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I don't really see the perfect fitting subforum, therefore I post this here.

From time to time I think about how the Imperial Guard regiments get their stuff from the orbit to the ground. There are some dropships and large troop transports mentioned in the lore, yet I sometimes have a hard time picturing them really touch down on the planets surface, so... maybe shuttles?

Anyway my own homebrew regiment has a background of notorious material shortage and had repeatedly to come up with "low budget solutions" for different problems. I already used the idea of some Gravchute assisted transport gliders in a short story and inspired by a question of another user regarding Leman Russ tanks in a Drop regiment thought how those may be dropped too. But I'm really not sure if this makes physically sense therefore the question:

So reading on Wiki a ballon filled with helium has roughly 1kg lift /m³ on the ground in a normal temperature range (-10 to +30°C). So a Leman Russ tank (60 tons) should be able to float at ground level if attached to a roughly 50m diameter balloon. At larger height that gas will expand (the same amount of gas having twice the volume at half the pressure) with other problems following, but in this general idea we don't want to get it up, we just want a relatively save touchdown.
So imagine the following:
1. our large troop transport just gets down to the upper stratosphere and drops out its LR tanks
2. they fall freely until they reach about 0.5 atmospheres pressure and here inflate their lets say 75m diameter ballons with enough Helium to generate their weight in lift at ground level
3. they should start to slow down their assent (?)
4. maybe 1-2 km above ground they additionally open parachutes, further slowing down (??)
5. they survive touchdown from orbit (???)

Is there a fundamental flaw in that idea? I'm not that knowledgable regarding baloons or parachutes, so it is really just a wild thought. But if that could be a way to bring material to the ground cheaper, yet riskier than using shuttles, large Gravchutes or landing the whole troop transport it might be a nice piece of fluff for my regiment.

Big flaw - how do you store the helium before inflation? It still has to be carried on the drop. Also, have to protect the gas/balloon from re-entry heat when deployed.

Best option is probably Grav-sleds. Similar to the way Hercules airships drop tanks, but using reusable grav-sleds instead of pallets and parachutes.

There's also landing via Hamlicar Mk.40000 Glider like a tetrarch or locust.

For landing, I've always imagined the Imperial Guard as having something like a space higgins boat for infantry and a space LST for tanks. They could also theoretically have them slung underneath landers like the way the Space Marine flyers and the Sky Talon carry tanks.

I will just post links to what Imperial guard uses for its transport. It might come to be useful to you:
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Angantyr-Class_Dropship
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Devourer_Dropship
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tetrarch_Heavy_Lander
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Valkyrie#Sky_Talon
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Arvus_Lighter

These are various types of transports. Some are bigger, some are smaller. Some are cheaper transport planes seen everywhere. Others are heavily specialized and rarely seen. Arvus Lighter is your cheap as dirt solution to these problems. They might give you some ideas or leads to look for more information. As for balloons, I might have to look it deeper into them, but generally that is stretching with Imperial Guard. Even most impoverished regiments will possess some capacity to be airlifted. Usually, Imperial guard regiment won't even need to worry about it. Planet will get IG regiments to orbit. Then they will go whenever they will needed and Imperium will assign its own naval (airforce) to your regiments free of charge.

As for your idea, look at how Mars landers are done. Very similar stuff, but yours is missing one essential component. Militaries who air drop vehicles in such a way or Nasa their drones always use rockets to propel package upwards in order to slow descent at last seconds. Just like drop pod will suddenly start firing its thrusters away from its destination in order to slow down. Then there is problem of air resistance, because you would need to drop them from quite low in orbit for air ballons to actually work (because vacuum is less dense than helium and thus helium won't lift yout tanks). This would result in accelerated fall and this will result in air friction and then you have a drop pod, not controlled landing.

You can do what you want of course, but maybe you would consider finding cheapest transport which Imperium uses, downgrade them, make them look really shoddy and patched up. This way it would be a lot more simpler to you, it would be thematic and it would open you up for cool model conversations for your regiment!

The Cain books have large landers as the usual method. Big enough to ferry multiple platoons (with Chimeras) at a time. A few are company sized.

But even when they're using a civilian ship for travel, they still use the large landers, and it being the Imperium, they're dwarfed by even larger cargo vessels. Ships and transports in 40k are stupid big.

In Caves of Ice, the regiment uses civilian 'heavy duty cargo haulers' that had been converted before deployment for the guard:

Caves of Ice, Sandy Mitchell wrote:The front third of the cargo space had been partitioned off with a hastily welded bulkhead, and then subdivided into half a dozen decks with metal mesh flooring. Somehow Mazarin and her acolytes had managed to cram some five score seats with their associated crash webbing into this space so that we were able to disembark a couple of platoons at a time. The rest of the hold had been left open, to take our Chimeras, Sentinels, and other vehicles, along with a small mountain of ammo packs, rations, medicae supplies, and all the other stuff necessary to keep an Imperial Guard regiment running at peak efficiency.

Its later described as overloaded, but it works- that they can divide the cargo space into 'half a dozen decks' speaks to the scale of the transport, as does a hundred seats- not quite two max strength platoons.

