They reported on the news that Bush the elder celebrated his 85th birthday by skydiving, again, and he already is planning to do it again when he's 90. It was a tandem jump when he is strapped to a guide but it still makes me ownder.

In the 1940's the parachutes looked much bigger and still did damage if you landed badly. In the 1990's I had a friend in the army who said in parachute training a man he knew broke both legs on a jump.

Today, not only do you see tandem jumps it seems like stunt diverts can actually land on their feet, runnig to break mommentum and not have to do the whole tuck and roll thing, so the question is, has the tech level really improved that much?

The current sport chutes are far and away better than the mil-spec jump-n-prays the US military still makes Airborne units use. The sport chutes have vents in them to get some directional thrust, they have controls for steering in a tight radius and other improvements that allow for a good jumper to land in a specific car parking space if they plan their glide path right.

Yeah i noticed the sports chutes seem to be cut to look like a serries of cylinders to shape the wind while the old WW2 stuff look like domes with the sections looking like pie slices, so if they're so inferior, why does them ilitary still use them? just because htey have big stock piles of green silk?

They're cheaper, the military won't use the best gear but the cheapest. Budgets you know.

Exactly. Same reason the US military isn't using the Dragon Skin body armor that came out recently, even though it is far superior to what they have now.

My mother is airborne, and I don't know how many jumps she's done (a dozen a day, a few days a year, for many many years), but she's never once come off hurt. It also has to do with training. She told me about how after jump school, some of the more... manly men from her unit would jump off 2 story buildings, just because they knew how to take a fall.

Also, don't forget that even the crappy milspec chutes have a backup chute, in case your main doesn't deploy.

EDIT: It should also be noted that a tandem jump means you let a trained person do all the work for you; you're just along for the ride.

Absolutely correct, I have seen jumpers hit their designated spot with ease, looking like they are stepping off a stairway.



Sadly, very true. Dragon Skin armor is positively awe inspiring and I think it is criminal that soldiers are not allowed to wear it in the field. The corruption of the military industrial complex is beyond the pale.

Which is part of what always makes me giggle when Shadowrun talks about the wiz-bang novahot "milspec" gear.

There is a difference between standard issue (ie what eventually is given to the troops) and milspec (not much but there is a difference). Milspec is the level of quality that a person wanting a contract with the government needs to meet in order to be considered. So some milspec is novahot (expecially some first round prototypes).

Funny thing about budgets, I know in the Canadian forces we are on tight budget constraints, but I never got that feeling from my American counter parts. We needed a vehicle for a patrol when I was overseas so we went over to the Americans to ask if we could borrow a humvee. The Sergant just threw us the keys and said, "if you bring it back, bring it back with a full tank." My sergant's responce was, "sounds good, where do I sign for it?" "What do you men sign for it, just take it and if you bring it back, bring it back with a full tank." "What do you mean by if we bring it back?"
There was three parking lots full of humvees and the quartermaster was more worried about having the vehicles full (in case they needed to do a move out like yesterday) then he was about one going missing. "Its covered in the budget."

I have jumped with both.

The commercial parachute is safe as long as the person using it is safe. You make a mistake, the chute fails. The worst thing you can do is panic. The more trained the person the better they are at the skill. The local rigger who would jump after the rest of us would jump did his jump perfect. Hit the parachute release at the last second (15-20 meters up) chute opened up went up just a bit and walked off. Of course he also had a very special canopy as well.

A good landing should be a walk-off.

The military chutes have to deal with things that a civvie chute doesn't. You might be carrying 150 pounds of kit (as most in the paras do) in addition to your body weight, you will most likely be taking AA fire. You will also be jumping at lower altitudes. There is a back-up chute with the military chute. The military chute is static line.

There are numerous controllable, non-controllabale, low-altitude, high-altitude chutes.

Link: http://www.airborne-sys.com/

The best person on the boards to talk to is Rigger as he is a rigger and knows more about parachutes than I ever will.

Just so, and well stated.


