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Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Airships are cool but are a large easy target.

Yes, the notion of an airship as aircraft carrier was really only viable for a short time when aircraft engine technology wasn't good enough for high-altitude flight.

With the incorporation of superchargers and turbochargers in aircraft engines (and an overall increase in power), this drastically increased the altitude limits for propeller aircraft.

When the airships could still fly higher than aircraft, that reduced their vulnerability to direct attack.

Once someone figures out the Stealth Airship design, warfare will change!

Just knock out their radar from orbit and seed some clouds ahead of the invasion

I'd watch that movie.

So are regular aircraft carriers - hence they're traveling with escorts :).

Yeah. But regular aircraft carriers are smaller for carrying similar aircraft groups, because they only need to by less dense than water, not air.

An airship however is way easier to shoot down using non military technology that some nutjob group could afford. They're slow, big and a lot less armored than ships, and they'd make the news if shot down, which is what the above actors are after; in this world I don't see them like a safe solution for transportation.

In the context of aircraft carriers it probably is never a good idea to have them directly at the front. If it is close enough to be shot down by a Texan wielding a sawed of shotgun it probably is too close to the front. Same is true for the ship kind, if you can walk up to it with a welder and cut holes into its armor plating it is too close.

In the context of transportation planes seem to have significant issues dealing with loons wielding laser pointers. So unless you classify those as military technology you will have a hard time finding something cheaper and easier to get your hands on.

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