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Pentagon Chooses Two Companies to Build Flying Humvee

I don't think it will happen. The military likes to research everything, most of it being scuttled. Popular Mechanics likes to make everything look like it's imminent, but most of those inventions never come about. Ah well, one can dream. ;)
 
Waste of money is wasteful :borg:

This thing is impractical if only because of the skill needed to operate something like this.
 
sojourner said:
^How hard is it to operate something that doesn't exist yet?
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Well Aviation school has a year long wait. The lowest ranking individual who is permitted to operate an Army aircraft is a Warrant Officer. The Aviation school is over a year long. Using that information I'll let you figure out how difficult operating a helicopter that also happens to be a humvee would be.
 
^Are you sure it's not a Humvee that also happens to be a helicopter? Any teenager can get a driver's license.

Truth be told, you can't really gauge how hard it will be to control until one is actually built and we see what it can actually do.

Maybe the "flight mode" will be nothing more than a controlled hop that is completely automated?
 
sojourner said:
^Are you sure it's not a Humvee that also happens to be a helicopter? Any teenager can get a driver's license.

Truth be told, you can't really gauge how hard it will be to control until one is actually built and we see what it can actually do.

Maybe the "flight mode" will be nothing more than a controlled hop that is completely automated?
Click to expand...
A Humvee as it is takes more training than what is required of a teenager with a drivers license. I should know, I have a humvee license. Add to that the fact that learning how to fly anything takes a significant amount of skill. Even automated craft (UAVs) take a significant amount of skill to operate. You're grasping at straws here. We haven't even touched the amount of man-hours it would take to keep something like this functioning. They would probably have to create a whole new MOS for something like this as it combines features of helicopters and features of light vehicles. They would then have to create another MOS for operation of the vehicle.
 
clint g said:
sojourner said:
^Are you sure it's not a Humvee that also happens to be a helicopter? Any teenager can get a driver's license.

Truth be told, you can't really gauge how hard it will be to control until one is actually built and we see what it can actually do.

Maybe the "flight mode" will be nothing more than a controlled hop that is completely automated?
Click to expand...
A Humvee as it is takes more training than what is required of a teenager with a drivers license. I should know, I have a humvee license. Add to that the fact that learning how to fly anything takes a significant amount of skill. Even automated craft (UAVs) take a significant amount of skill to operate. You're grasping at straws here. We haven't even touched the amount of man-hours it would take to keep something like this functioning. They would probably have to create a whole new MOS for something like this as it combines features of helicopters and features of light vehicles. They would then have to create another MOS for operation of the vehicle.
Click to expand...

Totally missed my point. I am guessing most people with the ability to drive an automobile could figure out how to drive a humvee fairly quickly. As to "automated", I used that in the sense that the whole operation of making the flying hop might be automatic. Not that you could use a remote control to fly the thing around like a UAV. Which brings up that this thing may not so much "fly" as make an extended "hop" to clear hurdles such as mine fields and impassible terrain.

Like I said, we can't really know how difficult it will be to control until they build one.
 
Well.. given the advancements in digital control and computer assisted flying it becomes easier than ever to basically fly something.

IF such a thing would make it past experimental status (big if.. personally i believe it's a pipe dream) it could be dumbed down enough so that personell who've completed a multi-week course can actually fly this thing.

It won't be an attack helicopter or anything else.. it's just there to get you from A to B via air.
However, as Clint already said, it would need such a huge investment and big continous costs that operating a fleet of these would be financially (and most likely strategically) unlikely.

However it's a funny idea.. got a good chucke out of it ;)
 
Lindley said:
Flying is easy, you just fly.

Landing is the hard part.
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Computer assisted landing.. modern planes have automated landing systems already so in theory a plane could land by itself.

Landing a helicopter is even easier.
 
FPAlpha said:
Computer assisted landing.. modern planes have automated landing systems already so in theory a plane could land by itself.
Click to expand...

That actually requires support from external navigation signals, either an ILS or WAAS. An unaugmented GPS signal isn't accurate enough, especially in the vertical.

Not saying it couldn't be done, just that it's not quite so automatic as you may assume.
 
We don't have flying cars yet, but much of the technology we have today has been developed by the military such as GPS, so I guess this means we'll have them *soon.

*Soon = 20 years ;)

I feel bad for those that have been working on flying cars for decades like the Moller Skycar with no real progress.
 
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