Ekranoplan

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An ekranoplan (Template:Lang-ru, literally "screen plane") is a vehicle resembling an aircraft, but operating solely on the principle of ground effect. This effect can be felt when landing in a commercial airliner; just before touchdown, the rate of descent can be felt to decrease. Ground effect vehicles (GEV) fly just above any flat surface, with the height above ground dependent upon the size of the vehicle.

During the Cold War, ekranoplans were sighted for years on the Caspian Sea as huge, fast-moving objects. The name Caspian Sea Monster was given by U.S. intelligence operatives who had discovered the huge vehicle, which looked like an airplane with the outer halves of the wings removed. After the end of the Cold War, the "monster" was revealed to be one of several Russian military designs meant to fly only a few meters above water, saving energy and staying below enemy radar.

The KM, as one model was known in the top secret Soviet military development program, was over 100 m long, weighed 540 tonnes fully loaded, and could travel over 400 km/h, mere meters above the surface of the water. Another model was the Lun-class. The Ekranoplan has a lifting power of Template:H:title, one of the biggest lifting powers in the world.

The important design principle is that the wing lift reduces the further above the surface the ekranoplan "flies" (see ground effect). Thus it is dynamically stable in the vertical dimension. Once moving at speed, the ekranoplan was no longer in contact with the water, and could move over ice, snow, or level land with equal ease.

These craft were originally developed by the Soviet Union as very high-speed (several hundred km/hour) military transports, and were mostly based on the shores of the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The largest could transport over 100 tonnes of cargo.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, commercial development has occurred mostly in the United States and Germany.

Ekranoplans were featured in the Joe Buff novel Seas of Crisis.

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