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Researchers To Build Underwater Airplane
coondoggie writes to tell us that DARPA seems to still be having fun with their funding and continues to aim for the "far out." The latest program, a submersible airplane, seems to have been pulled directly from science fiction. Hopefully this voyage to the bottom of the sea is of the non-permanent variety. "According to DARPA: 'The difficulty with developing such a craft come from the diametrically opposed requirements that exist for an airplane and a submarine. While the primary goal for airplane designers is to try and minimize weight, a submarine must be extremely heavy in order to submerge underwater. In addition, the flow conditions and the systems designed to control a submarine and an airplane are radically different, due to the order of magnitude difference in the densities of air and water.'"
The patients have been running the asylum at DARPA for at least 8 years now. I watched a doc on the Military Channel about a DARPA conference. The doc was in the context of "cool new weapons at the DARPA" tradeshow or whatever they call it.
They actually had this idiot (he acted like one of those dopey "regular guy" characters in a cheesey commercial) who had money somehow. He talked about how, one day he was watching Frankenstien with static electricity poles and thought "hey that'd be a good way to control crowds...hmmm I should hire someone to make a gun that shoots static electricity!"
Of course he couldn't do it himself (had to hire someone to draw up some artist's conceptions), and the ability to power and aim the thing was a fatal issue...*had no working model at all*...and of course, DARPA gave him $3 million.
DARPA is full of shit. I don't care how "cool" some of the stuff they are working on is. Most of that tech is being developed for both military AND civilian law enforcement uses...I'm resisting the obvious comparison here...oh hell...they're like Nazis! and I'm only half joking...
Thank you Dave Raggett