Now this is just speculative but….
I was thinking about WIG aircraft and came to the conclusion that their military applications, however potentially useful, are limited and questionable. But it did occur to me that they could be extremely useful for maritime trade being that, if build large enough, they could transport very large loads (exceeding even the An-225) across large distances at (almost aircraft like) speed. This would constitute a revolution for maritime trade being that it could cut transport times without increasing costs – at least it could be less expensive than air transport. The only drawback is the massive investement that is needed to start the process: Large, costly and risky WIG aircraft need to be designed, built and tested and port facilities need to be adapted. This would cost billions.
So, I was thinking, this process is only useful for countries that conduct massive volumes of trade across large expanses of water. The following combinations come to mind, China+US, UK/EU+US… Anybody want to add some more?
Another problem here is that Russia is currently, I think undeniably, the world leader in the construction and design of large WIG aircraft so any project would have to involve Russia. If they were clever they could cooperate with the US and China to create a network (perhaps consisting of only two or three port to begin with) of WIG ports across the Pacific. They could also, potentially, come to some sort of agreement with these two countries to jointly develop very large transport WIGs that would ‘sail’ between these ports speedily carrying large volumes of cargo.
Whadya’ think?
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