DARPA, US Marines team on proper flying car project
Big news for flying-car lovers today, as US military boffinry chiefs have unveiled full details of their plan to produce an excellent flying Humvee or sky-jeep type vehicle - and have a prototype flying by 2015. Plans for the so-called "Transformer TX" were revealed in Pentagon budget documents last year, but details were …
What about a good 'ol fashioned hover conversion from Goldie Wilson the 3rd.. a snap at $39,999.95!
Oh bugger it isnt 2015 yet!
The military has looked in to this before, and it's always fallen over on very simple hurdle.
You can't bring people into/out of a fire zone on on because they are too vulnerable as the land/take off.
We have the technology to make personal jet/rocket transport for soldiers. We've had it since the 1970s. It uses the same technology as the engine on the Tomahawk missile. But it's just too vulnerable to small arms fire to be practical
By definition, ANY flying car is off-road as soon as it takes off ...
2015, that's only five years, so lets say it slips to 2017. Seven years to operational devices, add two more years for civilian reverse-engineering (no armor, no guns, no rockets - [no fun]) and we ARE going to see these on car dealer lots by 2020 - that's just TEN years from NOW.
Remember the Hummer wasn't supposed to be a civilian vehicle either, Arnie bought the first street legal one, and then came the deluge.
With the US military's bottomless checkbook, here's the deal - "Build it and they will buy".
I'll have two please, my wife gets the one with the rocket launcher.
> Arnie bought the first street legal one
Then all the ones I saw being driven around -- by military personnel -- before Arnie got his weren't legal? Somehow I don't think so.
IIRC it's that AM General wasn't in the business of supplying to civilians. Not a surprise really, many military contractors don't have a civilian supply chain -- most mere mortals can't buy Sidewinder missiles or F18s either.
Arnie just had to jump through a lot of hoops, i.e. bribe enough people, to get his toy. I guess all the other people who wanted one before him weren't willing to pony up the extra cash required.
Any resemblance between the military hummer and the civilian version is in name only. The civilian Hummer is an Isuzu truck in a party dress.
No, not the H1. Not even the H2. Perhaps you're thinking of the H3?
"and we here on the Reg flying-car desk will certainly be following the Transformer TX project with interest"
Is that in between the Monkey-Buttler desk and the LHC Interdimensional Portal Desk?
> Is that in between the Monkey-Buttler desk and the LHC Interdimensional Portal Desk?
It's between, underneath, inside, around and 30 Million light-years away from the LHC Inter-dimensional Portal Desk - all at the same time!
"Wake me up when robot wives are cheap and effective"
It wont really fit up any of our cobbled back-alleys then.
[Sorry]
The Indomitable Gall Research Projects Agency would like to announce our latest project to be put to tender.
IGRPA will give a prize of £10,000 and a 5 year contract to anyone who can produce an instantaneous matter transporter that can be manufactured for under £23.95 by the year 2020. The device will be capable of transporting a human 5 light-years in under a second, with the power draw of a Bayliss wind-up radio.
Twice as long as a HumVee. Downside - you'll get clamped twice. Upside - you can still fly away.
At last - a chance for him to get in on the pork barrel and raise some real money...
In my book anything with a prop is a helicopter. If they want an off-road driving helicopter that is fine. But if they want a /proper/ flying car, there's but one way: anti-gravity
Arnie => terminator => timemachine => future => anti-gravity
will it have that then? some crap dry ice wafting out of an old hoover hose?
> Arnie bought the first street legal one
first *civilian* street legal one.
>Then all the ones I saw being driven around -- by military personnel -- before Arnie got his weren't legal? Somehow I don't think so.
All kinds of military hardware isn't "street legal" by DMV rules. Much of it can't even be made so. "Sir, your Abrams tank doesn't have 5 mph crush zones." answer - "Sure it does, anything it hits gets crushed." Military aircraft are the same way - some can be civilianized, some cannot. The military isn't subject to any of this nanny state stuff - seat belts, bumper heights, etc. are irrelevant.
>IIRC it's that AM General wasn't in the business of supplying to civilians.
Originally they weren't - it was the lure of the almighty dollar that changed their minds.
And when I get MY flying Humvee with all the weapons systems intact, please, please, please clamp my car!! Oh by the way, do you wonder what that big red laser dot in the middle of your forehead is all about? Muhahahah!
You didn't quote me correctly, I'm not the one who wrote ">Arnie bought the first..." That was me quoting the OP.
Then you conveniently left out my comment about money so you could make essentially the same comment. Classy.
And if the military can drive them on the street -- legally -- with or without seat belts, 5MPH bumpers, crash tests, etc., then they're still street legal. Perhaps it occurred to you that there are laws exempting the milspec version from all that stuff?
It's either legal or it's not. It can't be both. Arnie's was just the first civilian, plain and simple.
"And if the military can drive them on the street -- legally -- with or without seat belts, 5MPH bumpers, crash tests, etc., then they're still street legal."
