Pogo outlined a fatal flaw in my bright idea of yesterday:
... on a practical note [the bungee ropes] have to be tensioned to cope with the weight of a fully-loaded soldier. Once he lets go of the bungee it's going to emulate a "flicked" elastic band (for that's all it is) and fly up and either tangle in or damage the rotor blades of the helicopter. There's also a chance of them flailing about and hitting the tail rotor. Neither action is likely to improve the airworthyness of the chopper! Back to the drawing-board Mr W. :-)
OK. How about this: the soldier drops down using a normal rope which is coiled round a spring loaded drum that emulates the bounciness of a bungee rope, i.e. he is in free-fall for most of the way but then slows down to a gentle halt just before he lands on the ground/deck of ship. The soldier then lets go, or unhooks himself using a patented single-handed release mechanism, leaving his other hand free to tote his gun.
To prevent the whole rotor/entanglement nastiness, the drum has a ratchet in it so that the rope does not bounce back/rewind itself until a soldier in the helicopter releases it and then the rope coils back in a controlled fashion, like a cable-wind inside a vacuum cleaner; or even better, the rope rewinds itself by about ten feet (so that people on the ground/deck of the ship can't grab it) and then stops.
Update: EKTWP in the comments describes the idea thusly: "Why bother with ropes & springs? I'm sure there are self belay units that you can use when climbing or ice climbing if you don't have a partner that could be used the other way around. You descend rapidly until you get to desired length, when you decelerate and when you unclip, the rope is retracted into the drum automatically (but not too quickly or it would catch in the rotors, etc)." That works for me.
Thursday 3 June 2010
Possible military application of bungee ropes (2)
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8 comments:
Keep the existing decent system, but make sure that you have two blokes on door guns, preferably of the revolving barrel minigun type. They hose the deck before descent so keeping everyone down there out of the way / dead / wounded hence allowing airborne troops easy, opposition free boarding.
What's not to like?
Why bother with ropes & springs? I'm sure there are self belay units that you can use when climbing or ice climbing if you don't have a partner that could be used the other way around. You descend rapidly until you get to desired length, when you decelerate and when you unclip, the rope is retracted into the drum automatically (but not too quickly or it would catch in the rotors, etc.).
speaking of military applications of bungee, Mark, were you ever an Air Cadet ?
we used to 'fly' the hair-raising Slingsby T.38 for primary training, before graduating to more conventional gliders
they were launched by bungee ! two solemn lines of space-cadets would march out dragging a V-shaped bungee, at the apex of which was the T.38, tethered to a spike with a quick-release trigger. when the bungee was stretched to the required tension, the hapless pilot would pull the release and the T.38 would be catapulted aloft !
they were as exposed as they look (see also here, and the first photo here) - and of course they never reached parachute-height, so it was a controlled landing or die
can't imagine elf-n-safety allowing 16-year olds out on these adventures today !!
L, do you mean 'decent' or 'descent'? The whole strafing idea is a non-starter, this is primarily a propaganda war.
EKTWP, I have updated.
ND, no I wasn't, but that's excellent raw material for part 3 of "Possible military applications of bungee ropes"
MW ' descent' Apologies. ASs to not strafing, yes I do see that politically it might be a bit tricky. But it would work.
One possible military application of ropes in general is to throw them in front of the boat so they wrap round the propeler(Chambers spelling).This does induce a prolonged halt,as I have found when mismanaging boats myself.
DBC, d'you mean like in Speed 2? They had to use proper anchor chains for that, but the idea has a lot of merit.
In PR terms "Gaza relief ship halted by mysterious chains floating in middle of Ocean' isn't quite as damaging as 'IDF kill nine peace activists'.
Not seen Speed 2.Seems kinda pointless from online reviews:no Dennis Hopper from original.
Other films which provide lateral thinking even horizontal wine heightened solutions: The Yangtse Incident where true blue British boat finds itself in troubled waters and can't get out because of a boom in front of it.A boom like construction with the torpedo nets from Above us the Waves ,if deployed quickly by nippy mine sweeper type ships should give intruders pause for thought.
Any Boys Own solution would be better than shooting people face to face.
Turkey seems to be reverting to
Islam .Not good
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