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War has broken out in a remote corner of the world.
US forces rush to respond, but the US navy's aircraft carriers, the tip of the spear of
American military might, will take at least a week to get on station.
Allied forces are in desperate need of air support now- modern military aircraft can
end a war in days versus an unprepared foe.
From bases in the US and Germany, massive Boeing 747s lift off one by one.
These are some of the largest planes ever built, specially modified 747s developed for
the US Air Force with an airlift capacity of a whopping 454 tons.
The massive planes wheel in the sky, turning their noses towards their final destination:
the skies over what could turn into World War III if the United States can't stop the
conflict before it spirals out of control.
As ten of the lumbering jets approach hostile skies, enemy long range radar easily picks
them up and fighters are dispatched to intercept.
The massive planes are slow, relatively speaking, and are easy prey for the incoming fighters.
The enemy pilots can't believe their luck, the mighty US Air Force is basically serving
up fat, juicy targets on a platter for them.
Suddenly, a cargo bay door opens up on the front of the plane.
A small fighter jet, approximately three quarters the size of an F-16 is pushed out on a conveyor
belt.
The plane plummets straight down as its engines flare to life, and the pilot eases the stick
back to level out.
A little over a minute later, a second plane is pushed out of the American 747.
In 15 minutes the ten American 747s have disgorged their entire complement of 10 fighter aircraft
each.
The enemy is suddenly facing a flight of 100 American fighters.
Small, nimble, and not as heavily armed as traditional fighter jets, these small fighters
are nonetheless a lethal force.
Not only do they have superior numbers on their side, but their small sizes and stealth
features make them incredibly difficult to accurately target at long ranges.
And with enough weapons and fuel on board their mothership to last for days, they can
stay on station for nearly a week, giving traditional US forces more than enough time
to arrive.
The concept may sound like something straight out of science fiction, or an Avengers movie,
but the airborne carrier concept has actually been something seriously considered by US
military planners for five decades now.
However, this is nothing new, and the legacy of the airborne aircraft carrier dates back
to practically the dawn of flight itself.
Within years of the first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, militaries around the world
were already pressing airplanes into service.
While balloons had been in widespread use for years as excellent surveillance platforms,
they were slow, unreliable, and easily destroyed.
Zeppelins solved many of these problems, but faced a host of their own issues- including
the fact that as anti-air artillery improved, they became a massive liability.
Airplanes however were fast and agile, and could cover great distances.
They were the perfect scouting tool.
But aircraft were inherently limited in their range, and getting them quickly to where they
were needed most was difficult.
They required extensive ground-based support, including a functional airfield close to the
front and safe supply lines to transport volatile gasoline and other materials needed to keep
them in flight.
An airborne aircraft carrier would solve all these problems- it could bring its own supplies
with it anywhere it went, and it could outpace even the fastest naval aircraft carriers.
Even more importantly, they could go where a navy ship couldn't go: inland.
Various nations toyed around with the idea of launching aircraft from dirigibles, including
the United States and Great Britain.
The US even modified two dirigibles to carry, launch, and recover aircraft.
The launching was relatively simple, each plane would simply be dropped from the belly
of the ship, falling until it gained enough air speed to generate lift.
A wild ride for sure, but a relatively safe one.
Recovering aircraft however was something else entirely.
First, there was no way to build an actual runway on top of a dirigible, though the idea
was brainstormed.
Instead, the best way to recover aircraft was through a mechanism that would hook the
aircraft and reel it up, sort of like a trapeze.
This required a pilot with nerves of steel, who would have to slow his plane down to match
the speed of the much slower dirigible.
This risked stalling the plane out, which would cause it to lose lift and crash.
To add to the difficulty, the parasitic fighters were purposefully built small and lightweight,
and in any amount of turbulence would be thrown around dramatically.
Despite these challenges, American airships Akron and Macon both proved that the flying
aircraft carrier using a dirigible was actually feasible.
Both ships conducted several successful launches and recoveries of their parasitic fighters,
and the concept was gaining traction in the 1930s.
However, dirigibles were notoriously finicky aircraft, and a number of very high profile
accidents including the total loss of the Akron, led the US Navy to focus its efforts
elsewhere.
However, the airborne aircraft carrier concept had worked.
The idea would once more find fertile ground in the minds of war planners during World
War II- especially in the first half of the war.
Allied bombers flying deep into Germany were getting routinely mauled by fighters, and
the Luftwaffe knew that Allied fighters could only provide air cover for about half of the
journey.
Therefore they simply waited well outside of the Allied fighter's range, ready to pounce
on the big bombers as soon as their escorts were forced to turn back.
It was a slaughter, and for a while air crews had the shortest life expectancy of any job
in the Allied military.
In the Pacific, the dream of airborne carriers would allow US forces to strike hard and deep
into Japanese territory, completely outmaneuvering Japan's surface naval air forces.
However, there were other priorities for already tight military budgets, and despite the promising
tests of the concept in the 1930s, the idea was shelved.
The concept would be resurrected in some form or another for the next few decades, though
no significant progress was made.
In the mid to late 60s though, many of those World War II veterans who had dreamt of flying
aircraft carriers once more resurrected the idea.