One of the constraints you have to deal with on the "dangerous" standard-issue military "airborne" 'chute is more than just the total mass (man + LOTS of kit), but also two more problems we saw in WWII over and over:

A man hanging from a conventional 'chute calculated for the softest (safest) possible landing is a hanging duck against small-arms fire while on the way down, so a certain amount of calculation goes into the optimum drop-rate when those chutes are designed. Don't make the mistake of thinking they're low-quality or poorly-designed items that could be better replaced with a civilian item. The rate they fall at, that makes them seem more dangerous, is precisely calculated as an acceptable level of risk balanced against a LOT of other factors.

Departing an aircraft with a static line is a violent and disorienting event, and with modern aircraft this can be happening at very high speeds; We're not talking a calm jump out the side of a custom-build jump-plane in clear weather from 1,500 meters. You depart the aircraft at well over a hundred knots and your chute immediately begins to deploy because you don't have much time in a low-altitude combat jump. If the primary doesn't open immediately (and cleanly) you have only seconds to deploy the secondary (which has a smaller canopy/faster corresponding drop-rate) and hope for the best. Civilian 'chutes don't have to contend with this, and would probably fail if they had to. They're designed for a totally diferent set of requirements.

As a final note, the para-sail is effectively a non-rigid ram-air airfoil, not unlike that on an airplane, which is steered with a variation on the same system actually employed by the Wright Brothers in 1903. It is just as precisely controlable as any aircraft, with a stall speed that is functionally negligable. This is the canopy of choice for any non-static-line higher-altitude jump, and in night time conditions, is acceptable despite the slow rate of decent because even with night vision gear, correctly judging distance by eye on what is a relatively fast-moving target is actually pretty tough. Give that a shot with nothing but the Mark One eyeball the Creator issued you at birth and some starlight on an overcast night, and let me know how well you do. The other up-shot of this is that the decending troops can land in close order and within the perimiter of their target much like the glider-born shock troops of Nazi Germany in the assaults on the Belgian fortresses.

All the military cannopies are just as lovingly designed, engineered (Think multi-million dollar computer design and modelling here, folks) and put together as any civilian rig. They just have a different set of priorities and constraints which dramatically alter the way they function by comparison.

Holy crap! I honestly never thought of that but it would make sense, for the reason you gave, that a paratrooper might want to drop faster than a civilian or even a special ops person who isn't expected over the target. Spending less time in the air helpless as someone takes pot shots at you. I was thinking of cases like the American General Gavin who cracked his spine landing at Arnhem but The Poles at Arnhem and the Germans on Crete suffered very high casualties from ground fire before they were boots on the ground. Thank you.

Recently had to work with a trained jumper (Ranger and civilian/recreational jumper) that made a bad landing on a recreational jump. His leg was all sorts of fucked-up, but his training kept him alive. He still tried to talk me into skydiving, but I think I'll pass... gravity and I have a tense neutrality at the moment and I'd hate to heat things up on that front.

Yeah, part of me thinks it's way cool, part of me knows when I went up in a plane I'd have 'issues' with getting out early.

Clint Eastwood in Heartbreak Ridge said it best when he decleared, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is not a normal act.

A friend of mine said he did not want to do it because "I don't want to hurt the pilot's feeling be getting out early. He might think I don't have any faith in him."

Military specifications don't mean better quality, necessarily. It refers to the specifications given by the military that probably go beyond civilian usage.

For example, let's look at aircraft. The civilian airplane is usually about transportation of cargo and people. There are some military airplanes that fill the same role, but there are other roles that would never fall into civilian specifications. Civilian aircraft has no real need for high-G maneuverability, extreme speeds, far reaching sensors and targeting systems, or a variety of weapon systems. Civilian manufacturing would never have designed the A-22 Raptor because it costs too much to design and build, and the market would be too small (one or two of the richest flyers in the world).

*bows in the Japanese fashion*

Domo arigato.

