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BatMan Begins!!!

cochtl
polycounter lvl 18
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cochtl polycounter lvl 18
Not really, but after this article i want my very own special forces bat wings to combat evil!

i am special forces batman

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  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Haha, that's awesome
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    r on secret peacetime missions could avoid detection or suspicion by staying close to commercial airliner flight paths.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    AUUUUHHH!!! ***SUCK****

    Airline Pilot: "Gee why did the port engine just stall for a moment?"
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    You're thinking about that one scene in The Incredibles, aren't you?
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    it's not as billowing as a cape
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    No KDR. I wasnt. Its a generic enough ha ha to work though. Its not like Pixar came up with it.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    We saw this the other day. The comments section is stunning:

    Why in the world are you telling the world this. I really think what your are doing is absolute treason. Nothing less.
    Wake up writers, set aside your Awards you think your going to win and stop aiding the enemy. If I could I would arrest the editors and the writers for treason.

    - John Miller, Dallas USA
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    The enemy. Sure. What enemy?
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Cobra Commander?
  • LordScottish
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    LordScottish polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    The enemy. Sure. What enemy?

    [/ QUOTE ]
    Yeah, the USA doesn't have any enemies, everybody likes them.
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    I'm going to have to agree with John Miller, we don't need to know this and other than me wanting to join up just to wear those I don't think we needed to know this exists more than we needed to keep this secret.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    War is as much about intimidation as it is about actual damage, just having any potential enemies think that you could deploy troops in their backyard without them noticing does a lot. Even if that stuff was completely unfeasible or never saw widespread deployment the pure suggestion that you CAN do it will reduce the likelyness of an attack.
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    Intimidation is all about the other guy thinking he has little to no chance. Intimidation can postpone a war but cannot win a war since last I checked you can't intimidate your differences away. If you're going to intimidate, someone's going to test your mettle eventually and how you respond is what’s really intimidating the other guy.
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    The point was a UK website printed information about a German company taking exisitng technology and modifying it - and they were then accused of treason.

    Tube.
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    All the more reason all this crap should be secret
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    The RAF just discovered hang gliders? Hm.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    war is worth a lot of money, actually most "secret" war stuff is in newspapers. Well at least in the UK where we have a FREE PRESS
  • Weiser_Cain
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    Weiser_Cain polycounter lvl 18
    screw the free press bring on the fucking Gestapo
  • Moz
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    Moz polycounter lvl 18
    garba garba garba

    Fish_head.jpg
  • Ninjas
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    Ninjas polycounter lvl 18
    I sense a new X-treme! sport in the future.

    Oh ya, this sure needs to be top secret. Now that this is out, I'm sure Iran is going to get all their goat herders to make woolen nets to protect their borders.

    Some things are more important than government secrets, like reporters being able to print what they know. I mean, if it is a secret, shouldn't the government keep it secret? It isn't some reporters fault the government can't do it's job.
  • Asherr
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    Asherr polycounter lvl 18
    it's not like someone could just turn on the Dicovery or History Channel and learn the capabilities of the US military or something. wink.gif
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    yeah reporters shouldn't work for the government, they should work for the people- but I guess in reality they just work for themselves. Didn't the daily mail print some article a while ago about superhuman power armour the army will be using? I wouldnt be surprised if they heard somewhere about this vague glider idea, dressed up some bloke in parachute gear then photochopped him around for the final result. Theres not much info in there you couldn't just figure out yourself if you heard about the idea of using glider wings instead of parachutes.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    I sense a new X-treme! sport in the future.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    The delta wing has been an extreme sport for several years: http://www.felixbaumgartner.com

    deltawing.jpg

    Felix baumgartner flew across the English channel with them in 2003.
    There's a famous documentary on his attempt and the wings have also featured in major hollywood movies.

