June 08, 2006
Maybe we'll get our flying cars after all--minus the car...
Pretty neat stuff...
Daily Mail:....Now German company ESG has developed the strap-on rigid wing specifically for special forces use.
Resembling a 6ft-wide pair of aircraft wings, the devices should allow a parachutist to glide up to 120miles, carrying 200lb of equipment, the manufacturers claim.
Fitted with oxygen supply, stabilisation and navigation aides, troops wearing the wings will jump from a high-altitude transport aircraft which can stay far away from enemy territory - or on secret peacetime missions could avoid detection or suspicion by staying close to commercial airliner flight paths.
The manufacturers claim the ESG wing is '100 per cent silent' and 'extremely difficult' to track using radar.
Once close to their target landing zone, the troops pull their parachute rip cord to open their canopy and then land normally.
Weapons, ammunition, food and water can all be stowed inside the wing, although concealing the 6ft wings after landing could prove harder than burying a traditional parachute.
ESG claims the next stage of development will be fitting 'small turbo-jet drives' to the wings to extend range even further....
Apparently some parachutist used home-made wings to "fly" across the English Channel! Of course these gadgets will probably soon pass into general use and be used by terrorists. C'est le Guerre....
The article has a picture. (Thanks to Jimmy Akin)
Posted by John Weidner at June 8, 2006 10:32 AMThis has hoax written all over it, at least as presented in the Mail. Where are the gloves? How will the "jet engine" (with its 0.5 gallon of fuel!) be started? How will the pilot (for lack of a better term) avoid having his feet incinerated by the jet exhaust? If they aren't burned off how will the pilot prevent his feet from acting as rudders at 140 mph? And why are the quantities given in mph and gallons rather than kph & liters?
Posted by: Terry at June 8, 2006 02:41 PMWell, if you Google the company, you find pages like this: Army Technology - ESG to phase in unique Ram-Air Parachute System ...
Good question about toasting the pilot's toes.
It should not be hard to start the engine, since it will be starting, one assumes, in flight with air already flowing throught it.
Maybe the feet are supposed to act like rudders? (I suggest adding bat-wing-style fins to the feet, just for swank.)
Posted by: John Weidner at June 8, 2006 03:21 PMOkay, they might be able to start the engines with the wind flowing through it. Come to think of it, a small canister of compressed air might be able to do the same thing. I'd still like to see what our guy would look like, wearing that uniform, after being suspendd in a 120MPH windtunnel for an hour.
Posted by: Terry at June 9, 2006 12:39 AMI'd still like to see what our guy would look like, wearing that uniform, after being suspendd in a 120MPH windtunnel for an hour.
Not to be snarky, but probably far better than he would if his plane were shot down, or his parachute spotted...
I would imagine many of the missions this would be helpful for would not require a full hour of gliding...10 minutes in the air would give you a 20 mile range - I'd imagine that would do pretty nicely for a lot of covert ops...
Posted by: Ethan Hahn at June 9, 2006 04:55 AM