I see it as my job here to bring a little different perspective when I can. You should try seeing the world through MY eyes one of these days. *grin*

Careful about what examples you try to make: My father build an airplane based on a mid-war design (1930's) that was spec'd for +9g/-3g, and if he had installed an acrobatic engine and a diferently plumbed fuel tank, it would have been quite capable of impressive aerobatics.
The majority of military specifications we're talking about when the concept of "MilSpec" comes up deal with things like resiliency, fault tolerance, the ability to operate in harsh environments, uniformity, compatibility and special needs (that's the expansive segment). Another thing to remember is that the Shadowrun universe split from reality in the 80's when the military STILL had the most and best computers and the most pervasive access to things like advanced materials. As we speak I am eating Thai with a titanium spork. Titanium, used as an eating utensil, a concept that would have been ridiculed as nonsense beyond even humor when the universe was conceptualized and began its parallel course. Even NASA used aluminum for the purpose on the Space Shuttle, if they weren't using a high-end thermoplastic. The fact that the Soviets built entire submarines out of the stuff was enough to make American military planners simultaneously drool with pure envy and boggle at the idea. (Remember, the MiG-25 Foxbat "Mach 3" interceptor was made of Stainless Steel, while the American Blackbird was almost primarily titanium, and was regarded as being beyond space age; Even the Space Shuttle used aluminum as the primary material for the airframe, beneath the heat shielding.)
MilSpec is their code phrase, essentially, for "way more than you have the nuyen for and forget actually getting access to it!"

Other than the fact that it falls apart, is vastly heavier, and won't actually stop bullets, yes, it's far superior. And more expensive.

Pinnacle Armor debarred from government contracts due to fraud.

There were huge issues with the tactical aspects of Luftwaffe parachuting doctrine. Like the troops jumping essentially unarmed and having to search for their weapon containers....

I wasn't going to bring up the "down sides" I had started to hear talk about. Seems it's not the God Armor we were lead to believe, and maybe for once somebody in Army Logistics knew a lemon when they saw it.

Body armor experts seem agreed that the basic idea of flexible armor is great, but the actual pinnacle product isn't what people are looking for. It might eventually prove the basis of a design that works well, but it isn't there today.

And for the record, the Dragonskin armor failed the US military testing in both environmental integrity and ballistic protection so budget had nothing to do with it. The DS armor failed to make the grade with a company rep standing right there with a copy of the test standards in-hand to be sure that the test was fair, and the company threw a hissy despite the Army being interested in seeing their next generation product for it's great technological potential. The DS armor also weighed almost 20 lbs more than the current Interceptor armor so...yeah.

Right, given enough money and resources, a civilian can build just about anything they want, but they are not going to do it for a commercial market. There may be some civilian aircraft that can compete with military aircraft in terms of performance, but you won't find them in large quantities. There isn't really a "need" for it, and that "need" is met by "specification". Civilian, or should I be more specific and say commercial, aircraft has certain needs that focus more on efficiency and economy. There is nothing efficient or economic about afterburners, but in a dog fight, they can sure make a difference. Sensors on a civilian aircraft have a minimum requirement, but they are usually supported at both ends of their flight by ground communications and sensors. High end sensors reaches diminishing returns as the cost increases. Military aircraft needs to see the enemy before the enemy sees it, so farther is better. If you can finagle a senate commity to approve it, who cares how much it costs.

I do want to support your point that civilians should not be under estimated, so let us take a moment to applaud Michael Melvill for building his little space ship that carried him up to 100 kilometers in a bid to build a reusable civilian space ship.



This is something we definitely agree on : )

Are we talking about 1940s parachutes; 2070s parachutes; that pioneer spirit; military armor; or military vs. civilian design in aviation?

Or is this a bait and switch thread?

Look at how all of this went down, this reeks of payoffs. Here is a reasonable timeline for events.

Dragon Skin

Interceptor Armor is not rated III-A, Dragon Skin was and would still be if money hadn't changed hands.

I was talking about modern chutes, which given their current performance would be expected to incrementally improve by 2070. Take the current performance and then extrapolate something within the realm of reason, that is what I say.