    Any argument that this article is somehow treasonous in giving out top military secrets is therefore bloody ridiculous.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    Cool toy but almost usless other than as a toy for the rich. Think about it jets make lots of noise so no sneek atack with them. Good old parachutes dont make any sounds and if droped from high enough can glid the troops for miles so they can make covert atacks. The military releases shit they dont find usefull to the public so they can make back research costs.
  • Wells
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    Wells polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    Intimidation can postpone a war but cannot win a war since last I checked you can't intimidate your differences away.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Everyone knows war is the only way to make differences go away laugh.gif
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    I don't think jet noise would be a problem. The idea would be to cut power and glide long before you got close enough to the ground that anybody could hear a jet.
    The overall problem with the concept is that as a horizontal distance covering craft it is highly inefficient. You lose height just as much as you gain ground and have to be dropped from some insane height to get anywhere at all.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    daz those wings are far too small too glide well, more "fall with style" imagine the injuries that the pilots would suffer, intimidation, arrrrrrgh look human metorites were doomed
  • Rick Stirling
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    Rick Stirling polycounter lvl 18
    Shepeiro - If they are too small, why has the tech already been proven to work?
  • motives
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    motives polycounter lvl 18
    noone knows, we are all bumblebees
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    well if your talking about the xtreme sports versions they have normal parachutes as well to do the last bit slowly

    "Wearing an aerodynamic suit, and with a 6ft wide wing strapped to his back, he soared across the sea at 220mph, moving six feet forward through the air for every one foot he fell vertically - and opened his parachute 1,000ft above the ground before landing safely. "

    hittin the ground at 220mph might be painfull, unless the also feed the pilots PCP

    :-P
  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    i guess they'll just use it for the human-guided bomb project. SAS suicide unit.
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    God bless teh intarnets - where else can a bunch of video game artists critique the technical viability of military hardware? Who cares if air force engineers think it has potential; when the texture artist for Super Buttfuck 2007 tells me a bit of air force technology is useless based on cursory analysis of one photochopped picture produced for a newspaper article, I'm sure he must be correct. Fucking military engineers, they're all scammers and con men...
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    he he its great innit, anyway i used to design hyperspeed jets but i decided game arts where its at so there :-P

    god bless the internet where critique gets critiqued gets critiqued

    anyway i was just pointing out that you couldnt land without a normal parachute, it would hurt (thats a military engineering term for "ow me f****** head"), as it says in article
  • JonT
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    JonT polycounter lvl 18
    Everyone's mum knows that gliders have as long and narrow wingspans as possible! Lightyear had it right, altho the delta wing may look cooler and be less susceptible for detection.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    i still think Nausica had it right, although i bet here shoulder muscles are like a mans
  • cochtl
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    cochtl polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    [ QUOTE ]
    I sense a new X-treme! sport in the future.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    The delta wing has been an extreme sport for several years: http://www.felixbaumgartner.com

    deltawing.jpg

    Felix baumgartner flew across the English channel with them in 2003.
    There's a famous documentary on his attempt and the wings have also featured in major hollywood movies.

    Any argument that this article is somehow treasonous in giving out top military secrets is therefore bloody ridiculous.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    That was mentioned in the article. As long as we are criticising this, i want to have large autocannons like these strapped to either shoulder GAU-8_avenger.jpg
    and canards on my ears.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    daz those wings are far too small too glide well

    [/ QUOTE ]

    So they'd be a lot better under power? The surface area of those wings is far too small to do *anything* well. You aint gonna be skimming over city rooftops with this thing! All they can do well is go down. Fast. And we already have something that can do that. It's called skydiving. That's why the whole concept is just silly.
  • KDR_11k
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    KDR_11k polycounter lvl 18
    It gives additional forward momentum.
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    [ QUOTE ]
    So they'd be a lot better under power? The surface area of those wings is far too small to do *anything* well.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    So when you applied for that job with NASA, did you mention to them that you don't actually know anything about aerospace engineering?

    Yes, they *would* be better under power - the more force you have directed downward, the less lifting surface is required (a virtue of what's called the Coanda effect). Seen the wings on an SR-71? They fly alright. Some flying devices don't need lifting surfaces at all to stay airborne; the fins on missiles are used entirely for stabilization and direction, with directed engine thrust entirely responsible for providing lift.

    Trying to evaluate performance characteristics from that picture is an exercise in futility, as it's clearly a mockup (that or the RAF HALO jump training somehow makes the divers' hands immune to frostbite). The concept has merit; everyone reading this has as little or less experience studying lift dynamics as I do and I don't fucking know how well it'd work; we're all dumber for participating. Le Fin.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    No need for the snideness Tom. It's monday fucking morning. We all know you're a smartie and you don't need to prove it. I never claimed to be an expert in aerospace engineering. All I was really originally trying to do was to show the people that consider this giving away military secrets that it's been done before. That conceptually it's not new. I'm basing my comments on the documentary of the cross channel attempt.

