Royal Marines Testing Out Jet Suits [video] | Hacker News Reader

Royal Marines Testing Out Jet Suits [video]

youtube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtvCnZqZnxc

Same device being using in a training exercise by a civilian mountain rescue team in the UK.

I suppose it could be useful, but not being able to evacuate someone certainly limits what it can do. In the video they still needed a helicopter for the actual rescue part.

For search drones are cheaper, scale better, and are safer for mountain rescue staff. This may make sense for whatever cross-section exists for remote mobile first aid where a helicopter is unavailable, and you roughly know where they are (due to limited fuel and the risk of the jetpack itself getting stranded).

If it can be expanded to hold two people this could be incredible for rescue.

I believe it's being targeted at rapid medical response.

In the same way paramedics arrive on a motorbike or in a car, prior to the ambulance and subsequent patient transport.

It is very common for SAR to send EMTs in on foot to start initial stabilization and lifesaving procedures before a helicopter or ambulance is able to arrive. Check out these old SAR reports- they're mostly on-foot, not by ambulance. https://www.nps.gov/zion/blogs/sarblog.htm

You wouldn't use this for evac- you wouldn't be able to stabilize a neck or spine with this.

Out of curiosity, why did these jet suits not exist until now? Why not a few decades ago? What (recent) technological advancement(s) has only now made them possible?

My first guess is improvements in batteries?

Surely if you're hauling around all that fuel adding a small jet with an alternator can't be that difficult?

Sometimes things just take a while. We could have had inexpensive desktop 3D printers decades ago.

FDM 3d printing was invented in 1989. The patent expired in 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Scott_Crump

I'm sorely disappointed that thus far, 3d printing hasn't been the commercial revolution that was hoped for. It was, and remains, little more than a hobbyists toy with little benefit to the general public. The manufacturing side of things may have found uses for 3d printing, but i'm doubtful if even that is the case.

>The manufacturing side of things may have found uses for 3d printing, but i'm doubtful if even that is the case.

you are grossly under-representing the role of additive manufacturing in today's world.[0]

[0]: https://amfg.ai/2020/01/14/40-3d-printing-industry-stats-you...

There have been jetpacks for decades, but historically, landing softly was difficult. Lots of broken legs. They had limited flight time and many injuries.

Those would more accurately be described as "rocket packs".

Microturbines for the radio control aircraft market. These are single stage centrifugal turbines with relatively low efficiency but high power to weight.

https://minijets.org/en/0-100

They provide a company history on the site why:

https://gravity.co/inside-gravity/history

Batteries and brushless motors help start the microturbines. The microturbines come from the RC hobby world... Cheap hobby jets made this experimentation affordable. They apparently also used metal 3d printing for the jet suit, although I'm not sure that's as important.

"Good for you! Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today!"

Underrated movie. I just rewatched it last week and it was much more well done than I remember. Maybe because I'm watching as an adult, not a teen.

But as a teen the shower scene was still great.

Can someone explain the use case? Is it just to help soldiers board an aircraft quickly? With innovations in drone technology, I'd imagine it'd be more ideal to engage with the enemy with an autonomous or remote controlled drone. This would avoid putting a soldier flying's life in danger but maybe I'm missing something.

> With innovations in drone technology, I'd imagine it'd be more ideal to engage with the enemy with an autonomous or remote controlled drone.

The enemy are likely inside the ship. So you would need to board and then go into the ship and fight. I can't imagine a drone being able to do that soon.

Could also be a hostage situation... You don't want to be willy nilly blowing shit up on an innocent third party ship, though a few bullet holes can be patched up.

You want to board a ship at sea for inspection. Currently, you either abseil from a hovering helicopter or drive up to the ship's side with a patrol boat and scale a rope ladder courteously provided by the ship's crew. Both approaches put your vehicle and everybody on it at risk: one RPG hit and you're out of business. Having smaller, faster targets approach independently, optionally from multiple directions at once, is obviously better.

Unless you are making a habit of inspecting ships that like to surprise you with RPGs fire (And what exactly is their plan after firing that RPG at an inspection crew sent by an incredibly heavily armed warship?), this thing will need an incredibly low accident/crash/technical defect/user error rate in order to be a net positive for adoption.

Also, if you are boarding the kind of vessel that makes a habit of surprising naval inspectors with incredibly lethal application of medium-arms fire, what stops them from shooting you while you float in... Or are screwing around with getting your gear off after you land.

