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Jet Packs Used To Board and Capture a Navy Ship in a Test

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The British Navy tested having three commandos use Jet Packs to test boarding and capturing a patrol boat.

The Gravity Industries Jet Suit has 5 engines, 1050 horsepower, and a top speed of over 85 mph. The suits cost about $440,000.

They were also tests flying from and to an aircraft carrier.

There are Jet suit speed trials.

Adam Savage had helped make a bullet proof metal armor iron man flying suit with Gravity Industries.

SOURCES- Gravity Industries
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

38 thoughts on “Jet Packs Used To Board and Capture a Navy Ship in a Test”

  2. It's pretty cool alright.

    As for sophistication? Take a look at Steam Boat Willy and then compare it to the movie Avatar. Technical improvements come with time, experience, and research. Baby steps.

  3. I know right.
    At the end of the day, you are just a guy with very little radial velocity(heading right for the boat) that will get shot at by the defenders.
    And as soon as you are hit, you and your $500k coffin drags you to the bottom(bullet can hit your inflatables).
    Vs 20 guys on a $1500 motorized dingy firing BACK.
    This is dumb and gimmicky.

  5. I could see using these for light infantry to get behind enemy lines, not directly assaulting. As an example, when Marines assault a beach you could use these to drop a few hundred troops to assault their artillery parks, C3, blow bridges to stop reinforcements etc.

  7. And as I mentioned, if the scenario is a small ship with hostages, you risk killing them if you use a support gunship like a helo.
    And if you have a helo that closes just drop off guys from it. Why even use Clunky Iron Man?

  8. You're missing the point. A small vessel with innocent people on it would risk killing the hostages if you start unloading on it with a 50BMG from a helicopter. And if you go through thus trouble and have a big enough platform, like a helo, just drop guys off from there.

  9. You are not shooting anyone. You need both arms to fly the thing. Those are jets on the ends of their arms. It is like they are old ladies on walkers. And though they are making it look easy…the slightest disruption and they are totally out of control.

  11. Anyone else think they should modify it to control flight with the legs, leaving hands free?
    Keep the jets mounted high, but leg movements aim them.

  12. Ver nice. However, if they can move the arm engines to the backpack, that would free up the boarders hands to manage weapons. Otherwise they would be sitting ducks on landing. The Bell Rocket Belt did manage that albeit with shorter flight times.

    For stealth approaches paragliders already work well. A powered system could be used for the primary journey and cut the engine for a glide in over the last mile.

    Its great to see this getting more attention, commercialization even in a limited fashion could really help move jet packs forward.

  13. Slowly hovering in clear sight with engines screaming like a banshee. This is suppose to be a threat. Are sailors baby birds? Can't defend themselves?

  14. As Chris mentioned there would be suppressing fire but also if you mixed in a lot is unmanned drones first and then in support. Then there would be many noise signatures. I think if they mixed in the powered rapid climbing systems then it could become possible to rapidly place hundreds onto a ship. You would not try to take a ship with aegis. But some ship where you can rapidly get a 3-1 advantage. More security needed for oil tankers and cargo ships. But these systems could retake hijacked commercial ships and yachts

  15. Reduce the throttle? Pretty easy for jet pack guy to simply adjust to the reduced speed. Grab his legs? And while your grabbing my legs I'm shooting you.

    Dude, relax I'm American, and I'm also retired. If you bothered to even read the article you'd note it's the Royal Navy, not the Marine Corps, that's doing the demo. I'm simply trying to articulate the tactical advantages this tech may have. If you new anything about these types of ops, you'd know that ship boarding is often done via fast rope from a helo. The advantage that jet pack guy has over helo op is that one missile can kill both helo and the squad of Marines its carrying.

    Chris68

  17. If it's for small boats with hostages then why would supporting elements with big guns be firing at the to suppress defenders?

  18. It would not even work in that situation. Very easy for someone aboard to push the bozo reducing the throttle while landing, and into the drink he goes. Or just grab his legs and lift..he will be shooting off in some direction, quickly finding the water. You couldn't be angling to get the Marines to buy you a new toy?
    Dude, you don't want this. Just one sputter and you are under. 

    And if you are saying all the bad guys are already dead or debilitated, why would you need this? All you need is a rubber dingy and an outboard at that point.

  20. especially neat if they could approach from underwater and launch within a few feet of the hull. Any way that such propulsion could be water-tight and 'launched' from underwater or just above the water, having traveled with a personal submersible for a few miles.

