho on 8/18/13, 4:32 PM

  How come the soviets were so amazing at engineering?

• by monkeyspaw on 8/17/13, 10:53 PM

  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.

• by mashmac2 on 8/17/13, 9:19 PM

  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...

• by jaipilot747 on 8/18/13, 5:37 AM

  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?

• by nazka on 8/17/13, 9:18 PM

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

• by nawitus on 8/17/13, 9:42 PM

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