This seems like a fun toy which is only useful in situations when nobody's looking to pick a fight with you.

Also in this heavy fire environment, my first choice wouldn’t be to send a slow moving guy covered with fuel tanks.

Certainly the technology needs maturing but one might imagine that other elements could provide overwatch/supporting fire while the boarding party maneuvers. Additionally, while the video shows relatively long flights actual use might only replace the ladder or fastrope portion of boarding.

Does this sort of thing happen frequently enough in peacetime to even warrant a contract to build this? Again, see my question about "Who in their right mind opens fire on an inspection crew sent by a warship?"

And during wartime, I don't see this being at all useful. This isn't the eighteenth century, warships no longer perform boarding actions against opponents that are going to shoot back.

Its already built. You can buy one retail: https://gravity.co/

But yes, not really sure of the real world application of this in a military situation. It seems all you can do is fly, any effort to manipulate a weapon wearing these things seems like it would go poorly.

> You can buy one retail

Best I can tell from the website, you can commission one via a "contact us with your enquiry" form but you can't buy one retail as such. Which is a shame because they look like fun.

We're over 10 years into dealing with piracy in & around the gulf of Aden. Boarding ships happens more in peacetime than wartime.

Moreover the us is likely to withdraw naval overwatch over the Arabian sea and the middle east as it no longer needs access to Saudi oil. This sort of thing is very prudent for the UK to develop. Probably china should think about this sort of thing too since 60% of its food supply depends on middle eastern petrochemical input.

> Does this sort of thing happen frequently enough in peacetime [...]

> And during wartime, I don't see this being at all useful. This isn't the eighteenth century, warships no longer perform boarding actions

Exactly, this would be more for peacekeeping operations, the RM do a fair amount of anti-piracy, which is often/I suppose always, by the time they're involved, going to mean board & search & whatever else.

I don't think this video (on the OEM's YouTube channel no less) should be taken to mean it's the new SOP though! Just R&D/evaluation, not going to find the next best thing without trying any candidates.

Yes. They are not perfect. Congratulations on pointing that out. Now evaluate all the alternatives under your perfect lens.

I don't see how this is dramatically better than existing systems that can fire a rope ladder on hooks onto the railing. I suppose there's a failure rate on those attaching, but you can realistically carry several of those on a boarding party.

I presume the Royal Marines know far more than me about such matters, but I just can't see the use. It's a soft target strapped to a small jet engine that seems liable to shred itself into shrapnel if it gets hit by small arms fire. I can't imagine it's pleasant to fly in the wind either, especially if the wind isn't constant.

Judging by the way they were flying, and that the maneuverability seems to largely come from those bits on their hands, it also doesn't seem particularly agile. You're not going to generate a lot of lateral force without the risk of snapping the operators wrist/forearm. Presuming there are hostiles on board the ship, they seem like they could rather easily take one of these down with some buckshot. Even if you don't get a lethal hit, the impact seems like it would likely make the operator lose control of the jetpack either from rotation or just from the sheer shock of being shot. It seems like they'd either slam into the ship (bad), or fall into the ocean at which point the turbines would disintegrate in the water like helicopter blades flinging shrapnel into the operator (also bad).

If I had to rank them from my armchair, I'd take a water-based boarding using launched rope ladders first, air-based boarding via rappelling from a helicopter second (assuming I knew how to do that) and this thing third. It has all the risks of getting shot down that a helicopter does (except that it doesn't even take an RPG to take down the jetpack), combined with still having to make a water-based entry.

This is just a recruitment stunt, "join the marines - be iron man"

Walls are often a key defence against attack.

These make wall defences irrelevant.

This sure puts egg on the Trump administration's face.

I mean ladders already existed

We have had helicopters for a while...

Honestly? This is mostly PR for Gravity and the Royal Navy. Gravity gets to look cool to investors and the Navy looks cool to recruits.

And what dies the drone do then?? Threaten to explode unless they stop the ship?? Take over the controls??

Medical personnel, coast guard inspections.

As the tech gets better there could absolutely be a case for tactical assaults using this kind of tech.

So, they have mastered jet arms, now they just need gun legs!

Ever play Downwell? The character flies and shoots using gunboots: https://downwellgame.com

Gravity Industries official website

https://gravity.co

— They regularly post on FB also

https://www.facebook.com/takeongravity

I thought I saw these before.

