I know they could use a new parachute, and this one has been promised for years. Anything that improves soldier survivability is OK in my book. But why does everything the Army field have to look so damn ugly?
A new military parachute system which fits wings on soldiers could enable them to travel to 200 kilometres after jumping, Jane’s Defence Weekly reports.
The system, which involves the development of new modular carbon-fibre wings, will mean that aircraft can drop parachutists from 9,150 metres into an area of operations without flying into a danger zone.
Trials of the modular wing are being developed by the German firm Elektroniksystem und Logistik and Draeger.
They are due to finish by the end of 2006, with the entire parachute and wings combination expected to be available during 2007.
It’s about time. Besides the advantage in drop distance, the old parachute system could only carry about 300 pounds or so, what a soldier weighed 50 years ago. The average soldier today is much heavier than his predecessor and the battle load is bigger. This new chute not only carries more weight, it drops more slowly.
marines do stuff w/ style OOOAH!
cool – sounds like they contracted out to Wayne Enterprises … oh wait, that’s fiction … I read a story in Popular Science once about giving skydivers wings, and they concluded that the wing area required to slow the diver enough to land safely would rip his arms out of their sockets. Still, this was a couple years back, and who knows what the Army can do …. still sounds fishy to me – this thing would be super-classified if it was real, and no blog would get a hold of it.
Wait, its from a major news source … I gotta learn to read the original article before I comment – this sounds like a jazzed up hang glider – that would make sense, if they weren’t calling it a parachute.
I am still trying to wrap my mind around jet-powered paratroops …
Today, jet powered paratroops, tomorrow, the world! Muhahahaha …
#5 Yeah, it has a real James Bond villian feel to it …
I see here you said it would better to have the troops falling more slowly, why is that such a good thing? (I honestly can’t figure this out) I would want to drop as fast as was safe so as to get out of the VERY dangerous situation ASAP.
If anyone knows the reason for wanting to be slower, please, share it with me.
so little army men wont break their plastik legs, thats y slower – lol
#7,
You want the troops going slowly enough when they hit ground that their bones don’t break when they slam into the ground. Even tough guys have their limitations.
This parachute/wings system looks like expensive crap to me.
#8 & 9:
Surely if the parachutes were dangerous at the moment they would have been replaced long ago, as little respect as I have for the US military, I don’t think the guys are that daft.
#10. When was the last major (ie Market/Garden) drop? it seems to me that they are sinking a lot of $$$ into something that is not going to be all that important. the US military is totally committed to air supremacy, and once you have it, you can do air assault without any major air drops.
there are a lot of internal forces within the Pentagon, peoples’ careers are caught up in particular systems without regards to whether they are a particularly good idea. this might be one of those.
I was watching a parachutis the other day and wondered why that could be the we bring home our austronauts in whatever replaces the Shuttle.
It seems like humans could go up and down in “Apollo-style” capsules but use these new ultra-controllable parachutes. It seems much more efficient and weight efficent than a fixed wing ala the shuttle.
Cargo/gear/etc could go up on seperate automated flights that, mostly, will never come down again.
If the drop zone is not safe for the aircraft – what does that say about the parchutist’s safety?
You could make a video game out of this: Frogger for Marines? – or target practice on parachuting enemy – sort of a slow motion version of “Space Invaders”
Greg (12), Parachutes don’t work at that kind of altitude – they rely on increasing air resistance, and if there’s no air (or very little), as on the fringes of space, you have no (or very little) air resistance. There is also the problem of the tremendous heat involved in decelerating from orbital speeds – the (presumably exposed) astronaut would fry to a crisp, or take so long to get down that it would be infeasable … hmm, mby advances in spacesuits, but it still seems farfetched, given the other limitations ….
#7, The slower the decent, the more gear the parachutist can carry. One of the problems with the WWII drops was the parachutists were overloaded and dropped from a low height. Because they hit much too hard, many were injured or even killed upon landing.