“COPTERBOX” FOR MEDS, SUPPLIES

A few weeks back, we looked at the Army’s “med­ical mis­sile” for shoot­ing sup­plies to wounded sol­diers in hot zones. Well, appar­ently, there’s more than one fly­ing first aid kit out there.
With fund­ing from the Army, Fayetteville, NC’s DropMaster, Inc. has devel­oped a “CopterBox” — a fast-​​spinning, card­board cylin­der equipped with rotat­ing blades — that can be used to air­drop sup­plies to sol­diers in need.
Chuck it out of a heli­copter or a plane, and the CopterBox will slow a 60 lb. pay­load to 34 feet per sec­ond. And “since it spins at about 400 RPM, it cuts through trees and always reaches the ground, unlike parachute-​​based sys­tems,” writes DropMaster’s engi­neer­ing direc­tor Chase Warren. Plus, the things are cheap, Chase says: just $300 a pop.
But right now, the Pentagon ain’t buy­ing, Chase com­plains. Despite a small busi­ness grant from the Army — and nine years of work by “my father, 5 other peo­ple and me” — Chase says the answer has been the same from every branch of the U.S. mil­i­tary he’s approached: “We don’t have a require­ment for your con­cept. No one has come to us ask­ing for this.“
THERE’S MORE: The Australian mil­i­tary has been using a sim­i­lar prod­uct for years, notes Defense Tech reader GK. These “heli­boxes” have max­i­mum weight of just 7.5 kg, he says, but they’re just right for rations, water, and the like.

August 13th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.