Russia
In the late 80's and early 90's in Russia appeared project Termoplan ", the distinctive feature of which is used to create lift than helium airship section and a section with air, heated by engines (an idea expressed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in the 90 years. XIX century). This could reduce the weight of unproductive ballast 70-75% in comparison with other structures, blimps, and consequently increase the cost (up to 28.125 grams per tonne-kilometer for the design capacity of 2000 tons). In addition, such an airship does not need closed slipways and mooring mast, which dramatically reduces the cost of the service infrastructure. Disk-shaped hull shape allows for flight in the side and head wind at 20 m / sec.
Company Avgur "in 2000 on the territory of the Tula airport conducted flight tests of the tethered balloon unified" UAS-400 ", which took on board the complex radar and communications" Cordon-2 ". Tethered balloon, rises and falls with a hoist from the body of the military chassis GAZ-66 ", has a volume of 400 m ³, lifting 120 kg, lifting height - 1200 meters. As a base used in the development of radar Tula RI "Boom" - a set of "Credo-1E with a slot antenna range of 2 cm already at an altitude of 300 meters of the station is able to pinpoint all objects within a radius of 40 kilometers, traveling at a speed of not less than 2,5 km hour.
At the MAKS-2005 presented some already built Russian airships manufactured by Avgur. Airship «Au-12m has a volume of 1250 m ³, length - 34 meters. Working height reaches 1500 meters, speed - up to 90 km per hour, while in the air - 6 hours, the flight range of 350 km, the crew - 2 people. The pieces shown interest to potential customers, already in 2006-2007, "Avgur plans to move to mass production of some models. A developed 8-seat airship Au-30 "Argus" in the foreseeable future will become part of one of the state programs. At the Farnborough Airshow company Avgur "and" RosAeroSystems "presented balloons for military purposes" Puma "and" Jaguar ". Their volume of 8900-11800 m ³, payload up to 2,2 tons. Capable of performing autonomous flights of up to 1 month continuously withstanding the wind force of up to 12 points on the Beaufort scale (about 33 m / sec).
In the promising developments at the company stratospheric airship "Berkut" working ceiling of 20000 meters and autonomy in 4 months, the volume of 320 thousand m ³, length 250 meters, diameter - 50 meters. He is regarded as telecommunications platform with an area covering up to 500 thousand km ². The average daily consumption is about 230 kilowatts, to ensure that solar panels will serve an area of 8 thousand m ².
Also, airships (including unmanned) can be used to patrol the roads, observing the social order at large public events, promotional, etc.
The Russian company "Aeroscan in 2006, begins to use airships for the space and technical monitoring of the area and engineering facilities.
The Government of the Sverdlovsk region in October 2006 announced its intention to organize a regional production of airships. For the organization of production will be allocated $ 30 million in the project will take part: OJSC Ural Civil Aviation Plant "Federal State Unitary Enterprise" Production Association "Urals Optical and Mechanical Plant, NPO Automation, Federal State Unitary Enterprise" Design Bureau "Innovator" and JSC "NPP" Start. "The cost of foreign analogues of such aircraft, usually in 2,5-4 times higher than the Russian.