Pimping the blimp for mining and military

In the far corner of an unlit office on an industrial estate in Bedfordshire, David Burns sits in front of a bank of flickering computer screens, his hands grasping a joystick and multiple throttle levers.

In front of him is a digital mock-up of an airport on the east coast of the United States. As he pushes the throttle forward the camera slowly begins to move down the airfield before lifting off into the sky.

"There she goes," he says. "All you need is about 30 knots to get her off the ground and she's away."

The "she" this softly spoken Scottish pilot is referring to is a computer-simulated version of what will soon be the first fleet of commercial airships to be built in Britain for more than 80 years.

Burns is a test pilot for Hybrid Air Vehicles, a British engineering company that is pioneering a comeback of the dirigible behemoths with a modern twist.

The company has just signed a multi-million-dollar contract with a Canadian firm to supply a brand new range of heavy-lift airships that will carry goods to remote areas of the Arctic, where roads are nonexistent.

They will be used mainly in the mining industry to ship in heavy equipment and take away raw material from some of the most remote communities in North America. The first generation of 91m ships will be able to lift up to 20 tonnes. There are plans for vessels that could lift 10 times that.

If all goes to plan, a fully built British airship could be crossing the Atlantic as early as 2014.

Except don't call it an airship. "We're really trying to get away from that word," says Gordon Taylor, the company's Canadian-born marketing director.

"If anything they're closer to airplanes, there's a fundamental difference. We like to call them hybrid air vehicles because they amalgamate the technology of an aeroplane and an airship."

For decades enthusiasts and logistics experts have argued in favour of a return of Zeppelins as an efficient and more than feasible form of transport that could be a vital bridge between commercial jets and ocean liners.

But since the Hindenburg fire in 1937 as the giant airship docked in New Jersey, the public and investors have been terrified of revisiting such a form of transport.

Zeppelins of the past were built on a rigid aluminium frame out of cotton, silk and ox-gut and were often filled with highly flammable hydrogen.

Hybrid Air Vehicles' new ships are filled with entirely inert helium into a Kevlar-reinforced semi-rigid balloon that loses less than 3 per cent of its gas every year. The balloon itself is aerodynamically shaped like an oversized wing, providing lift as it moves forward.

Four engines add extra power, allowing it to take off and land on gravel, sand, ice and water.

Barry Prentice, a professor of supply-chain management at the University of Manitoba, builds, tests and studies airships. He describes the plan to supply northern Canada with a fleet of the vehicles as "a tipping point" that will herald the return of commercial Zeppelins.

"For decades there has been a complete lack of confidence in airships as a mode of transport but the mining industry is exactly the sort of investment you need to encourage others to follow suit," he says.

"Say you discover a gold mine in a remote corner of the Arctic, the first thing you have to do is build a road. It's an incredibly expensive process and, once the mine is finished, the road is useless. Airships change all that. Once it catches on and is shown to work, the idea will spread."

It was the United States military that first took a punt on airships and generated enough confidence in the idea to give it traction in the 21st century.

Because of secretive contractual commitments, Hybrid Air Vehicles can't talk about it. But it is a matter of public record that the Bedford firm - alongside American arms giant Northrop Grumman - won a half-billion-dollar contract last year to build three surveillance blimps that will give the US military unparalleled eavesdropping abilities over battlefields.

The so-called Long-Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicles can hover at 6000m for 21 days and are packed with sophisticated computers and listening devices.

Military chiefs hope the vehicles will allow them to send intelligence to troops on the ground within 15 seconds.

Defence tests have shown that the blimp is virtually indestructible.

The inert helium is at such a low pressure that even if the blimp is holed by bullets it would take days to seep out. Missiles bounce off without exploding and the ship cannot be detected by radar.

One defence industry official who saw the tests conducted on a prototype said: "We shot at it with 120 half-inch armour-piercing rounds and, three days later, the balloon was still flying. It's a remarkable piece of kit."

Hybrid Air Vehicles' Gordon Taylor has a pitch: "Imagine you're with 400 of your best friends. You board one of our vessels at 11am on a Thursday morning. There's fine dining, cocktails, stately rooms and dinner dances.

"The flight across the Atlantic takes 30 hours so there's no jet lag. The only thing you'd need to worry about is how to get over the hangover from all those cocktails."

It's hard to argue with that.

- INDEPENDENT