1968. Vietnam.
A marine recon team ("Rush Act") is trapped by the NVA and radios for immediate extraction. The weather is terrible. The pilots are reluctant. The commander of 1st Recon BN, LTC Leftwich will not leave his men out there to die. He hops onboard the aircraft and flies through the monsoon weather to rescue his men by CH-46 SPIE rig extraction.
[McGazette, February, 1992, page 12]
THE HELICOPTER EMERGENCY EXTRACTION PARADIGM
As good as this all is, wouldn't it be better to find a better way to extract small units behind enemy lines? The helicopter as a clandestine insertion/extraction platform is flawed by noise, infared signature and slow speeds, the weather can also kill if not sensor equipped. The enemy is alerted and waiting. The U.S. Army SF special recon team in Northern Iraq that was extracted under enemy fire after being compromised by a little girl illustrates this moral dilemma. We cannot leave our men behind enemy lines, but can we afford to lose a dozen of men dying in an extraction/rescue attempt like we suffered when recovering an officer with nuclear secrets during the Vietnam War (BAT-21)? While we can and should silence helicopters and employ stand-off recoveries using ground vehicles like armored/armed HMMWVs and German Wiesel tracked AFVs rolling out the back end of CH-47D Chinook-type helicopters, we need a self-extraction capability by AIR for SF teams to supplement foot, and ground human-powered vehicles (small boats, ATACs, ATBs).
A small team of U.S. Army SF personnel exit a jet transport at high altitude wearing oxygen. They descend to ram-air parachute (RAP) opening altitude and fly into their insertion point quietly.
Cache-ing their "Parajets" at the future Extraction Point (EP), they quickly re-pack their main RAPs back into their containers.
They proceed on foot to their target: a Chemical/Biological weapons plant hidden within a supposedly "peaceful" fertilizer plant. Wearing extremely good camouflage, they reach the target undetected and shine a laser beam directly onto the target. They radio in to a F-117 "Nighthawk" stealth fighter flying overhead to drop its laser-guided bombs.
A pair of hits! The entire area comes to life sirens blaring, weapons fired wildly into the air!
Time to get out of here!
The team runs all the way back to its EP. They can hear enemy armored vehicles and Air Defense Artillery weapons mustering around them expecting a helicopter to appear soon to pick-up American Commandos. They don their Parajets---engines on, they climb out of the area, skimming the treetops. They are well out of danger within minutes.
Click here to see movie clip of rocket-pack flying
They deploy their reserve RAP and throttle down to conserve fuel for their flight back to friendly lines. Over the base, they lower their Parajets and rucksacks on a lowering line, flare canopies at 20 feet for a soft stand-up landing. The first combat use of jetpacks has been a stunning success.
MANPACK "HARRIER"
Most military personnel are familiar with the British AV-8B Harrier II aircraft which can land and take-off vertically (V/STOL) now in limited U.S. service. A two-seat version was featured in a behind the "Iron-Curtain" agent recovery in the film, "The Living Daylights". To capitalize on this further, we are building special pressurized pods that can be fitted to its outboard wing stations that can carry 2 men apiece. The Harrier can fly above 600+ mph and can appear as part of a regular attack jet strike package before veering off to do "other missions". However, the Harrier has its limitations.
The Harrier is not "stealthy" it cannot "sneak in" anywhere that is well defended unless we destroy ADA and radars ahead of it, which alerts the enemy. Even still, the Harrier is very loud. Its thrust vectored engines along its fuselage and fuel tank make it non-survivable if hit by an enemy SAM. We lost 5 in the relatively tame Gulf War. The actual use of the Harrier has shown that it needs a take-off roll to carry a useful bomb load---thus its actually a short-take-off jet like the A-10 Thunderbolt II with vertical landing capabilities (STOVL) which is what we are shooting for in the new Joint Strike Fighter program. The Navy and mc are not smart enough to put a retractable "ski-jump" on the end of LHA/LHD amphib ships operating Harriers to maximize its payload or improve pilot safety in event of a flame-out like the British Royal Navy has done. Topping this off is the mc's refusal to be a "team player" and offer anything to USSOCOM but their arrogance. Thus, its a platform that is not likely to be effectively used to insert/extract SF teams in real world missions.
Taking inspiration though from a limited V/TOL profile, it seems highly feasible to use RAPs in conjunction with a small cruise missile jet engine instead of the current rocket packs with a mere 30 seconds of flight time to gain a 30 minute flight profile completely under jet power, and throttled down under RAP, 4-6 hours of sustained flight at 30 mph for ranges of 100-150 miles. The key capability the jet pack can provide is vertical lift from the ground to get away from a danger area, forward speed to deploy a RAP and then sustain thrust to keep the RAP at a steady speed and altitude instead of descending. Current MC-4 type RAPs have a glide ratio of 3-to-1, which while usable initially will require a bit of jet thrust to keep airborne. What needs to be done is perfect the in diving descent opening of larger para-gliding RAPs with 8-to-1 glide ratios as used by gasoline engine and propellor powered systems like "Pagojet" flown by "Fan-Man" etc. to crash in on sporting events a few years ago.
The RAP tandem rig (main and reserve) would be on the back of the jet pack, risers routed to the SF pilot's split-saddle leg strap harness for comfort. He can deploy the main by ripcord and jettison it with cut-away and deploy the reserve via ripcord as in any other military RAP system. His Military Free Fall (MFF) parachute skills would have to be advanced to maintain a stable face-down posture with the added weight of the jetpack. If this is too difficult, a small drogue chute like employed by tandem parachute systems (jump a passenger attached to you) could be employed to keep a stable body position until main canopy opening is desired. The Russian Airborne use the drogue chute to exit in front of jet engines to avoid use of static-lines/d-bags and allow simultaneous exit of Paratroopers from the forward fuselage area and palletized heavy drop BMD-2 Armored Fighting Vehicles out the rear ramp. This allows a closer delivery of man/machine on the drop zone.
On the ground, the SF operator/U.S. Army Soldier need only stuff his main back into its d-bag and close the container to avoid burial complications/$ of loss of the parachute. After performing his mission, he uses the jetpack to fly all the way home if under 30 minutes flight time or to deploy his reserve RAP for aerodynamic lift-assisted flight for longer ranges. The mid-air recovery of these SF operators by helicopters and MC-130 Combat Talon I aircraft with the Fulton STAR system are possibilities.
SUMMARY/CONCLUSION
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
- Albert Einstein
The Parajet concept outlined above is feasible. Whether we can convince the "stodgy" military minds to do it is another matter. Fortunately a lot of R & D work is done by DA civilians who need not worry about their vanity, careers, and peer images and can pursue technology to the fullest. We have the technology to do this. We need to do this to break the helicopter-under-fire extraction paradigm to fully exploit the possibilities of AIRBORNE WARFARE.
Discovery Channel Rocketpack pages (videos & history)
Popular Mechanics article on the Rocket belt updated recently
Bill Suitor--the original Rocket-Man
Rocket-men you can hire to demo in your area!
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