Surely if it's going to be spending most of the time in the air and above us in the sky and camouflage is an issue then blue/white would be more appropriate than the sandy colours shown on the thing in the photo?

It is probably cheaper to just let the front line troops die and send in new ones to replace them.

Theres enough bieng born every day for this idea to work.

Saving millions in development costs and getting rid of the excess "American Poor" into the bargin

Exhaust gas recirculation seems like a great way to make it fall out of the sky (assuming it can get there in the first place)

Paris, because she knows when to blow and when to suck...

...Schmind Tunnel Test.

I can do "wind tunnel tests" on any old tat made from balsa wood, yogurt pots and sticky tape. And a nice powerpoint slide.

Can I have £50 million, please?

does the design look a bit like Thunderbird 2?

in the Hummer of the air

Obligatory Paris, because she's an expert on Hummers, yes?

I think Brains should sue - he obviously has prior art on this one.

It probably will fly about as well as a genuine Humvee.

"Unusually, the flying Hummer's payload bay is situated inside the central hub of the hover fans. (This is intended to benefit the craft's stability)"

I assume the rest of the volume of the vehicle is used for fuel storage?

With a payload of 180kg, the word "repeatedly" is well used in this context. You'd need a never-ending stream of the bloody things waffling back and forth to keep the logistics under control.

Also, "Humvee of the sky"? To qualify here it would need to carry five or six fully equipped troops and mount a machine gun on the roof. The monicker "Chocolate teapot of the sky" would seem more appropriate here.

This all way too reminiscent of the Avrocar project. The US military went all starry-eyed over the idea of their troops dropping into combat from miniature flying saucers and shovelled money into Avro, until it became apparent to anyone with more than a passing interest that it was never going to do anything that a helicopter couldn't do better already (like flying for example).

Gee, Mr Tracey

The picture only shows the top, so it makes sense for it to blend in with the ground. The underside could well be blue and white.

Aren't blackhawks doing the job perfectly well at the moment?

So, they've managed to create something that can reach the battle in a third of the time it takes a helicopter while managing to combine it with the payload capabilities of a bloke with a wheelbarrow?

Surely the only use for this is to draw fire whilst the guys on the ground wait for the real helicopter - you know, the device which can hover over an area, land, unload a hell of a lot more than 180kg supplies and then load up about a dozen soldiers for the trip back to base.

... no swinging blades. Then again, I'm more interested in the article I read this morning about the flying saucer experiment. No moving parts and the propulsion works with or without the atmosphere. Now where did I read that....Reuters? Wired? New Scientist? Science Fiction Theatre? It's conspicuous by its absence from my RSS feeds now!

They tried that in 'Nam, wasn't well received.

its a flying insult to anyong trying to aim for it

just add lots of rude expressions in arabic

anyone looking too closely will be so incensed at what is writen on it, they wil be completely distracted from trying to shoot at it, as they start ranting and raging that it is an abomination againt islam/the locals/ the taliban,,, etc.....

they will then give up trying to shoot it down, as it had by that time left the area or dropped something on them to shut them up.

Even if it doesn't fly it, that top-mounted intake shows great promise in making entertaining YouTube videos.

how many coconuts can it carry? what's it's airspeed velocity in Unladen Swallows?

Are ye suggestin' Humvee's migrate?

Like the man said. prior art...where's Gerry Anderson with that lawsuit.

mines the one with the papers to hand to the lawyer

It looks like a texture file you can download for free at www.renderosity.com

And the way the UVmapping of the model doesn't quite work is also suggestive.

The point of any of these projects is to get funding. It does not have to work in the real world, it does not have to give the troops an advantage. It just needs to impress the holders of purse strings.

For all the fair wits who actually design aircraft, you can get more information from their website at www.frontlineaerospace.com It's indeed in early design, but it looks like a good innovation to meet military-defined resupply objectives. I'm not in favor of the suggestion that we simply let 'em die and send out more, unless it's that poster's family, not mine. The problem now is that to get the same amount of critical supplies like food, water, ammo to fellows under fire, it does indeed take a long time, with convoys of lorries or HUMVEEs, hitting IEDs and getting drivers captured. Yes, the literature says this means lots of quick sorties but at much lower risk. Not sure why the article says "most" aviation analysts question it. Of several websites I've searched to get more information, only one from a credentialed source is snide, and there is a reasonable reply. We'll see if it ever flies. It looks designed for a specific function, not to be pretty.

Oh, those things Our Boys (TM) pull out of ditches in Afghanistan with Land Rover Defenders....

No description of the alleged "street-cleaning truck" was given here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/16/mutt_suck_truck/ other than to say "the truck was speeding". Perhaps this was in fact a low-level urban test flight for this new robo-wombat-suck-blow-a-tron.

And what a success: the stealth capabilities made everyone think it was a municipal garbage truck and four-legged-fleshy death was dealt out in double-quick time.

P.S. Thunderbird 2-point-oh-one?

All mujaheddeen will need to do after spotting that thing in the air is to watch it until it comes to a hover then fire their mortars at the place.

Alternatively they can just shoot it down at that point, happy at the thought of it crushing on the heads of GI's it was meant to resupply...

Does it count as a Mile High Club membership if the act in question is self-inflicted? With a payload of 180Kg it would have to be (leaving the midget jokes aside). Hmm, that icon nearly works...

It looks a lot like one of the gunships from Half-life 2... http://www.hlfallout.net/images/content/enemies/full/gunship_full.jpg