Again the idea was pitched out of sheer necessity- America's massive fleet of strategic bombers
had the range to hit any Soviet target from bases in the US, but America's fighters could
never keep up with the big bombers.
If conventional or nuclear war were to break out, the B-52s would be basically on their
own as they crossed the Arctic circle and into hostile air space.
But what if defending aircraft could be carried into battle alongside them?
One idea proposed attaching a fighter or two to each bomber aircraft, in essence allowing
each aircraft to carry their own fighter escort with them and launch when necessary.
However, the complicated equipment needed for recovery was nearly impossible to fit
onto a bomber without serious modifications that would jeopardize its primary mission
of dropping bombs.
Fighter escorts would basically be forced to fend for themselves once they were detached,
and believe it or not, the idea was briefly considered for the all-important nuclear bomber
fleet.
The pilot's sacrifice was acceptable to military planners that needed to ensure nukes landed
on Soviet targets as needed.
The more realistic solution though involved a single aircraft specially modified to carry
parasitic fighters internally.
The fighters would be smaller than traditional fighter aircraft as they wouldn't need as
large a fuel load.
Their small size would also limit their payloads, but with the planes dedicated solely to air
superiority, they'd be able to pack enough of a punch to threaten enemy fighters.
Such an aircraft had already been designed and flown back in World War II and the years
immediately after, the most famous of being the XF-85 Goblin.
This tiny fighter would've indeed been a terror in the sky, as its incredibly small size gave
it great maneuverability and speed, and made it a frustratingly small target for enemy
fighters.
The new airborne aircraft carrier would be based around a modified Boeing 747.
This allowed the parasitic fighters to be slightly larger than the Goblin, and thus
carry more fuel and weapons.
The fighters would be stowed internally on an upper flight deck, and a conveyor belt
system would move them onto an elevator which would lower them to the lower flight deck,
where another conveyor would once more push them towards the front of the aircraft.
Once there, a ramp door would open and the fighter would simply be pushed out.
With a deployment time of about 80 seconds, the 747's entire complement of 10 fighters
could be airborne in just about 15 minutes.
Once it was time to recover the aircraft, another ramp door would open in the rear.
Then a hook would be extended and the incoming fighter would hook itself, very similar to
how aircraft conduct modern aerial refueling operations.
Then the parasitic fighter would be reeled in, placed on a conveyor belt, and moved inside.
Each 747 could carry enough fuel and weapons for multiple sorties each, and airborne refueling
planes could keep the mothership in the air for days at a time if needed- the only limitation
was the physical endurance of the mothership's engines.
While not on a mission, the crew of the parasitic fighters could relax in their own cabins,
with a full galley available to cook hot meals on demand.
In the 1970s, the technology was there, and the launch and retrieval systems had already
been proven multiple times in the past.
So why didn't airborne aircraft carriers happen?
First, aircraft designers would have to make a decision on what to prioritize with the
parasitic fighters themselves- should they prioritize weapons capability, fuel storage,
or radar?
A small aircraft meant sacrifices would have to be made, as the technology had not yet
miniaturized components enough to make micro fighters that could enjoy adequate amounts
of focus on all three areas.
The threat had also changed, and while in the 40s and 50s most air to air battles were
still carried out with guns, by the 70s heat seeking and radar guided missiles were the
preferred weapon.
Soviet fighters had both good long-range missiles and powerful radars, and while in the past
its tiny size would have made it a difficult target to hit with guns, now the microfighter's
small size was a liability that limited its ability to carry adequate long-range radar
equipment.
In a face off against Soviet fighters, the microfighters would have been swatted out
of the sky like gnats.
But big planes were becoming increasingly vulnerable themselves, and the primary threat
was no longer the fighter but rather the anti-air missile.
These telephone-pole sized missiles could be shot from dozens, even hundreds of miles
away, and a single one could take out a bomber.
Microfighters wouldn't just be useless in this scenario, but the airborne carrier itself
would be a massive liability, with the loss of 10 fighter pilots and the entire airborne
carrier's crew if one was shot down.
The price was simply too high.
However, today the concept has once more gained some resurgence- but this time the US isn't
looking at launching microfighters, or at least not traditional microfighters.
Today, the United States is testing a weapons program it calls 'Gremlins'.
The concept is simple- a C-130 Hercules aircraft outfitted with an entire fleet of small, remotely
controlled or automated drones.
Each drone would have a different job- some would be dedicated to air superiority, taking
on enemy fighters directly.
Others would be for scouting and reconnaissance, while others yet would be used to spoof or
jam enemy radars and communications.
Some would even be launched in suicide attacks against ground targets.
With each C-130 capable of carrying dozens of drones, the concept of the airborne carrier
is finally taking a step out of fiction and into reality.
But how close is this to actually being reality?
Well, a lot closer than you might think, as the program has successfully deployed and
recovered drones while in flight.
Details are still scarce, as the US is keeping a very tight lid on what may be a truly game
changing way of waging future air war, but the writing is on the wall.
In a future conflict, it may no longer be the US Navy who's the tip of the American
military spear, but specially designed US Air Force motherships, traveling anywhere
in the world within hours, and disgorging hundreds of combat drones against enemy air,
sea, and land forces.
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