I jumped with the U.S. Army (501st PIR) using nondirectional parachutes initially designed during the 1940's and later refined. The aircraft I jumped from were usually jets and were exited at around 300mph. The chutes fell at 7mph so yeah, you can injure yourself pretty badly if you don't have the correct form when exiting the aircraft or when impacting the ground. Those chutes ("T10-series") are strong enough to support two jumpers in full kit. The newer, military directional chutes ("D1-series") cannot support two jumpers but have a slower vertical velocity and a much higher horizontal velocity.

The WW2 style chutes ("T10-series") as designed take under 4 seconds to deploy and be inflated which is also about how long a jumper falls when jumping at 300ft. This low altitude static line method is so dangerous its not usually performed in training within the U.S. military as reserve chutes have no time to get used and tangled jumpers have no time to react. I know the jump into Panama was at 300ft. They weren't even issued reserve chutes as they wouldn't have had time to pull them. [and reserve chutes are spring loaded so they fill with air quickly]

So yeah, the earlier poster saying military chutes have a different set of priorities is spot on. Civilian chutes are made to mitigate impact and improve comfort of landing. Military chutes are made to mitigate exposure to enemy fire. The two are truly worlds different.

There's a saying in the German army: "Paratroopers are mental. They jump from a plane. A fully-functional plane!"

SR4 still have ruthemeyer polymer? That would be a pretty cool addition to a parachute. Add in a squirel suit, you figure the plane/vehicle could be 5 miles to either side of the target. I cut the 10 mile range of the squirel suit because of the additional gear the operator is carrying, still that isn't bad for a covert entry.

Just one problem here:

The stealth ability of that suit is strictly visual. Little known factoid: If the canopy of the F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter wasn't specially treated, the pilot's HELMET would have given away the plane. Yes, you read that right: the flight helmet of the pilot has several times the effective RCS (Radar Cross-Section) of the whole plane from the frontal aspect.

So your squirel-suited invisible jumper is mother naked to radar, and will be blindingly obvious on any kind of ISAR (Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar) or even a good tracking/guidance-capable doppler. Radar-evasive low-observables (read: stealth) is as much about shape as materials, too, so you can't just cover the trooper in RAM (Radar Absorbtive Material) and be done with it. On the other hand, because Radar is completely DIRECTIONAL, (and I hate to do this) you COULD borrow from the James Bond flick "Die Another Day" and construct a shell aircraft that would shield the trooper from the radar OF THEIR TARGET and let them glide a long distance at high speed. The price would be relatively prohibitive, but it could work, in theory, with a list of caveats a mile long.

Defeating RADAR: Use for a Silence spell #113

Like the money that changed hands when they sold 590 copies of their not NLECTC rated armor with falsified NLECTC labels to the US Government? There are often negative effects on people who engage in fraud and sell body armor with falsified ratings to people going into a combat zone.

yeah, I know, the German sticks went out the plane and the last chute in the stick was a waeapon container which troops had to run back to, unlike biritsh and americans who carried their personal weapons with them, BUt my first point holds. Earlier targets of German para's were seen to run in panic, so they got cocky and jumped right on the targets, later massed allied paras would jump near the targets and attack on ground. On Crete the Germans jumped right on top of the Australians who not only didn't panic, they started setting up for what can only be called target practice. The Germans there were defeated before they even had a chance to try for their weapons.

Yes, I was only talking about visually. Radar is another matter, but then again I understand that deckers can be useful. For every measure there is a counter measure. But of the guy hanging underneath the 'please fill me full of holes' parachute billboard, ruthemeyer seems like a reasonable starting point. Just throwing some thoughts out there.

Did all manner of searches couldn't find anything regarding this. Do you have a link to the article?

That situation had a lot to do with the fact that British Intelligence knew exactly where the Fallschrimjager were going to be jumping into.

