Good - An Example

Good morning all,

Above about a hovercraft flight across English Channel.

Good - Get Out Of Dodge ... includes the Third French Republic... the place is definitely not the Fifth French Republic.

 

Well I am glad it worked. I would hate to see him pull an Amelia Earhart in the middle of the English Chanel. I wonder how many times he dumped the thing in the lake before he got proficient enough to fly it. It does raise some questions.

What is the range? How far can you go? Is there a fuel source or is it a battery? What is the capacity? How much can it lift or carry? Those of us who throw a little more shade than others would be interested. And the big one; how much does it cost? I have a feeling I will have to ransom my first born male child to get one of these. Training? Something tells me this isn't like getting in a car and driving off.

 

Well then that would answer one of the questions. Isn't the English Chanel about 19 miles across? You can't go very far.

 

Range would be around 12 miles, its powered by paraffin/kerosene.

 

Well that would probably get you out of harms way if it came down to it. Do you have to be a drug lord to afford one?

 

The French military have given the chap about €1.5m to help develop it.

 

Duke: I don't dispute that what you are saying is 100% correct. I am just scratching my head. 1.5 million euros to make yourself a big, slow, low flying, target, that could be shot down with a rifle, probably even a pistol. Am I missing the value here? Isn't that why we developed drones?

 

€1.5m is nothing these days, buy you half a helecopter at best. I don't think much of it as an assault platform, one shotgun and they'd be dropping like ducks

 

I'd not say its a bad gadget but would guess it will be for recreational use. That said, would you need a license to 'fly' it I wonder.

 

You need to look at it differently. What you are doing is sort of like looking at the flight that Wright Brothers made at Kitty Hawk with their first airplane and saying all the same things. No, that little wireframe, wood, and cloth aircraft would have been useless as far as a military threat BUT look at what it developed INTO.

Imaging for a bit an infantry that could move across any sort of terrain at speeds faster than the fastest man can run. They can carry all their gear and do it all so fast that an enemy will be flanked and unable to keep up with their rapid advances and position changes. It would rewrite infantry battlefield tactics. This is sort of what the Germans did at the start of WW2. They moved so fast that the French were passed and flanked before they could adjust. The German blitzkrieg rewrote how we fought wars. The days of trenches and men marching along in lines on foot were gone.

I look at this and can see a lot of potentials.

 

I loved that book and still read it every couple of years. The movie was such a disappointment!!! Other than the names and just slightly general basic plot the movie had very little to do with the book.