Getting s trial deal with Royal Marines is a good get.

Really strange flashback feeling to playing Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (at the after-school 'computer club', heh) watching this! Incredible. As a YouTube commentor says, this is the C21 everyone was waiting for right? (L5 self-driving cars or drone deliveries will be others I suppose, they're just further behind.)

These suits (Gravity Jetsuits) were on sale in Selfridges in London for 340,000 GBP a few years ago. I had no idea they were so far out of the prototype stage. Astonishing. There's a racing series, you can book experience flights in them (if you don't have half a million dollars for your own), and now apparently you can also fight pirates.

If that's not the coolest thing you've ever seen, I don't know what is...

Are there jets on the backpack as well? As a lightweight person doing ring workouts, I can already tell you that just holding yourself upright is tough for most people to start with. Heavier people have a way harder time on rings, so I'm imagining holding the fuel and equipment while doing a dynamic ring workout, and I can't imagine doing it without a jet on the backpack, always gimbaled downwards.

my first thought was that this seems like the sort of thing that looks like it would be incredibly fun until my arms tired and went limp after gaining some altitude and I plummeted to my death. Now a jetpack exoskeleton on the other hand...

Most of the thrust is indeed coming from jets on the backpack. As far as I can tell, the hand thrusters are used mostly for balance. So like leaning forward a bit while standing and supporting yourself by grabbing a railing.

Yes there is.

Very cool. But I can’t help thinking they would be siting ducks if there was armed resistance on that vessel...

Not if they had a remotely controlled turret attached as well!

Shooting a moving target is actually extremely difficult, especially if you are using a rifle instead of a shotgun. You can also see one of the soldiers drawing and aiming a handgun after landing, so they aren't completely without firepower. Chances are good that they could also strap a bullpup rifle or subcompact machine gun on their chest during flight.

Also if significant resistance is expected, there are always torpedoes.

Shooting a target that moves at a constant speed isn’t hard even with a rifle, at least not at these ranges.

A more interesting use for these would be if they can be used as an arrested landing system for arial insertion at that point you essentially get drop troopers.

This is a nice proof of concept but i doubt this would go through a sufficient risk reduction to be useful in an actual combat situation anytime soon.

A moving target only gets bigger if it is moving directly towards you. At some point, the jetpack has to start moving towards a landing.

I think you need to compare it to the existing alternatives when boarding which are essentially a boat + ladder (fixed or grapple style) or a very large helicopter hovering above a static limited location (e.g a wide open space away from wires). Once people starting going down the rope, the helo is pretty much committed (albeit with covering fire most likely). Whatever happens, usually that process only then gets you on one place, e.g one level. Smarter defenders often make that harder for people assaulting - locating sentries, using barbed wire to block those places etc. You then have to fight, often through openish ground until you get to the first breaching points on that same level. Everyone is usually coming from the one location, for example where the ladder or helo rope is and doing it one by one. So it might take 30-60 seconds at least to get everyone onto the ship.

It would be much quicker to board and harder to defend if an assault team could land basically anywhere on the ship simultaneously. All of a sudden you have people assaulting from front, rear, sides, top and then downwards etc etc. You are suddenly trying to defend from 10 different assaulting positions. Plus the noise and signature of the jet packs will probably be lower than that of a helicopter, so a chance for more surprise. Anywhere with a small enough gap for the jet pack to land.

I assume also in future they will make the transition to fighting a lot faster, such as some kind of quick release mechanism to drop the jetpack stuff off you and get into the fight.

Also another side benefit is that you can use your jetpack to get back off the ship. That might not be the case if it's too tricky for the helo or assault boat to recover you.

There already seems to be some kind of quick release mechanism - they can attach the arm mounted components to the backpack pretty quickly - you can see it when the chap with the ladder lands at about 2 mins into the video.

The existing alternative is to fast rope off a helicopter. Jetpacks afford you the ability to land in multiple locations but guys in the air are going to be very vulnerable without the helicopter crew to cover them.

Other than being cheaper than a helicopter I don't see how this changes much if the defense is at least semi-competent.

A helicopter being stationary enough for people to fast rope out of it is also vulnerable. I don't see why they couldn't still have the helicopter providing fire support while they approach with the jetpacks.

Also imagine a boarding like this occurring at night. Sure night vision goggles are ubiquitous at this point, but it is still going to be a smaller/stealthier approach compared to a helicopter.

