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Pentagon Selects Companies To Build Flying Humvees
longacre sends in a quote from Popular Mechanics:
"The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected two companies to proceed with the next stage of its Transformer, known as TX — a fully automated four-person vehicle that can drive like a car and then take off and fly like an aircraft to avoid roadside bombs. Lockheed Martin and AAI Corp., a unit of Textron Systems, are currently in negotiations with DARPA for the first stage of the Transformer project, several industry sources told Popular Mechanics at a robotics conference here in Denver."
The picture included with the linked article says it all, really.
Coming from a guy that designs military combat vehicles for a living, this is another disaster in the works. If you need some reference material look at the Osprey program or the AAAV program. Both are massive failures with colossal budget overruns and they are similar in scope to this flying humvee idea.
I can tell you right now this will fail and I can tell you why - it will cost less to run a heavily armoured vehicle than it would to fly even a lightly armoured one.
When attacking a ground vehicle, an adversary can set off an explosive almost directly underneath a vehicle, and can aim a blast at specific parts of the vehicle; this is how EFP's work. (EFP's are fundamentally different from IEDs in the manner they're deployed.) All the adversary needs to aim it is a reference point like a tree or a telephone pole.
Most ground movement will always be on roads because off-road travel is slow, dangerous and requires a tremendous amount of maintenance. You never see in movies what it's like to recover a stuck vehicle, or recover a tank that's thrown track. So ground vehicles have to carry large amounts of armor because they're going to get hit, and they're going to be right next to the explosion when they do. It is a good idea to simply get off the ground and not get blown up.
Having driven MRAPs for a while, I think they're useful in places like Baghdad where there's a significant threat of harassment from IEDs, and where you've got reasonably good roads. But I'm doubtful that you can take the v-shaped hull concept and apply it to a purely tactical vehicle, as v-shaped means a high profile and high center of gravity. And in a place like Afghanistan, where roads are mountainous, narrow or non-existent, you're probably stuck flying anyway.