I caught a segment during this morning’s “Today Show” that documented this jump and was blown away by the flight path control these jumpers have. The bald jumper went on to say that he’s shooting for a “no parachute” capability with wing suits. Now, as any student pilot knows, a flared landing takes some practice, so you can imagine how tricky arresting a gigantic rate of descent with a wing suit would be — not to mention, unlike powered flight, if you mismanage your energy, you are totally hosed.
But if daredevils can standardize the move, the implications for special operations are tremendous. HALO is sneaky, but it still has a finite vul window. If you never slow down until the end of your landing skid (not rollout), your vul window is basically nil.
Here’s a quick look at these dudes playing chicken with Christ. Check it out …
– Ward
Wonder if you can get that kind of control in a trooper who is also carrying 100+ lbs of gear?
Wingsuits have typical glide slopes of 2.5 to 1. Aerodynamically, they are more like rocks than airplanes. I don’t think you can land such a thing safely unless it’s done on a steep downward slope. At least one famous flyer who is working on a wingsuit landing says he needs to spend millions on a specially prepared landing site. This doesn’t sound very promising for spec ops.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tqW6O_dcF2M
More wing suit action
Squirrel suits have been around awhile. They offer nothing of use to special forces. Strapping 100+lbs of gear to a soldier would make the suit useless, and a sudden stop like a last second chute pull all the more dangerous, physically. There is no practical way to land these sans chute, even without all the combat gear. The military is far better off researching personalized mobile armor suits, like in the mecha universe, or even a nano-muscle suit like in the game Crysis. Technologies like these are not all that far away. Exo-suits that perfectly mimic human movement and increase strength many fold are already out there. They are only impractical because of fuel requirements or bulk. I find it hard to believe that within 10–15 years we won’t see these suits on the field of battle, if not in a logistics role.
A special forces soldier in such a suit armed with an under slung shotgun/grenade launcher/whatever and a shoulder mounted XM312 .50 cal would be worth an entire division. The ability to take the benefits/features of an armored vehicle and wrap them around the individual soldier is indeed a game changer and where I’d like to see more money spent, even though a lot is being spent now.
I Have two questions? First I saw two videos,the first one,an individual had a fixed wing type apparatus(not sure what it was made of) attached to his chute bag(or whatever you call it since I was never airborne or a sky diver) on his back that he used for crossing the English Channel before he pulled his chute & landed.The second video,a German had a type of bottle on his chute bag on his back that he used for temporary propulsion,like a mini jet engine,before he pulled his chute & landed.Could a combination of the two devices mentioned above benefit a small Spec Ops team infiltrating an area where they wouldn’t want the plane they were flying in,or jumping from,detected? A wing suit would seem too weak to accomplish that.
Hey, how about we strap a luge/skeleton sled on our dudes and just have them land like planes? That’s safe, right?
On a more serious note, with autonomous tech as capable as it is, I’d imagine that spec ops/spec war guys could jump with their gear attached to some small UAV that follows them on their way down.
Steven, exoarmor doesn’t solve the infiltration problem.
But yeah, to deploy this thing you need a GPS guided version to put a weapons container on target and hope your guys get to the weapons before the enemy.
I think the wing suit will be great for the HALO guys. The LZ will be even farther from the drop plane — reducing even more the possibility of detection. The increased target radius will also increase uncertainty for the defenders. To me this additional free-fall horizontal range appears to be the main advantage. Other proposals — strap on wings (maybe with jets), or James Bond’s Switchblade winged sled, all have hardware that may provide significant radar returns, or at the least will be harder to dispose of or conceal once on the ground.
I do not however envision landing with these things, but still using a ram-air in LO. I also have some questions about the use of the wingsuit by SOP persons concerning the gear they’re carrying.
Actually,I do think that the “James Bond” sled is a better idea than waiting in a plane with the added weight of wings attached to your parachute kit(not to mention the room the wings would take up),plus the added weight of a compressed air bottle or whatever would be used for “jet propulsion”,all on top of the parachute you’d be wearing & everything else you’d have to carry with you.
It’s only a matter of time until someone takes this concept one step further, and makes ram air wings on these suits. I can imagine several different attach points and foil configurations — not to necessarily achieve a no-chute landing, but to slow rate of descent, increase wing (and thus lift) area, etc.
Thom,
It’s been done. Check out Yves Rossy, also known as Jet Man. Do a google search for “Jet-man: the incredible flying man.” He uses four radio control jet engines and a folding wing. He still lands with a parachute but he covers alot of ground fast. It is loud for military operations but, “big sky, little bullet“
Airborne, All the way