They later describe the shuttles from tankers that pick up promethium at the facility they're guarding as over 500 metres long, and clarify that as almost half the size of the civilian starship they arrived in.

Nothing is really described in a lot of detail, but the word 'shuttle' is tossed around repeatedly for both types of lander, rather than the 'military dropships' they would normally use

Thanks for the helpful comments. As mentioned it was just a wild thought anyway and I see why it won't work.

@ Stormonu: Grav-sleds sound interesting, but I found nothing on the Warhammer wiki or Lexicanum. Do you know where I can read more about that?
@ Inquisitor Lord Katherine/Gliders: I have an eye on this beauty:
https://sarissa-precision.com/products/airspeedhorsaglider
especially in the "crashed" state as a terrain piece.
@ Ernestas: thanks for the links. I was more or less aware of those but the idea to make an Arvus really shoddy and patched up sounds interesting. But I personally don't really like that model much. Maybe something for the future.

@ Voss/civilian freighters: I think that is what I was looking for, thanks. As mentioned I'm mainly searching for a piece of fluff to support the "ill equiped, but managing somehow" image of my regiment in my background/stories. The picture of an old, civilian freight hauler that was modified to serve as transport serves perfectly for that.

What would seem more suitably grimdark to me would be your regiment’s notorious supply issues being dealt with by some insanely brave piloting, and ruthless savings elsewhere.

Materials shortages don’t lend themselves well to harvesting and refilling helium balloons. Rather, good solid repairable landers that can make drop after drop after drop and keep flying, possibly beyond their designed tolerances. Likewise, parachuting tanks seem easy to shoot out of the sky, and that means more material losses.

What about savings elsewhere? Like armour stripped from the rear and sides of battle tanks leaving the tracks more exposed but less material used in their construction? Faster, lighter, which could be represented by Tallarn rules. That would also give the infantry fast movement with Advance+shoot, as they are trained to keep moving to avoid casualties (and moreover avoid loss of equipment that is more valuable than their lives!).

Orbital re-entry craft would still need to be the huge landers used by other regiments, simply to ferry the sheer number of bodies and vehicles needed to wage war the Astra Militarum way. So what if their tactics are the thing that evolves instead to save precious resources? Their battle ships maybe protect them even more zealously through re-entry with sustained volleys to keep interdiction fighters away. Daredevil pilots perform dizzying death-dives hugging tight alongside the landers. Pulling up at the last minute and fanning out, they fool enemy sensors into not seeing them and strike mercilessly before pulling up and returning to their hangars in orbit. You could write all sorts of fluff like this.

Maybe instead of supply chain vehicles they simply have armies upon armies of penal workers and lobotomised servitor-slaves, carrying munitions on their backs and trudging to the front lines. It takes more time, many die each day, but lives are cheap and plasteel is expensive.

Also sounds pretty interesting. But they are not that big on manpower either, as their homesystem has "just" over 500 Million inhabitants. So far I reflect their equipment shortage by a wild assortment of different vehicles (the main reason for that fluff, as I want a lot of different models). So they basically take whatever they can get, often taking over damaged/outdated/local vehicles, regardless of problems with the supply of replacement parts (better a suboptimal vehicle than none). I even have an orky buggy (not build yet) they found and repurposed, so kind of a looted looted vehicle.

I like the grav/rocket sled. It has precident if you count, computer games. in universe.
Dawn of War 1 grav-sleds, (how Guard deploy get their buildings)



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I can easily imagine a tank on a pallet, a building in a box, or a whole stack of ammo dropping down to support and supply to the boys on the frontlines. Depending on the madness of your regiment the tanks could go down manned...

It'd sort shaft the whole basis of the Elysians, but they should have just gotten good.

Did you considered using gliders?

Yes, and I already did in a short story. As mentioned I really like the Airspeed Horsa Model from Sarissa and might get it later on.

So I think there’s a problem with the idea of using balloons in landers. Those rated “lift” values aren’t going to happen in the upper atmosphere, and aren’t going to be much use countering downward acceleration. You’re going to get your payloads “bounced” on the ground before they achieve equilibrium.

The other problem balloons as re-entry vehicles are going to have is that those balloons make big, fragile targets, and you won’t have the mass to armor them. And one re-entry vehicle exploding is going to create very dangerous shrapnel for the nearby vehicles to worry about.

Disclaimer: Gas filled balloons are a common idea for things like aero-braking in science fiction, with I think part of the idea being that the gas containers would be insulation for the hull during braking (you’re at orbital speed and you need to slow down safely to land), and easily disposable.

It’s better to ask “How are they leaving?” and “So why aren’t you using that to land?”

 solkan wrote:

It’s better to ask “How are they leaving?” and “So why aren’t you using that to land?”

Troop landers are a viable idea, but not if you wish to land close to/between/behind enemy positions and overwhelm them/cut their lines of supply. In my view troop landers they are big, noisy, pretty obvious and well, massive targets.
I'd think gliders if you're cheap and want to be quiet, drop pods and grav-chutes if you're not that bothered. And rocket/grav sleds for more important equipment such as tanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also someone has to find the LZs for the gliders and troop transports, so you will need pathfinders.

