Los Angeles: With its armoured doors and bulletproof windows, the burly Humvee has been a stalwart ground transport for the US military. But now the Pentagon thinks the hulking vehicle should also be able to fly.
On Tuesday, Pratt & Whitney's Rocketdyne division in Los Angeles announced it had been awarded $1 million (Dh3.67 million) to design a propulsion system for a flying Humvee.
Don't scoff — there is good reason for an airborne truck, defence officials say. With the proliferation of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on the ground, a hovering Humvee would be an ideal way to keep soldiers out of harm's way, Pentagon officials said in announcing the award.
Dubbed the Transformer, the vehicle — at least an artist's rendering of it — looks like a toy commando truck out of a "G.I. Joe" cartoon.
But according to the Pentagon's technical specs, it would "combine the advantages of ground vehicles and helicopters into a single vehicle equipped with flexibility of movement."
The Transformer would have folding wings that pop out from the side of the vehicle and helicopter-like rotor blades attached to either the roof or the wings, depending on which design the Pentagon picks.
Also, it would be robotic, so there would be no pilot or driver behind the wheel.
Revolutionary project
The hybrid craft is being spearheaded by the Pentagon's famed Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, which has been behind projects that have either turned out to be revolutionary, such as the internet and stealth technology, or just bone-headed, like developing telepathic spies and jungle-tromping robotic elephants.
The research agency said the flying Humvee should be able to haul around 1,000 pounds while travelling a distance of 287 miles on a tankful of fuel.
It's a tall task considering that the ground-only version gets 14 miles per gallon at best, said Scott Claflin, director of Power Innovations at Pratt & Whitney's Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of United Technologies.
In addition to Claflin's company, the agency has selected five others to work on the Transformer program in its 12-month, $9 million development phase.
AAI of Hunt Valley, and Lockheed Martin of Bethesda, the nation's largest defence company, are listed as the programme's prime contractors.