The 'chute would have to be of the same material too, or they just fill IT full of holes and let Mr. Newton handle the messy details. *grin*

As to hacking the radar, it would entirely depend on if it's part of a central grid someplace, and if that grid is in ANY way connected to the matrix. It's old-fashioned as drek, but I can't see the military abandoning fiberoptic hard lines and isolated non-WiFi networks in an era of riggers, deckers and the Virtuakinetic. If they're isolated, you're back to square one. If they're not, you're probably not going to have to go to all that trouble in the first place, one way or another. Security is more that features, traps and sensors: it's a state of mind. Glaring weaknesses can indicate either simple oversight (happens, all the time) or more often a general lax approach except perhaps in a few key, flashy and obvious facets. In the 2070's, I can't fathom ANY group taking their Matrix security as anything less than mission-critical if they are going to bother taking ANY meaninful physical precautions.

Pinnacle Armor debarred from government contracts due to fraud.

I have lost count of the ritzy houses in gated communities with high end security systems and then...glass panels on either side of the front door. Within the confines of the game, should Miss Johnson task me with getting into the a =military= installation you can be very certain that I am going to be looking at the big picture. Economy of force.

Am I going to jump into an air base? Nope.

Would I consider jumping out of an airplane to get close to I-80 in western Nebraska to setup an ambush? Sure.

It is all about context and yes, I was intimating that the parachute would need to have ruthemeyer polymers. And since SR4 specifically mentions synthetic spidersteel I am not that worried about Billy Bob the rent a cop with his 9mm shooting at my parachute.

Thanks.

I find it interesting that there wasn't any mention of criminal prosecution. It would be curious to find out what protocol the NLECTC certified lab did test the armor at. I mean did they throw lawn darts at it or since they get armor to test did they actually test its ballistic properties?

Edit: Reason I mention the testing data, is that I have seen Dragon Skin take multiple hits and defeat the projectiles...including a hand grenade. Then only time it seems to fail is when the military tests it...and then they refuse to release the testing data. Hmmmmmmmmmm... Agent Orange, Army testing LSD...etc., etc..

Synthetic spidersteel is a "soft armor" which gains it's value when used in layers. Bear in mind that the current generation "Spectra" material if woven into a cable is already many dozens of times stronger (in tensile strength) than steel, and dramatically tougher than even the original Kevlar. And I wasn't thinking "light pistol", I was thinking mid-range assault rifle. Seriously, any facility deserving of a night-time jump into the compound isn't going to be protected by donut-eaters. *grin*

Obviously not...if they got frickin phased array radar!

My counter to the layering point that you raise (correctly so to)...is that while armor is meant to protect the wearer from penetration...the parachute can spread that force out over a much greater area than a vest can. Add to that, if the chute has to yield 12 inches to the projectile that isn't a problem, where on a person...it would be.

I wasn't thinking so much in terms of stopping the round, because that's not going to happen. I was more interested in the loss of structural integrity on the part of the canopy and resultant decrease in effective drag as more and more air gets out. I'm not sure if the holes would have any propensity to reseal or if they would blow clean open as the impact energy transfered outward? At least we wouldn't have to worry as much about the tear propogating, but still... thirty holes the size of a child's fist is going to be a Bad Thing for the person hanging from the risers... How's the old jody call end? "Look out ground! I'm comin' through!"

Quite correct, sir. Interceptor plates as issued to infantry are rated Class IV, not IIIA. The test I'm referring to involved a new (at the time) Class IV Dragonskin design that failed both initial penetration testing vs. the required projectile type (which normally ends the testing right then and there, btw) and then a different vest of the same design failed the temperature chamber test after that (when they normally wouldn't have bothered with the temperature test after the design had already failed the ballistic test). So considering the Army was excited enough about the new design's concept to break their own rules and basically waste their time and money to do a secondary test just on the perceived merit of the new flexible armor design, I think that Dragonskin got themselves a pretty good deal as they got a bunch of good info for when they give it another go later...and on the Army's nickel.

