In our campaign, we had airships (rigid-hulled zepplins actually) built by MilGov being built even before we had a copy of the Airlords of the Ozarks. We had descirbed the reason why, was that the Air Force Chief-of-Staff had someone on his staff who was a major history buff. And while growing up had gotten involved in gliders and airships, and brought up the fact that the Germans during the first world had used airships to send supplies to the German field armies in Africa. Since the majority of the USAF personnel assets had ended up being transfered to ground combat positions and other areas outside of Air Force control, they where able to convince GoA Cummings that developing these airships would be a major advantage since the majority of high-tech devices where out of their reach at the moment. They had already been using high altitude 'weather balloon' technology form the 1950s and 60s to gather intelligence, and this was just another 'retro-tech' answer to the problems they where having RIGHT NOW.
And since the USN actually still has several of the pre-World War Two era airships they operated in storage they and the USAF would have something to use as a model for their efforts to build large Zepplin style airships.
Thus MilGov had already started work on airship technology... And the addition of the New America Airship tech would allow them to speed up their work at developing these zepplins that would be needed for the recovery of the country.
Or at least.. that was how we did it in our home campaign.
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