IT is the largest airship in the world, offering military surveillance to the US Army and soon to be deployed in Sweden as an eco-friendly way of transporting wind turbine blades across the country.

But the brains behind the giant vessel are all Scots.

The aircraft, known as the Airlander 10, has been designed and manufactured by Hybrid Air Vehicles, a company based in Bedfordshire, England, but headed up by a team of Scots including the grandson of Clyde shipbuilding mogul, Hugh McMillan.

The team includes head of flight science, David Stewart, from Dunblane; chief test pilot, David Burns, from Rutherglen; chief executive Stephen McGlennan, from Stepps in North Lanarkshire; and chairman Philip Gwyn, grandson of Mr McMillan, the founder of Blythswood Shipyard in Scotstoun.

All four will be in Glasgow on Tuesday when Mr Stewart delivers the prestigious IESIS Macmillan lecture at Strathclyde University.

The company, which employs around 40 people, spent 24 months building the Airlander 10. The £40m carbon fibre airship, so far the only one in existence, was used to monitor US Army operations from the sky but was axed when Congress was forced to cut its military budget.

Mr McGlennan compared the vehicle, which can carry up to 48 people, to a sort of floating CCTV device which combines aeroplane and helicopter engineering with a modern take on Hindenberg technology and aesthetics.

"This type of aircraft really does two things differently," he said. "One, it can fly for a very long time in terms of days - it can fly for 21 days. And the other thing it can do is act like a very big helicopter with very long range, so it can do point-to-point logistics.

"What the US Army wanted it for was the long endurance flight and they would use it for what they call 'persistent surveillance'. So when the US Army operates on the ground, the Airlander will sit above them and give them persistent surveillance.

"It's a bit like having CCTV but over a much wider area."

Hybrid Air Vehicle, who own the intellectual rights to the design, have now bought the physical aircraft back from the US Army and plan to showcase it to the British Army and to various potential commercial buyers.

They have already partnered up with Swedish firm, Open Sky, to use Airlander 10 as a vehicle for transporting wind turbine blades.

Mr McGlennan said: "What they want to do is move renewable energy infrastructure from the south of Sweden to the north of Sweden, which is very rural. They're very environmentally-friendly in Sweden and they don't want to put hard top roads through their virgin forests, so what they want to do is show how the aircraft can take wind turbine blades from south to north."

Also in the pipeline is a possible rollout in Canada as a more reliable - and less dangerous - method of "remote re-supply", currently done on ice roads and made famous by the television programme, Ice Road Truckers.