xiaohuangdou

The most recent large ekranoplan from the former Soviet Union is the 400 ton Lun which was built in 1987 as a missile launcher. It carried six missiles on top of the hull. At the time when the Soviet Union fell apart there was a second Lun under construction. It was about 90 percent finished when the military funding stopped, because of the financial situation and the end of the cold war. Some ideas were raised for a new life for the Lun, they ranged from a passenger ekranoplan to a rescue vessel. The second Lun was eventually renamed to Spasatel,wigs sale, the military systems were removed and work started to finish the craft as a rescue vessel. Unfortunately there were financial problems and the work had stopped completely by the mid-nineties. Every now and then plans are presented to finish work on Spasatel, but it will probably never be finished due to lack of funding.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, developing or maintaining big ekranoplans became impossible for the Russians and the design bureaus started focusing on smaller ekranoplans for non-military use. The CHDB had already developed the 8 seat Volga-2 in 1985, but other design bureaus and companies emerged that wanted to exploit the Russian lead in WIG technology. The most successfull of these is Technologies and Transport where the Amphistar was developed as a smaller and more modern derivative of the Volga-2, both are now in production.
The story of Alexeievs western counterpart, Lippisch, also started around 1960. At that time he was asked to build a very fast boat for Mr. Collins from Collins Radio Company in the USA. Alexander Lippisch was already a well known aircraft designer at that time, being called the father of the delta wing. In the second world war Lippisch designed the Me163 rocket powered delta wing airplane which was well ahead of its time. The boat for Collins, the X-112, was at least as revolutionary a design with its reversed delta wing and T-tail. This design proved to be stable and efficient in ground effect and although it was succesfully tested and followed up by the X-113, Collins decided to stop the project and sold the patents to a German company called Rhein Flugzeugbau (RFB) which further developed the reversed delta WIG boat.