Photos of the LUN Ekranoplan
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@xinit @Nick_Stevens_graphics @NanoRaptor Nope, that's entirely real!
@Nick_Stevens_graphics So I saw a video of Russians shooting a Ukrainian sea drone as it entered a harbour at high speed and I thought it made sense to have as fast as possible for defensive purposes.
Would a drone Ekranoplan be a better idea or just a bigger target?
Not sure.
The Ukrainian approach to drones is cheap and loads of them.
From my understanding, the benefits of an ekranoplan are that it can be heavier than a plane as it gets more lift. Faster than a boat too.
I suspect the simplicity of a boat approach would win out.
I suspect an ekranoplan drone would also be noisy.
I'm out of my depth here.
@Nick_Stevens_graphics @SturmUndDranger The Ekranoplan was doomed from the start on basic principles.
Ground effect only works when your wingspan and distance from the ground is correctly proportional.
For the size and weigh of craft, it had a tiny wingspan, meaning that it could only utilise ground effect when the sea was billiard table smooth. This ruled out usage in any of the Western (or Soviet for that matter) theatres of operation.
This meant it had to fly higher, lest it be damaged by swell and heavy spray. Piloting anything that close to water at the best of times is challenging, but at the stated speeds, it meant no time to react to freak waves or unexpected swell.
This meant it had to be used along swell lines and break lines, which dictated the direction it could move in effectively. Close to shore break lines were too close to not affect wingtips, and on open water you couldn’t keep constant elevation.
All this cumulated in a few things. This thing lit up radar like a Christmas tree and if it couldn’t fly low enough to utilise ground effect (or avoid radar), its efficiency was drastically reduced, too high and it couldn’t fly, and in bad weather was completely grounded. If touched down on water in a storm, it was easily capsized. At the time they thought it would manage 1500-2000km, but often would only achieve a third or less of that, especially in a headwind (where more lift is generated, but at that elevation is very gusty). When not getting the efficiency they needed, it could never travel at full speed, making a radar hot, slow moving target essentially made of paper, filled with explosives.
Very much from a time of throw all ideas at the board and see what sticks.
Edit: I should also add, given it couldn’t fly at altitude, but still had to be aerodynamic, it had radar which it couldn’t effectively use. Other things could see it, and it couldn’t see them. Even much taller traditional warships would have picked it up before the opposite. That’s also bad for navigation, and not hitting things at such high speeds.
@ADHDruid @Nick_Stevens_graphics @SturmUndDranger
That’s why it’s so cool. Like the nuclear powered plane, it’s such a completely bonkers idea that it looks like something from an alternate timeline with different physics.
@david_chisnall @Nick_Stevens_graphics @SturmUndDranger oh I don’t disagree. I love these things. I also think some of this stuff never really mattered if it worked or not, just knowing the other side was working on something insane was and effective tool. There’s a reason they only made one of these!
I’m very much a retrofuturist, too, so I love the idea that it could work, somewhere… for something
