Arneb wrote:I never saw the point of an ekranoplan, I must admit. So it can hurl rockets while approaching at some .6 Mach a few meters above water? Well, there are many planes that can do that, and they can fly high as well. Being a massive blob of stuff, an ekranoplan wouldn't be too hard to hit with an anti-aircraft rocket, would it?
Think of them more as ships than aircraft. Ships with no hull in the water, so can't be hit by torpedoes, and move extremely fast. Very close proximity to ground makes them, as aircraft, hard to spot and track on radar. Think they were designed more as fast transports than offensive aircraft.