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.

Comments

Airborn, huh?

[Essequemodeia]

I'm pretty sure existing humvees upon discovering an exploding IED at close range fly through the air already.

That's not a Transformer

[0xdeadbeef]

That is clearly a M.A.S.K. vehicle.

Well I'm glad

[sean_nestor]

that we've clearly got out budget priorities straight in this country.

they already have this ... helicopters

[Dan667]

Military spending is out of control, this program should be killed.

Re:they already have this ... helicopters

[Nadaka]

Helicopters can not be driven on the ground and can not be flown by 18 year old combat infantry.

Re:they already have this ... helicopters

[Monkeedude1212]

Helicopters don't need to be driven on the ground - BECAUSE THEY CAN FLY - and nor could any flying vehicle be operated by 18 year old combat infantry.

So really, is the cost in fuel savings for being able to temporarily drive on the ground, or temporarily lift off, really worth the money being dumped into the engineering, design and production of this vehicle, not to mention the increased target profile...
Is it really worth it when we have vehicles that already fit this niche pretty well? You need to avoid the ground, go by air. We have air. You're going to need a qualified flight operator whether you only need to fly 50m or 5000m, so its not like you're saving on personel training by implementing this.

Re:they already have this ... helicopters

[Grishnakh]

Helicopters are very expensive, and it's enormously expensive to train the pilots to fly them (about $600 per hour for flight training in a turbine helicopter, just for operating/fuel/maintenance costs, instructor costs and overhead are extra). Helicopters are not very fuel efficient. And that's for a trainer helicopter; something armored like an Apache costs way more per flight-hour.

This "flying jeep" is just ridiculous. It's basically a form of helicopter with wings for better fuel efficiency once under-way. But with wings on the side (plus big long rotor blades on top), there's no way it can drive on normal roads. The current Humvee is already almost too wide for standard roads. Plus, helicopters are already vulnerable to small-arms fire, unless they have tons of armor (like the Apache, which is big, expensive, and a fuel hog); this thing obviously doesn't have much armor.

This project just looks like a way to give someone a bunch of taxpayer money for some stupid drawings and pointless meetings.

Re:they already have this ... helicopters

[Lord Ender]

I think the idea is that driving 95 miles and flying 5 is cheaper than flying 100 miles.

... what.

[IICV]

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

What. To avoid roadside bombs, we're making Humvees that can fly automatically.

Tomorrow's news: in order to prevent heat stroke in our soldiers, the Pentagon has begun selecting companies to build a satellite that will block out the sun.

Where am I?

[Andrewkov]

Did I accidentally get redirected to The Onion?

One word:

[Pojut]

Armor.

What kind of armor can a flying Humvee really have? Military-spec Humvees are already heavier than a fat chick at an all you can eat buffet with a bag of holding...how do they expect to make them take off quickly at any given time?

Re:One word:

[Toze]

Bags of holding are not as heavy as their contents; ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_of_holding ) depending on the edition and type of bag, she's only going to be about another 15-60 pounds on top of her regular 300. While Humvees are indeed heavier than this (5200-5900 pounds, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humvee), fat chicks with bags of holding are not an appropriate standard of weight class for military vehicles. I suggest using Huge ( http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Huge_Animated_Object ) or Gargantuan ( http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Gargantuan_Animated_Object ) animated objects.

/pedant

Re:One word:

[ducomputergeek]

I thought the F-4 pretty much proved you can make bricks fly if you put big enough engines on them.

They have too much money...

[Manip]

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. It would also cost less to produce and be easier to maintain. Oh plus safer from ground fire and rockets.

But apart from all of those blindly obvious holes, this is a grant plan.

Logic Fail....

[kevinNCSU]

The point of a Humvee is that it's cheaper/easier/safer to drive than fly. If they can "take off" to avoid a road-side bomb then that implies they know where it is so they could also, you know....stop? Or turn around? I'm sure insurgents would love it if not only does the convoy stop when they encounter a roadside bomb, but instead of getting out and clearing the area/shooting insurgents they instead start spinning up giant rotors of death in close proximity to each other and then slowly become airborne targets to which even small arms fire can now cause catastrophic failure.

DARPA

[AtomicOrange]

DARPA is out there to look at the strategic techonologies that might be required in the future battlescape. Just because it starts out as a design concept that doesn't necessarily seem the best of ideas it's there to further flesh out and seek out innovation from industry/private sector. So many are quick to chastise DOD research, yet there is so much out there that wouldn't be possible without DARPA and other Military/Goverment funded research. Healthcare (ie Trauma response) is always a huge beneficiary to this research. Across the board it pushes technology and innovation in fields which may not have had the funding to be researching such.

Good idea

[gman003]

For the past few centuries, the biggest technological developments were driven by the military. Mass production started with guns. Aircraft were first made into actual tools by the military. Jet engines. Nuclear power. I don't have to tell you guys how much of modern computing is derived from the military, from ARPANet to microchips. Whatever your thoughts on the ethics of it, the military drives technology.

Now we're just co-opting that process to get me my flying car.

Re:So in essence...

[LoRdTAW]

I want to know how they expect this to help in any way, shape or form. The idea behind road-side bombs (IED's) is to remain as stealth as possible and then detonate as the vehicle or convoy is passing. I have two friends who served in Iraq: one who lucky survived an IED blast with only cuts and partial hearing loss (the gunner died from shrapnel and the passenger had severe injuries) and the other had the Humvee in front of his hit but thankfully no deaths. One even told me a story that they walked over an IED after they went to investigate suspicious movement in a building and it detonated but it was a 155mm shell buried upside down so the blast dissipated into the ground. They were lucky.

Most of the IED's are disguised as broken down cars, carts or buried in the road itself. Some are poorly disguised, an example was one of my friends was in a convoy that stopped when a very out of place pile of rocks was spotted up the road. That IED was detonated by M2 machine gun fire. So some can be avoided but others are almost impossible to spot. Detonation was an area of interest and Army EOD (explosive ordinance division) was called in to disarm and study the methods of detonation used. Some were set off by a guy hiding near by with a wired detonator (my friend always said he pictured Wile E. Coyote hiding behind a rock with a plunger type detonator.) Others are set off using cell phones and in one case, timed by a washing machine timer (that one failed to detonate).

So I really want to know if this is a ridiculous idea someone came up with or some form of pay out as a favor. It makes absolutely no sense. Besides this is the same military that sent Humvee with no doors or armor. Their only defense was to cover the floor with sand bags and pray they didn't take fire through the doors.