Or it could just mean that the cops aren't too keen on pulling over a fully armed military vehicle and pissing off those inside it.
Jet-powered aircraft that can fly 5000 miles, drop 10 metric tons of ordnance and fly back to base, self-powered. Max Altitude at least 12000 meters.
Would be used to punish locals who want to bomb us into accepting their violent faith and then set up booby-traps when we want to go after the nasties.
Oh wait, let me look at the B-52 and Tu-95 specs. Or the A380 specs.
There is only one solution to ghanistan: Get out of the shit and only interact with them from safe altitude. Karzai already tries to change sides, but I guess they will behead him anyway. Their violent faith commands them to do that.
I wasn't aware Afghanistan was a christian country...
But this is well up to their completely bonkers benchmark.
The pictures show a sort of V22 Osprey design which is no where near going to be road worthy.
Whatever comes out of this project (*if* anything comes out) will look radically different.
Call me skeptical, but this sounds a lot like Karl Pilkington's "Life Watch".
Where's my dropship and APC combo please? That thing had a particle phase cannon that could fry half a city WHAP. Not to mention it's excellent complement of sharp sticks!
To think anything that size could produce enough power to carry something as dense as a US Marine.
You know, the guys who claim they have a working Flying Car Just About To Go Into Production Next Year(tm)?
Moller have been claiming they have perfected the tech for something like two decades now, so they should be a cert to win this contract.
I'm so certain they'll do it I'm going to hold my breath! ready......
Sello-tape a helicopter onto the top of a car and have fold-away propellers.
Now that I've got a more sensible suggestion than DARPA, can I get their budget next year?
So the whole idea is it can skip over the mine fields then patrol.........
Is it me or would it not be easier to try and manufacturer some sort of Chopper to air lift them in?
Doesn't need to be huge, it just needs to have a cockpit and a bit for the car to hook into + something to lift them, I'm thinking like the things that collected Harvesters in Dune2/2000 if anyone played either of them.
Seems infinately more plausible and cheaper since we have all the relevant tech... Seriously, would you want to be flying over a mine field at 10,000 feet only to have your "leccy" supply run low and you plummet? - Choices are, crash and die... or parachute out of something with rotors that is crashing and descend into a mine field... hmm...
Redux.
This specification's straight out the Department of We've Heard it all Before.
FAIL, because it did last time.
Until they master "proper" antigravity, which due to the laws of physics, seems fairly unlikely.
about _LAWS_ of physics, they're more like... guidelines, suggestions of physics even.
On a 43M USD Budget?
No. Frickin'. Chance. We are not talking about improving an existing model but designing a brand new solution from the bottom up.
Either a) This will get binned during the submission stage once a more realistic figure appears or b) the actual cost will run into many times the original budget and make this thing liable for the chop during the next wave of cost cutting.
If I was REALLY being cynical I would suggest that this whole thing was a low-cost, buzz-word laden white-elephant purposely designed to justify pre-project overheads/resources before being sacrificed ahead of anything actually achievable.
@Peter Ford/Adrian Esdaile
Dr Moller is already there - even a link to the DARPA thing on the bottom of the page:
http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=126&Itemid=104
If going for an out-and-out flying car is too ambitious, how about an APC with 'hop' capability? Driving in an operational area (apart from diversions such as IEDs) often means detouring 150km because a bridge is out, or driving parallel to where you want to go because of a drainage ditch or wall in the way.
Make something that can hop a standard humvee 100m forward, and/or 100m up (or any combination thereof) and you'll become the patron saint of soldiers in low-intensity wars everywhere.
UAZ. All metal + tent, no plastic inside. Unprecedented 4x4, brand new one, tank tracker, $ 8000, delivery included. Will fly even if you forget to start the chops engine. If MoD deals, feel free to contact me.
I'm just sayin.
Yay, The Reg!
The various governments of our countries are so terrified of flying civilians that they have been trying to destroy our general aviation for decades. Have you seen the hundreds and hundreds of pages of regulations we pilots have to memorize just in order to fly the family a few hundred miles to grandmother's house? it's insane. Now they have even passed a law in the US that we cannot leave the country by plane without obtaining permission PERMISSION from the government to leave. They are allowed to search us without a warrant, confiscate our aircraft, and do all sorts of other things that are illegal in any other environment except GA. In Europe, you can drive from Germany to France without stopping at customs, but not if you fly across the border.
No, the idea of a flying car for civilians is a cruel hoax that our governments will NEVER allow.http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png
"The military isn't subject to any of this nanny state stuff - seat belts, bumper heights, etc. are irrelevant."
Bet they're not allowed to smoke inside them...
I understand freedom of speech and everything but if we're reading this then so are all the terrorists. What happened to all the secrecy?
Paris cos she can't keep a secret!
It's actually a cunning diversion. In reality, DARPA are designing subterranean drilling vehicles to deliver soldiers into the front rooms of suspected terrorists.....
Just don't tell anyone. ;-)
