The rebirth of the airship is the perennial Next Big Thing in aviation. Of course, any talk of reviving the genre that never quite rose to meet its proponents’ lofty expectations comes with the inevitable wisecracks about the Hindenburg.

Now, Lockheed Martin thinks it can make people stop laughing with its Hybrid Airship, a new sort of aircraft that combines the upsides of the airship with the abilities of a hovercraft.

OK, maybe they’ll laugh a little—it looks like it pissed off a swarm of bees—but the Hybrid Airship is nevertheless coasting into reality after decades of development within Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works division in Palmdale, California.

The program is one of just two large airship efforts in the world close to fruition; the other is Hybrid Air Vehicles’ Airlander 10, aka The Flying Bum. A one-third scale version of Lockheed’s ship took off nearly eight years ago, and the venerable defense contractor is now three years from rolling out a production version.

When it does, the 300-foot-long, three-chamber, helium-filled airship will act like a hovercraft while maneuvering on the ground, without the need for a proper runway or even fully smoothed surfaces. Once airborne, it will haul 20 tons of cargo—vehicles, mining equipment, military gear, disaster-relief supplies—at speeds up to 70 mph, staying aloft a week at a time.

It promises to be more efficient, in terms of both fuel use and operating cost, than any land-, sea-, or air-based cargo system, allowing operators to reach remote areas without the infrastructure large planes and ships demand.

“We have had to overcome a lot of preconceived notions,” says Lockheed program manager Bob Boyd, who defends the oft-maligned aircraft. “Airships were a big part of the war effort, mostly in aerial defense and in finding and sinking submarines. But then they languished as advertising vehicles for Goodyear and MetLife.”

Granted, but that doesn’t make them economically viable in the 21st century. “For cargo, the airship needs to be positioned between faster—i.e., via conventional aircraft—and cheaper, as it is with ships,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group.

Conventional blimps can’t carry loads large enough to make them truly useful. And because cargo airships are usually one-way haulers, the economics don’t work out. “The track record of this concept is discouraging, at best,” Aboulafia says.

Lockheed Martin, which has been pumping air into this idea since 1990, thinks its design can deliver that leap in capacity. It called the thing a Hybrid Airship because it uses both buoyancy and aerodynamics to generate lift. The airship itself is shaped like a wing, what engineering types call a “lifting body.” That supplies 20 percent of the lift, with helium doing the rest.

The mixed setup also gives the ship’s operators more control, since you can’t turn off helium’s buoyancy. “By forcing a certain amount of lift to come from aerodynamics, that makes it heavier on the ground, which is important when you want to stop," says Boyd.

Another problem: The anchoring masts and tie-downs that keep the things on the ground are prone to ripping airships to pieces when they kite around in heavy winds. That’s where the hovercraft bit comes in. Skunk Works engineers created three doughnut-shaped fabric cushions with internal fans that can suck the ship to the surface. The Air Cushion Landing System lets the ship float over land or water during taxiing and takeoff. “The ACLS, combined with the hull, is what really gives us the capability to reach remote locations,” Boyd says.

In flight, the Hybrid Airship will use steerable, diesel-powered fans for propulsion and control, along with elevators, rudders, and ailerons at higher speeds. It’ll stay below 10,000 feet, eliminating the need for pressurization, and can fly up to 1,600 miles without refueling.

Taking Flight

The airship won’t require airplane-like speeds for takeoff and cruising, Boyd says, because while lift is proportional to speed, it’s also proportional to the surface area of the vehicle—which the airship has in surplus. Hovering inches off the ground, the Hybrid Airship can get airborne in just 20 feet, compared to the 3,000 feet gobbled up by the standard cargo plane.

To make the hull strong enough for service, Lockheed ordered up Vectran, a Kevlar-like fabric arranged in three chambers with two internal curtains down the seam lines. It’s lightweight, inexpensive, and highly resistant to puncture. If the hull is breached anyway, the helium is enclosed at such low pressure that it will stay inside the airship. “External air pressure will push it in, and even if there is a leak it will be slow,” Boyd says.

Just to be safe, and to jettison tedious and costly manual inspection, Lockheed developed a useful and definitely creepy robot. “Spider” crawls over the hull searching for and repairing the tiniest of leaks. It two halves, one outside the hull, one inside, are linked magnetically. As they move around the ship, one side shines a light onto the fabric. When sensors on the other side pick up the light, they know they've found a hole, and patches it with adhesive.

Boyd expects the first production version of the Hybrid Airship to be ready by 2019, in a 20-ton configuration, with models carrying up to 50 tons to follow. As for customers, cargo newcomer StraightLine Aviation has already signed on to buy 12. Lockheed expects other buyers to come from the mining, oil, and wind power industries (you try moving one of those turbines around). The airships could also serve humanitarian missions, carrying relief supplies to areas with damaged infrastructure, or none at all.

There’s even room for 19 passengers, so you can live out your Indiana Jones fantasies. Just don’t throw anyone out the window.

Given Lockheed Martin’s long track record of making big things fly, the airship may finally, really, actually be back. Just give it a few more years.