Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Cool 'Weapon' of the Day


The ESG Flying Wing, or Gryphon. TMQ summarizes:

Actual Rocket Man In Planning Stages: A German engineering firm called ESG has designed this powered flying wing for paratroopers. In theory a special forces paratrooper using the wing, which has tiny jet motors, could jump from a carrier aircraft and sail more than 100 miles with a combination of gliding and powered flight; smallness and shape make the flying wing invisible to radar. Of course, after a dramatic 100-mile flight abroad the stealth wing, the special forces soldier would arrive at the target – with a pistol and a signal flare, which is about all the device can carry. Don't you just sense generals are right now looking at this picture and saying, "I so don't know what this is for, but I want it."

2 comments:

Philo-Junius said...

During World War II, German Fallschirmjaeger would parachute with most of their equipment dropped in a separate pod. While this could lead to situations where the paratroops were cut off from their equipment behind enemy lines, paratroops need time to organise and rendezvous after a jump in any event. The utility of this new device should not be evaluated strictly in terms of its ability to land a soldier completely equipped.

The Editor at IP said...

I will judge the utility of the new device strictly in terms of its ability to make the paratrooper look like Batman.

On that scale, it is highly utile.