    I said a LOT better. As in, would it really be *hugely* significantly better? As in, even If it was powered, I doubt they are looking at this as something akin to a mini personal plane. If you watch the documentary about the Austrians flight over the channel, and his wing looked very similiar to this one, it was very clear that it was just going down, very quickly, with some slight ability to steer. Hence the need to drop from some insane height. Watch it, it's interesting. Probably available on the discovery channel. But you probably don't need to since you've already planned this all out mathematically!

    *edit* I actually don't give a 'flying' fuck wether it works or not. But the treason comments got my goat.
  • TomDunne
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    TomDunne polycounter lvl 18
    My Monday is occupied with illustrating women's lingerie in Corel Designer 9, which was all the rage in 2002. Revel in the snideness, kemosabe; the incompetent whore in the cube next time mine is getting a pipe bomb in her car when I pass through the parking lot this evening, so you're living the High Life!

    At any rate, I've plugged all the relevant values into my trusty Brainiac 5000 (just to confirm the calculus I had previously done in my head during lunch) and it turns out that, yes, it would be hugely significantly better. Allow me to es'plain. No, that will take to long, allow me to sum up:

    If you have thrust, you can alter your angle of attack. This means that by directing the propulsion so it doesn't just push the craft forward, but that it also slightly changes the pitch of the wings, so that they're canted slightly upward relative to the horizon. When you've got this going on, the fluid dynamics change such that the air under the wing is effectively "pushed down" rather than simply past the wing (the Coanda effect I mentioned). It's sort of what you see when any commercial jet lowers the flaps on its wings (although that has slightly different effects, both are angle changes to effect greater lift).

    Conceptually, this is solid stuff since it's not intended to be anything more than a directed descent vehicle rather than something designed for distance flight. And as it happens, they likely would be dropping from an insane height, just like standard HALO jumps are conducted today (a recent Bond film gave an example, IIRC). If I were to put my Junior Engineer Merit Badge on the line here, I would speculate that a greater problem than the wingspan/lift issue would be one of weight. Building the glider out of carbon fiber is nice, but those engines and fuel (or rocket motors) aren't going to be light as a feather. Adding that to the already large payloads that airborne soldiers typically jump with, I'd think trying to land this thing is likely to increase the number of chiropractors the military keeps on staff. You can't send the equipent down separately and expect it to arrive at the right place and you can't really eject the propulsion system prior to landing and expect to call that "stealthy".

    But that's pulled from as far up my ass as anyone else's guess is apt to be.

    *edit*

    I agree the treason comments are absurd. Like slander and libel, most people have no idea what the hell constitutes treasonous action. Alas, being a dumb fuck isn't considered unpatriotic either, or we could have us a' lynchin'. I'd live, I'm a smartie laugh.gif
  • SuperOstrich
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    SuperOstrich polycounter lvl 17
    [ QUOTE ]
    Cool toy but almost usless other than as a toy for the rich. Think about it jets make lots of noise so no sneek atack with them. Good old parachutes dont make any sounds and if droped from high enough can glid the troops for miles so they can make covert atacks. The military releases shit they dont find usefull to the public so they can make back research costs.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Ever been to an air show? There is always a demonstration about how jets are always used for surprise attacks, since at high speeds you can't hear the jet engine until it's right on top of you. They're basically traveling at a speed close to sound during surprise attacks.
  • Daz
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    Daz polycounter lvl 18
    @ Verm smile.gif

    [ QUOTE ]
    *edit* I actually don't give a 'flying' fuck wether it works or not. But the treason comments got my goat.

    [/ QUOTE ]
  • SyaPed
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    SyaPed polycounter lvl 18
    Since when can parachutes glide 120 miles? And that's the unpowered version...
  • cochtl
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    cochtl polycounter lvl 18
    I dont get what the fuss is about with the treason bit. I mean it's a big showoff contest to awe and anger other countries so that money can be made. Its not like we are in the cold war and everything is top secret, especially a relatively "old" technology such as this. Treason would be appropriated when some test pilot/diver managed to get the tech smuggled across to some bad country's border to sell it off. One example would be like flying a Mig into china to sell it off for its tech (things like that did happen btw)

    That said, the article explains how normal "covert" jumps usually use helicopters or jumping from an even higher distance, and these things can be used to allow a drop team to be deployed from an greater tactical distance to further enhance its stealthness.

    Where is the love? Sheesh frown.gif
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