Also boardings can be done safely in far more situations, much further out to sea. You can carry a few of these on pretty much any patrol boat, a helicopter needs a take off/landing site and has an operating distance.

Sometimes being smaller and more manoeuvrable is better than being better protected but larger and less manoeuvrable.

>It would be much quicker to board and harder to defend if an assault team could land basically anywhere on the ship simultaneously. All of a sudden you have people assaulting from front, rear, sides, top and then downwards etc etc.

Yes; see 3:45, when three people in jetsuits arrive at once.

In a situation where boarding is urgent, each additional arrival increases the chance that someone will succeed in getting a ladder down.

I assume this is for stealthy / assaults eg pop up at the last minute where you also have other assets that can suppress the target.

And assaulting via a small boat is going to be a larger target and slower and harder

This is intended for situations where you'd be rapelling down from a helicopter, so it's no different, in fact possibly safer. During these boarding events there will be a lot of other munitions pointed at the vessel in target.

Besides what others have said (this has to be compared to next-best options, fire suppression can come from someone besides the jetpack flyer), it would be possible to mount a gun firing over the shoulder/head that would be controlled by head movement, rather than hand movement. This is already done in Apache helicopters, which allows the pilot to fire on targets while leaving his hands free to fly the aircraft.

> One of the revolutionary features of the Apache was its helmet mounted display, the Integrated Helmet and Display Sighting System (IHADSS);[51][52] among its capabilities, either the pilot or gunner can slave the helicopter's 30 mm automatic M230 Chain Gun to their helmet, making the gun track head movements to point where they look.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache#Avionics_a...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQp6o0Hm7o

I have heard it described as "like having guns firing out of your eyeballs".

And it would weigh a hell of a lot more than the safety margin on the "jet pack"

Not to mention that the recoil would be very difficult to control.

Do you think handgun recoil would be hard to control? Not clear to me.

To be clear, I'm not talking about putting the gun from the Apache on the jetpack, just the helmet and a small arm (e.g., something with a caliber like a handgun). You could be right that that would weigh too much, but that's not at all clear to me.

From the video the lander was already carrying a pistol.

I wonder how quickly one would sink in one of those things. Definitely does not look like it would be easy to swim in.

Good point. I would imagine/hope there's some kind of compressed air device that would inflate upon impact with water.

Probably not, those are usually attached to armor vests and he's not wearing one, and having large enough bladders to support the whole jet suit would be pretty bulky/heavy, and I can't see anything like that. The plan would probably just be to ditch the suit and swim. The clothing he's wearing is quite snug fitting, Crye G4s if I'm not mistaken.

More about the inventor/founder's story here - we discuss his background, his time in the Marines and why he built the jet pack

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/richard-browning/id155...

The closest thing I've seen yet to a flying Iron Man suit, in real life.

The video shows royal marines flying off moving boats, and landing on other moving boats, in open water.

Amazing.

Ok, that's on my Amazon Wishlist now...

With that out of the way - could this be one of the devices that have been used/spotted at high altitudes by plane pilots?

I think it's unlikely - the company/team behind this tech appear to quite serious, with multiple government contracts in the works, and a focus on safety. I'd be very surprised if they were buzzing commercial aircraft on the US west coast. unless of course they've exported a few suits for testing by some crazy US black Ops private contractors... but again I think it's unlikely.

The lateral/transversal movements could resemble UFO descriptions, but that those altitude you'd probably need a whole life support system to keep the pilot alive.

That's pretty cool, but the serviceperson doing the boarding has both hands fully occupied and might get shot at with no way to fire back.

The same is true for a marine climbing a boarding ladder, net, or rope, or fast roping down from a helicopter (which would also be vulnerable to gunfire). This is an alternative to some of those options.

Exactly, this is an option for covert entry, or access to a location hard to reach any other way. If someone is shooting at you during infiltration, something has already gone horribly wrong and the whole thing is blown anyway.

Nothing about this is covert. The jetsuit is really quite staggeringly loud.

A helicopter is a lot less vulnerable, not least because it can put out suppressing fire.

Usually you would have someone else on a boat or helicopter with a gun to cover the boarders.

Did you see the video? The angles involved may not be shallow enough.

... When a warship is sending a party to board you, shooting at them is a very good way of ending up sunk.

