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Chinese unleash Caspian Sea Monster

'Wing In Ground' aircraft is go

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China today confirmed it has developed a "Wing In Ground" (WIG) sea-skimming aircraft, state media reports.

According to Reuters, the Chinese version of the Caspian Sea Monster is capable of flying at 300km/h (180mph) at a mere half metre above the surface while carrying four tonnes of cargo. It relys on the WIG effect effect whereby, put simply, a wing travelling close to the ground is provided with extra lift by the "cushion" of air compressed under it - thus enabling a combination of greater aircraft weight for less power and/or enhanced fuel economy.

Professor Xu Zhengyu, vice-president of the research team at Tongji University in Shanghai, confirmed: "It's as safe as ships, although five or six times faster. And it can carry much more weight than ordinary planes while costing half as much and using half as much fuel."

Technical details of the first WIG vehicle are not noted, but Tongji University now plans to develop a 50-seat WIG by 2013, with" 200 prototypes capable of carrying 200 to 400 tonnes scheduled for 2016 or 2017". The WIG aircraft is "one of three types of aircraft given the green light in the general aviation field by the State Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense", although Xinhua notes "the Civil Aviation Administration of China has yet to confirm aviation regulations at such low altitudes, which may become a problem".

That China has developed a WIG aircraft will come as no surprise to regular Reg readers. Last September, we spotted this strange beast at Qingdao naval base while investigating Russian ekranoplan projects:

The Chinese Sea Monster at Qingdao

Whether China can succeed where Russia failed remains to be seen. As we noted last year, the latter's WIG ambitions were ultimately thwarted because the "technical difficulties of developing a successful example often in the past outweighed the potential benefits of the technology". ®

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Latest Comments

Re: Good Ideas : Early use of ground effect

The use of ground effect out at sea has a quite old history: Dornier flying boat pilots on pre-WWII transaltantic passenger service new that flying low conserved fuel, and used it to increase range.

Boeing actually is looking into ground effect as well, see

http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2002/september/i_pw.html

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Anonymous Coward

Fear of Music

"the Caspian Sea Monster is capable of flying at 300km/h (180mph) at a mere half metre above the surface while carrying four tonnes of cargo"

According to Boeing's website, a Boeing 747-400 freighter can carry 124 tons of cargo at over 500mph (albeit that Boeing might be using a different ton to the article's tonnes), over a distance of 4,400 miles, regardless of rough seas. The article predicts big things for the Wing in Ground vessel come 2016-2017, but that's a lot of time and money in the future.

And this is without mentioning freight container ships, which are much slower than 180mph, but can carry tens of thousands of tonnes of freight. When on put on my businessman's hat, this WiG thing doesn't seem a compelling prospect as a freight carrier. Perhaps it could carry rich passengers instead, lots of rich passengers, over a long period of time.

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defence?

Barrage balloons? Offshore wind farms?

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