  21. Which of course, leads us to drone unit assault tactics. As someone with negligible, or worse, sense of how an infantry/ guerilla/ SWAT/ special forces' mission would work, I would speculate that there could be a wide variety of drone types for the various functions of the assault: Perhaps a small number of sniper drones, each with a remote-modified/ autonomous Barrett M95 could take out comms, light anti-personnel defence, and sentries, from an extended distance, early – also montioring the mission. Now we need a few 30mm canons on some big-boy Drones (500kg+) like the Strykers have, to provide cover and retreat. Perhaps some tiny, quick drones to surround the target with something smaller/ lighter than an MG3 to 'get in there' and assist the boots on the deck. Drones individually supporting staff with extended range comm, enemy communication suppression, sniper drone 'remote pilot', medic support, and mission exec could hover a few miles away/ 100s of yards up. I envision a well choreographed swarm and pierce-type of mission. Not sure under what circumstances this would be appropriate – maybe from a triple-size zodiac staging platform in international waters about 5 miles from the target, 10 miles from a friendly shore, 15 miles from a naval ship/sub otherwise unable to approach…

  22. But keep in mind that hearing an attacker approach, and being able to spot them in bad weather or at night, and being mentally and tactically prepared to respond effectively are different things. Moreover, were I making an assault of this type, I wouldn't do so without support. A drone to spot enemy soldiers on the target ship. A supporting ship with 50 cal sniper rifles to take them out. Perhaps a helo equipped with missiles if the enemy is heavily armed. No way any Brit SAS or USMC assault force would make this type of attack without taking out the enemy long before they got close to the target.

    But like I said to Kehvan above, this demonstration by the Royal Navy appears to be centered around seizing small craft wherein the opposition is weak or easily suppressed. No one is going to use a jet pack to try and board a Chinese destroyer.

    Chris68

  23. Well, speaking as a Marine I wouldn't be assaulting one of my own ships. Were I to assault an enemy ship, say for example, a Chinese destroyer, I would first neutralize its defenses, including automated ones. Hence the phrase "suppressive fire". You never throw infantry, whether its on foot or jet pack, at an enemy target without first destroying or suppressing its ability to return fire. It's tactics 101.

    But all that said, I don't think they intend to attack enemy destroyers or frigates with this. This is more for landing on small boats, like say in hostage rescue type operations, or arresting smugglers. I don't get the sense they are meaning to use this in a conventional sea battle to seize enemy naval ships. Instead you sink those with missiles.

    Chris 68

  24. The fact is, these guys wouldn't get close to a US naval vessel, and it wouldn't be soldiers out on the deck shooting at them… There are automated systems that would address this issue with no problems.

  27. I think, rather, you'd have a winch under the drone, connected to a harness on the "drone trooper". Quick disconnect when he arrives. Reconnect when it's time to leave.

    With a long cable, the noise of the drone can be well above the landing zone, and the only thing subject to being shot at is the trooper and some Spectra line.

    So the drone arrives some set distance above the targeted landing spot, then you hit a button, and it drops you to the deck very rapidly, bringing you to a stop just as you touch down.

    I might go so far as to have a much smaller drone on the bottom end of the cable, programmed to dock with a hard point on the trooper's back. It finds him when he signals for it.

  28. Two important factors to consider are that the defenders would be shooting at moving targets and two, most likely they themselves would be targeted by the supporting elements of the attacking force. Most likely both in terms of suppressive fire or accurate sniper type. As a Marine veteran, I can tell you that hitting a moving target with a rifle is difficult. Even an enemy rifleman moving by short rushes is very hard to hit. Moreover, you always have to be aware that as you're aiming at that rusher, his buddy, who is lying prone behind cover, is also aiming at you.

    Chris68

  30. 1000 hp
    I get that it uses something on the order of a liter of fuel per minute.
    You aren't going to carry enough fuel with that to run it very long

  32. No easuer than shooting at a boarding boat.

    Right now the whole jetpack part is a completely separately designed thing from any armour like seen in the Savage video.

    Once they optimise the engines for weight with 3D printing and marry an optimised 3d printed armor to an exoskeleton to take most of the physical load from the pilot it will be a much more streamlined affair.

    As it is right now it's pretty much hacked together stuff that will be a lot heavier and clunkier than a fully custom designed piece of hardware.

  33. Oh, and maximum service time for these tiny jets is 24 hours with a complete rebuild necessary after it. Its not a task navy seal can do.

  34. Lifting injured people up carried by a person wearing a pack jet? not so sure. You are right about jet pack units are easy to be taken down when they land by a defending force, but it can be the best option in landing in a blank spot in a highly defended area.

  35. So how good of a shot were the guys shooting at them?
    The guys hired to simulate thw defenders that would have heard them from 3 miles away.

  36. I would've guessed that a 6-8 rotor drone, that can lift 200kg, with supplemental horizontal thrust would be more maneuverable (if not super fast over long distances) and quieter. Also, the drone trooper would sit on a quick-depart, suspended bench and have both hands free for weapons, comm, etc. The drone could hover out of theatre and then pick-up after the international incident had been plausibly-denied/ undertaken, allowing a person to function without a 60lb+ back-pack secured to them. I envisioned more of a mandalorian-style pack than an Iron man set-up, if we go jetpack, frankly.

  37. It's probably completely useless to take over a vessel, seeing as the commandos in question could easily be shot out of the sky if the boat had been hostile, but it is cool as heck, most definitely.

    I guess another video where a paramedic tries to reach a downed hiker in a mountain is probably a better use case, if probably too expensive to be used by civilian rescue operations.

  38. Common thread in these videos here and elsewhere that the crowd that gets impressed by doesn't mention? It is not being used over open land.

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