People have a very wrong idea of the situation where this would be used. The warship that sends the boarding party is going to have an overwhelming firepower advantage over anything they intend to board. They could sink the ship and kill everyone on board in less than a minute if they wanted to. The point is, in peacetime that's not a line they are going to cross unless the idiots start shooting first. A lot of the job of navies is basically acting as the sea cops, harassing wayward freighters and fishing ships into obeying whatever laws they are currently breaking. It's quite common for, say, Chinese ships to just try and leave fast enough that it's impossible to board them, trusting that the Naval vessel accosting them is not willing to start a shooting war. This adds another option for boarding such vessels.

Unless the pirate ship has hostages on board, then you might have to board it while shooting. Not a job I envy

What about shoulder-mounted autonomous weapons?

Alternatively a remote pilot

That could work!

Tank missiles, deployed by Siri?

James Bond comes to life. Goldfinger was ahead of its time.

https://www.bondsuits.com/007-coolest-james-bond-suit-moment...

Seems like these would be great for pirates (and other nefarious uses like smuggling, etc.) as well. Any technology that can be used by "good guys" can also be used by "bad guys".

If you can afford this (and the extensive training offered by Gravity required to use it without killing yourself) you can afford to not be a pirate.

Or maybe you're a poor pirate who stole one.

And then took the training. It’s like the SAS and their first jump - they lost half the group.

It wasn't really lack of jump training that killed the men in Operation Squatter, it was one of the planes getting shot down with 15 men in it, and then fighting the enemy.

Is this a jet powered engine or electric ducked fans? Cannot find it.

Zero chance it's electric.

There are ducked fans. During flight, the pilot adjusts the canards to adjust angle of aquack.

as also seen previously on Verge article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27059616

This reminds me of an old WWI video where the troops are still coming to grips with the technology. It will be interesting to see how things evolve in the future.

I'd be very surprised if low flying, high velocity anti-ship missiles don't make this sort of moot for most cases. Modern militaries seem to be playing a dumb game right now where they aren't acknowledging the absolute horror of modern missile systems, and pretending these sorts of WWII style ship to ship battles might happen between one-another.

> Modern militaries seem to be playing a dumb game right now where they aren't acknowledging the absolute horror of modern missile systems

CIWS has been a thing for decades, and had progressed from auto cannons to lasers in the past ~5 years.

This demonstration has nothing to do with ship-to-ship battles, and everything to do with improving options for boarding parties (which can be used against more than warships).

I'm pretty skeptical of this system, but if it has value it would be used only for boarding unarmed, or maybe lightly armed ships. Stuff like piracy, or rescue.

I don't think modern militaries are "playing dump" to the threat of modern missiles, a ton of work right now is being done of figuring out exactly what it takes to deliver a missile hit from beyond the horizon, and how to disrupt this so called, "kill chain".

Lightly armed pirates have AK47s, which will cause a lot of problem to an unarmed marine with a fuel tank on his back.

Any boarding party would probably have overwatch by an armed escort (cobra gunship, something else with a minigun door gunner, etc). Anyone on deck with a weapon would find themselves having a very bad day, very quickly.

It might be better to have a chair you sit on and use a joystick to maneuver instead of your arms. Let software manage the flight and stabilisation.

If you fall in the water strapped into a chair you will drown.

You'd drown strapped into the shown equipment too. Getting out of a chair is probably easier.

Given that they primarily fly over water for safety and how quickly he can remove his hands from the arm mounted units, I think it would be remiss of them not to have considered a quick release mechanism for the rest of the suit.

You could surround that chair with some armor. Maybe add a few guns and a bigger fuel tank, too. Add a more efficient air propulsion system like some sort of propeller and a bigger engine at that point for maximum performance.

Just joking heh, I actually think it would be better to make it autonomous or remote controlled. I don't see why a drone can't drop on the ship and set up a ladder in a similar manner, while being lighter.

I remember watching a similar video of Royal Marines demonstrating jet packs in the 1980s. What’s old is new again.

How many drones armed with a munition that could sink a power boat does the Royal Navy now field?

Considering how many times Boba Fett or his ancestors got killed by one shot or hit to the jetpack ...

I can not comprehend the mindset that would let someone work for years on building something, and then go, "I know what I want this to be used for: Murder!"

