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US Military To Develop Star Wars-Style Hoverbikes With British company

Posted by samzenpus on from the mind-the-ewoks dept.

New submitter amalcolm writes: The U.S. military may soon be zooming around on Star Wars-style hoverbikes. U.K. based Malloy Aeronautics has joined forces with Survice Engineering to develop the vehicles for the Department of Defense. "The Department of Defense is interested in Hoverbike technology because it can support multiple roles," said Mark Butkiewicz, who works for Survice. "It can transport troops over difficult terrain and when it's not used in that purpose it can also be used to transport logistics, supplies, and it can operate in both a manned and unmanned asset."

2 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, right by Overzeetop · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "The Department of Defense is interested in Hoverbike technology because it looks wicked cool,"

    Gotta figure out how to spend a trillion dollars without being able to make things out of solid gold or add diamonds - just pick a cool thing from scifi and write up a spec.

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    1. Re:Yeah, right by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Odd how certain people & parties are against fundamental (basic) research UNLESS it's spent by the military. It's often so fundamental that any resulting applications often have just as many civilian/commercial uses such that it may not matter which gov't entity sponsors it.

      Well, at least we got The Internet and integrated circuits out of such. (The military was a heavy customer of early IC, sparking faster improvement, even though they were not involved in the invention itself.)
         

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      Table-ized A.I.