Drop pods or Shuttles of varying types.

Valkyries and larger shuttles can carry men and materials. Drop pods can send down material rapidly if there is too much enemy flak, but men can't come down this way. Grav and conventional parachutes can also be used.




We can drop tanks from airplanes today. I'm sure the Imperial Guard has some equivalent equipment. Be it anti-grav chutes or just conventional cloth chutes.


Using some sort of gas ballons is a silly idea though. A bunch of big parachutes would be far cheaper and far more reliable. Wasting the Emperor's resources is both criminal and heretical.

If you like the idea of balloons I see no reason you can't use them. Throw in a line to the effect of "given this world's atmosphere and gravity a 50m balloon will support a tank..." so that on the off chance any reader is up on physics you have a handwave built in.

Balloons don't scale well as you increase weight. Whatever lighter-than-atmosphere gas you're using has to first offset the weight of its own container. Put more simply, a hot-air balloon first has to lift the weight of the balloon before it can lift a man in a basket. This is trivial when you're dealing with a small mylar or latex novelty balloon. But to lift--for instance--even the tiny payload of a commercial dirigible, you massively increase the weight of your gas container. And that's only to counteract the 1g pull of Earth gravity at rest. If you're starting out with a cargo of 50-ish tons hurtling down at terminal velocity, you simply can't counteract that sort of energy with passive buoyancy.

If you're working from the technological starting point of having interstellar space ships (hence the need to deploy material from said ship to surface) there are already technologies available to you that will work better, cheaper, more accurately, more reliably, and with less vulnerability to enemy fire than a balloon scheme.

But hey it's silly space opera so do what you want with aetheric space balloon spheres or whatever. . I play orks, they shoot their guns in the air while riding meteors through re-entry.

First, if you're using balloons, they should be filled with hydrogen rather than helium: it's way easier to obtain, it's less dense (so it gives better lift) and can burn heretics.

A silly idea would be to drop the tanks not in one piece, but in parts small enough to be easily fitted with parachutes. Soldiers/techpriests on the ground could then assemble the whole kit (and pray to the Omnissiah that the pieces they couldn't find weren't too important).

Hydrogen is a bad idea because of reentry heat - or you have to armor the gas carrier enough to negate its weight advantage.

With all this talk of balloons, I don't understand why the IM doesn't just confiscate Terminator teleporters and use them to drop something actually useful - like a baneblade - literally on top of their enemies.

As for grav sleds, that was a made-up idea, extrapolating what a 40K parachuting tank sled might be. I'd imagine it would look something akin to a jet ski and essentially be a reentry repulsor vehicle, like taking the hull of a Eldar Falcon tank or Tau Devilfish and slapping a tank on its back to allow it to land from reentry safely.

 Stormonu wrote:
Hydrogen is a bad idea because of reentry heat - or you have to armor the gas carrier enough to negate its weight advantage.

With all this talk of balloons, I don't understand why the IM doesn't just confiscate Terminator teleporters and use them to drop something actually useful - like a baneblade - literally on top of their enemies.

As for grav sleds, that was a made-up idea, extrapolating what a 40K parachuting tank sled might be. I'd imagine it would look something akin to a jet ski and essentially be a reentry repulsor vehicle, like taking the hull of a Eldar Falcon tank or Tau Devilfish and slapping a tank on its back to allow it to land from reentry safely.

Deep striking baneblades? You'd have to be some kind of tactical genius...

As for Guard grav-sled I'd imagine something a bit more agricultural such as:

I just throw it in a lander when you've secured an LZ

 Stormonu wrote:
Hydrogen is a bad idea because of reentry heat - or you have to armor the gas carrier enough to negate its weight advantage.

What's heat got to do with it? Hydrogen will combust only if there is oxygen to react with it. Obviously that would happen if the tank/balloon gets ruptured, but whatever gas you're using, a rupture is a major issue anyway. We all know hydrogen is a major safety hazard, of course, but when has the Imperium ever cared about safety?

In reality, reentry with lighter than air balloons is basically unfeasible, so you'd have to use some convenient unobtainium to make it work in sci-fi.

OK, it wouldn't work with the balloons, thanks. Nontheless some interesting ideas here.

 Stormonu wrote:

With all this talk of balloons, I don't understand why the IM doesn't just confiscate Terminator teleporters and use them to drop something actually useful - like a baneblade - literally on top of their enemies.

Terminator suits don't have teleportation tech built into them. Terminator suits are just able to protect their super human wearer during the teleportation process, which involves a small warp portal that you travel through to get to the destination. A baneblade has no such protection, even if you could fit it inside a teleportarium. The guardsmen would have a good chance of going insane. Plus you'd possibly lose a Baneblade, which is much more valuable than some Terminator armor, as teleportation attempts have a not-insignificant chance of not working. Either because you get stuck in the warp or you get fused with an object at the destination.