The problem lies in the fact that the Dragonskin failed at the time of testing...on legally-admissible video footage. The US Army could give a rat's buttocks if the new design had tested resistant against nuclear blasts at ground zero of a 100+ megaton detonation, it failed against the test standard of a .30-06 AP round fired at near point blank range. With a Pinnacle rep standing there to be sure that the testing was kosher. And with following shots to other areas of the vest also demonstrating failures to meet the required ballistic protection standard. With the Pinnacle rep standing right there with a copy of the test standards at hand if he needed to look at them as the follow-up shots caused failures in the vest they put up for testing. You know, the vests that the company had plenty of time to tweak and mess with to be sure that they wouldn't fail when shot with the test standard .30-06 AP round at near point blank range.

What more can the US Army do, fer chrisakes? Pinnacle knew the test standard, they had plenty of time to be sure that their design was up to snuff despite weighing almost 20 lbs more than the current issue ballistic infantry armor, Pinnacle had a rep standing right there as the test fixture was loaded and fired, the rep was also there when they showed the failure of the vest against the test standard. Then, to add icing on the cake, the US Army gave the tested vest extra chances despite the testing being a well-known and stated single-fault failure testing criteria. And the vest failed again while being shot in a different location while the same rep watched them load the test standard cartridge into the test standard fixture at the test standard range from the targeted vest. And then the US Army still spent their own money to continue the testing of a failed product because they thought the design was cool and it failed the temperature standards as well. At this time the US Army ended the testing and invited Pinnacle to try again later.

What the hell do you want form the Army, man?!?

Perhaps you are correct and I am mistaken (it has been known to happen).

I will certainly concede that the weight of the Dragon Skin is significantly greater (to the point when combined with the rest of their kit...prohibitive) than the Interceptor Armor. Having worn body armor with ballistic plate inserts, it has the following qualities: hot and inflexible. I can only imagine doing so in a desert is going to be exceedingly unpleasant and potentialy lethal.

Kerenshara, if in your Shadowrun games you want to rule that a .22 caliber projectile traveling in the neighborhood of 3,000+ fps is going to make a hole 'the size of a child's fist' I certainly am not going to say that you are wrong.

It would not be the ruling that I would make but that is just my opinion.

Don't be dense. *thbbbbbt*

I assume the equivalent of at LEAST the 6.5 Grendel or 6.8 SPC cartridge, given the way they seem to be portrayed. And take a look at what even a hollow-point 9mm Parabellum does to any single layer of Kevlar. That's with the fibers not being pre-stressed to any great deal. Put them under direct tension and then hit them with the same force. THAT was my concern. A much higher caliber projectile with a lot more mass hitting pre-tensioned fiber. That is why I wondered aloud about things like a tendency to re-seal as opposed to blowing open. I just don't have enough information on the characteristics of the material underr those conditions. And I DIDN'T actually make a "ruling". Besides, there is the question of ABSOLUTE weight of simple nylon vs. Synthetic Spidersteel. Plus the added weight of the camo polymers, and how THEY would affect the strength of the resultant material under fire.

Military parachutes also do not have much directional capability as during a mass jump the need to maneuver is less important than trying to get everyone near where everyone else jumped. This does not mean groups of special forces and pathfinders don't use different chutes, only that the mass jumps the goal of controlling your chute for pinpoint accuracy is not the goal. I have seen recreational parachutists do 360s 25-30 feet in the air and land on their feet with less force than if they had done a backflip.

As for dragonskin armor I could have sworn the rules were that it was to first apply the temperature test and then immediately test its ballistic protection. The armor failed because the bonding agent between the plates could not take the temperature extremes of 120F and -40F (I may have the temperatures off). This caused the discs to slip leaving areas with no protection. Sure dragonskin is awesome if you fight in a temperate location where the temperatures are between 50 and 90F. I don't think I would trust dragonskin armor though if it was going to go from the mountains of Afghanistan to the heat of the middle east.

Surely then a soultion to this problem will be found quickly, also from my Reading it only failed at 77c quite an extrem in most places.