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Successful lightning protection design is important for the CargoLifter CL 160 large non-rigid transport airship. Non-rigid airships, like balloons, have few hard structures so alternative means need to be designed to collect and conduct lightning currents. The helium lifting gas ionizes at one third the field intensity required for air so spark formation in ambient electric fields is more likely to originate inside a helium filled envelope than in the air outside of it. Protection development is being accomplished by a combination of high voltage strike attachment tests on scale models, and numerical analyses of electric fields.

The Joint Radome Programme was formed in February 1993 to investigate and research the effects of lightning and static electricity on aircraft radomes and dielectric fairings. Some preliminary results were presented at the Williamsberg Conference in 1995. Since then experiments have been completed that have recreated in the laboratory some of the features of in-flight failures; these have included both radome measles and punctures of radomes that had previously passed existing test methods. This paper gives an overview of some of the key results and the implications on test techniques.