Without making any statement of adherence from my part (on your perspective, or any of the below), I'll give you some possible alternative perspectives I can think of:

   - "this way I can help our guys protect innocent civilians"
   - "I need to sell this to to develop my baby (which I'm sure will ultimately benefit humanity); I'd prefer to sell this to Indian orphanages, too bad they have no budget or use for this"

As a anside, the product has already been sold to Argentinian mountaineering search-and-rescue teams.

To get an idea of the motivations or people in the Army, I can recommend "why I chose a gun", a 15 minute TED talk by a Dutch army officer that explains his reasoning. https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_van_uhm_why_i_chose_a_gun/tr...

Or to give some historical perspective: Christiaan Huygens developed clocks for (military) naval navigation. Not because he was the type of gung-ho "let's kick some French ass" type of guy. In fact, he collaborated scientifically with French and English, being Dutch, even when for example France was at war with Holland. He just wanted to Make Something People Love (tm). And at the time, the only one able to foot that sort of R&D bill was the state. If the state had not invested huge sums like that, it's not at all obvious that he would have been able to perform his work.

If I am given the choice of making something which I will enjoy making, but that will be used to kill a single human being, and not making it, I will choose not making it every single time.

That was an excellent TedX talk. Thank you for sharing it.

The way it's demonstrated in this video looks geared towards search and rescue, anti-piracy, hostage situations, etc.

And why are you taking that at face value?

Most of them don't think of it as murder, but (at worst) a dirty job that someone has to do.. and many of them think of themselves as performing a selfless service to their country. For others it's just a job, the family business, or a way out of a desperate situation.

Of course, as with any job with the power of life and death over others, there'll be some sadists who enjoy hurting or killing, sociopaths who care about nothing but themselves, and those who just want power. For others it's just a fun and exciting adventure (or so they expect before they experience it).

Being in an actual war and witnessing and/or participating in real-life violence up-close sometimes leads to massive guilt, PTSD, and disillusionment.. but others remain true believers their whole life.

Those who've never participated in combat (or at least not at close range) nor witnessed the long-term devastating impact of war on its victims are some of the truest believers of all.

You know most of SV was built on military tech requirements and its not "murder" if its a navy assaulting an enemy ship.

Only in the strictest legal sense. It still involves intentionally killing human beings.

Is pulling the lever in a Trolley Problem murder? Is the navy sniper who killed the pirate captain who was holding hostages at gun point a murderer? Seams like you're taking a moral absoluist stance in a very morally grey world, and remember "only sith deal in absolutes."

Star Wars is not a very good basis for a moral argument.

Nor is naiveté. There are bad people in the world. That's a brute fact you have to account for in your moral reckoning. If you take the purist "no violence" stance, you're abandoning victims to their fate so you can remain pure. That doesn't seem moral to me.

It's called "defense" for a reason. No strong society can exist without a public force.

You consider a transportation device "murder"? Interesting, seeing as it also can be used to do the opposite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtvCnZqZnxc

No, I am calling what armies and navies do "murder", as they kill people.

The US Navy is the largest peace keeping and rescue organization in the world. Just one aircraft carrier is a disaster response super hero, complete with a hospital, food, clean water, and tents.

They also murder people.

Sometimes 'murder' is justified, like when you're protecting civilians against pirates. That's the main use-case I see here. Nobody in their right mind would send these guys against an armed vessel.

Killing and murdering can be two different things, which is why we have separate words for the actions. You're conflating the two things as though they're always the same.

To kill is not inherently to murder. Typically from a legal and moral perspective killing someone in self-defense is not murder, for example.

Armies don't generally kill in self defence, though.

Collective self defense is still self defense, but it obviously needs to be argued on a case-by-case basis.

Arguing that is something an army doesn't do. It murders when asked to murder.

You're probably missing the fact that there are clear scenarios this could be used for where for one thing murder isn't the priority, and for another it may not be malevolent either.

i.e.

* Somali (or similar) pirates hijack a freight vessel and are potentially holding crew hostage. So there needs to be a quick way to render aid/help with extraction.

* As someone else up-thread mentioned, this can also be used to aid in SAR missions, such as in mountainous terrain.

What do you think should be done when someone hijacks a ship and crew and starts threatening to kill them?

I don't understand pacifists - are people willing to literally just lie down and be killed and let others be killed and do nothing and prepare to do nothing?

If we simply disband the imperialist military-industrial complex, those people will no longer be tragically forced into a life of violence and we will all sing Kumbaya.

It's not murder, it's defense

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