Lockheed Martin's 'Flying Humvee' Concept Gets a Lift from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

I guess they will change the name from High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) to High Mobility Multipurpose Winged Wheeled Vehicle Aircraft (HMMWWVA)?

Why not just build a quad copter, why bother with all the extra crap, it's not going to go fast with ducted fans anyway, so why ruin stability for a few extra knots? Or rather than making it look like a freaking truck with wings ontop... why don't they design from the ground up. Take a science fiction designer, show them what they have to work with and let them do the rest... adding function without form ruins both.

Playing Devil's Advocate since 1978

"The only constant in the universe is change"
-Heraclitus of Ephesus 535 BC - 475 BC

What a complete waste of tax payer money.

I think AAI's concept is superior,as the stubby wing and rotor can be more compactly stored than with the other concept,which to me,at least,looks almost cartoonish.
Carter Aviation Technologies is developing modern gyrocopter aircraft-they should have entered the contest.Google: "CGT-100 Gyroplane" for a look at their transport concept.

Complete waste of money and time. It took our government nearly a century to get the osprey together and now they give us another pork barrel project to line the pockets of some eccentric engineers who are apparently part of the in crowd over at the military-industrial complex. This is a total waste. Whatever happened to the clear aluminum/glass the Air Force was developing that could defeat multiple rounds of .50 cal? I remember seeing that story a few years ago and now there is neither hide nor hair of that product on our shelves.

In my opinion, this is idiotic on all levels. For a variety of reasons. Let's start with the premise: you want to design a flying humvee- in order to avoid IEDs and roadside bombs. Why exactly does that chain of reasoning lead to "flying car?" Why not "IED-proofing for our hummers"? It's pretty common knowledge that hummers aren't well-designed to survive IEDs anyway. Why not start there? Or how about increasing protection and detection on the roads? Invest in a minesweeper? ANYTHING before you have to resort to FLYING CAR?

But okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that flying car is the only way to go. How exactly would that work? You're driving along most of the time anyway, and a car light enough to be an aircraft would be FAR more vulnerable when they DO roll over a bomb. You would have to literally know most of the time where the IEDs are in the first place so that you could fly over them. If you already knew where the bombs were.... Then WHAT, again, is the point?

But okay, let's assume for the sake of argument that flying car is the only way to go, and that they magically fly over IEDs reliably without even knowing that they're there. Now we come to the vulnerability issue: an aircraft, particularly one so ungainly and wasteful, cannot afford the weight of much, if any, armor. IEDs may be a problem, but in the meantime, what on earth are you going to do about RPGs and small arms fire? On the ground as well as in the sky? These things are absolute sitting ducks, and I guarantee you, any soldier that looks at it for more than a second will avoid that deathtrap like the plague.

Lastly, let's get to the inherent design issues. They are absolutely unavoidable. No amount of ruinously expensive funding or exhaustive over-engineering can compensate for the fundamental nature of the thing. By building a car that can fly, the car is going to suck at being a car because it has to compromise several of its design imperatives in order to fly. An aircraft that can drive will similarly suck at flying because it has to compromise on its design, and will end up being as slow, low-hanging and vulnerable as a winded sloth. And, in all probability, as stable as an alcoholic on a trampoline.

There is literally no avoiding these problems. It is inherent in the nature of the thing. Sometimes compromise works, particularly if there's a large, comfy niche between two things; things like amphibians, hybrid airships, the Subaru Outback and fusion cuisine are all excellent examples of this working very well. But as the gap grows wider and wider, it becomes an impassable chasm, where compromise is both absolutely necessary and absolutely ruinous. It's called being the "worst of both worlds," and this utterly asinine vehicle embodies it perfectly.

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Always defer to facts rather than philosophy.

I looked at this when the idea came out. It was bogus then, and if anything worse now. Does anyone remember the Heller flying platform? No? Okay. I also want to draw attention to the Soviet "flying tank". THe concept has been tried before, and failed... fantastically.

Now SgtB, when was tyhe Air Force working on that? I would like to figure out if it can indeed be done.

J. James, nice way of calling DARPA a bunch of eccentric lunatics.

AAI's concept doesn't look aerodynamically correct. The ducted fan in the tail has a heavily obstructed intake by the body of the vehicle being right in front of it. In addition the fixed wing is going to obstruct the downward air flow from the rotor. It's inefficient at best.

The Lockheed design looks aerodynamically correct but I'm not sure what they would do with those bulky ducted fans when on the ground, they're going to make the vehicle too wide on the ground unless they can swing forward and aft or fold up.

How about a quad copter version of the sky crane they used to land the rover on Mars. Make it a drone so you can order one up any time you like.

instead build a pelican from halo and warthogs to be airlifted by the pelicans because the warthog can sustain an explosion of a missile from 100yd's