The US Army (and Navy) spent quite a few dollars and a number of years trying to develop this type of system in the 1950 and 60s, though a jet turbine powered 'Jet pack' came out of it with a reasonable endurance (not much less than this thing), the issues of weight and operator safety made it a non starter as a practical military system. I see this system has some form of parachute safety decent system, but can it deal with an engine failure at very low level (say 10m off the deck?). The main practical issue with this is you have only one man on board who has to fly the thing and do whatever military duties are part of the mission at the same time. The US Army came to the conclusion that if soldiers have to fly around in the battle space, a helicopter is the way to do it, being that it is faster and has the people on board that can concentrate on their single function (i.e. fly the thing or do other things required to allow the military mission to be successful (i.e. gunner, medic, PJ, etc).
Last edited by MAINJAFAD; 7th Oct 2014 at 06:50.