It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … what the heck is that thing?
on 04/28/2008 at 07:49 PM
Why does this make me think of Tony Stark?
Seriously, could one imagine the effect of between thirty and one hundred of these troopers come screaming out of the sky at a supposedly ‘safe zone’ for the opposition?
Sounds good… if it works as advertised. I mean…
“The Gryphon attack glider, designed to penetrate combat zones at 135 miles per hour, could revolutionize the art of parachuting.
Its helmet has a heads-up display and provides on-board oxygen for the jump. To land, a soldier separates the wing from his pack and releases his parachute to slow his descent. The wing remains attached to the soldier by a cord and lands before him.”
That all by itself makes it pure gold. Make the descent from where you left the aircraft to the LZ at 135MPH instead of whatever the descent rate of a parachute is? That should be at least a fourfold or fivefold increase in approach speed, huh? And at 135MPH, hitting a 6’x6’ flying target with virtually no heat signature would be like trying to hit a wasp in flight.
In all honesty, the only real problem I see with this one is troopers waiting too late to deploy ‘chutes because they don’t want to give up the safety of speed in a hot LZ, and next thing you know they’ve splattered themselves across the landscape.
Pterodactyl? Hmmm… I’m more expecting the guys who use em to start being called “flying blue monkeys.” I guess the real verdict will be if a senior Airborne General actually *likes* being nicknamed “The Wicked Witch of the West.”
Drop ships. Where are the drop ships?
Maybe the next Batman movie will feature this glider…
Additional thrust and vectoring can be enhanced by eating large portions of “ham and lima beans” rations (I won’t use the more common vernacular for this tasty treat)
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