hiro said:
Epicenter, sorry, my question wasn't clear.
Oh, right.
Just like everything else, I think the moment you get anti-gravity, everything below it becomes hopelessly obsolete. It's just the way cheap anti-gravity works.
Even before then, I think they were more of a novelty. If they really offered anything that great, everyone would be using them. They're not really aircraft (despite their appearance) but very fast moving ships. The only problem is that they have similar max load limits to aircraft as opposed to the greater load capacity of surface vessels.
I think under Soviet operational doctrines, more than missile attacks, they could have been a very interesting element for rapid insertion of troops according to Soviet "deep battle" doctrine. If you look at the Lun's arrangement of missiles obviously aerodynamics wasn't such a big deal on a such a slow-moving "aircraft." I'm sure with further development, the Soviets could have even put CIWS systems on them. Being very low to the ground (essentially you'd need a surface radar or look-down radar to see them), they could have been used for strategic initiative, not as a missile attack vehicle but as a cargo transport. A bunch of these things coming in over the North Sea, overlooked by air defense who are looking for Backfires could unload a lot of troops and equipment to assault ports in Germany or even the Low Countries in event of a war.
The Lun had a certain amount of altitude capacity - not great enough to truly "fly" but clear them of a lot of ground clutter; flying over treetop level and "jumping" to clear power lines while their course could let them evade tall buildings and similar things (or with research, they might have just developed "wire cutter" attachments to cut power lines). It's possible they could have turned them into how gliders were used for WW2's D-Day. With sufficiently detailed maps of Germany, the things could have swooped in through the Fulda Gap along with the initial tank thrust - playing NOE flight games like helicopters, depending on Frontal Aviation's Flankers and Fulcrums to keep losses from NATO fighters manageable (and their CIWS for the missiles that they couldn't cover). They'd be too fast and too low for MANPADS of the time to engage (likely they'd be out of sight before the missile locked on as it swooped over the trees or hills into sight of some surprised Stinger detachment), and NATO forces are infamously poorly equipped with rapid-response gun-radar based AA guns (the weapon that'd be really the bane of low-flying aircraft as the Israelis learned) with sufficient granularity to respond to a massed Lun-lift. Of course a certain percentage would be shot down, but they'd still be safer than cargo aircraft for paratroops. Once at their destination, they might make a one-time rough landing (the things wouldn't be flying back home) to deploy hundreds of troops and light vehicles into NATO rear areas to wreak havoc until destroyed or relieved by advancing forces which again would fit pretty neatly into Soviet Deep Battle and OMG doctrines.
I think WIG designs like this actually have more life as civilian vehicles. They have better fuel economy than aircraft up to a certain speed - for transoceanic cargo transport they'd be cheaper than cargo jets even though they're lifting about the same amount.
