Making a list of failed weapons systems, the temptation is to trot out the infamous ice-and-sawdust ship, the giant tricycle tank, or some other ridiculous doohickey. But the world of military programs is not neatly divided between the sublime and the stupid. There are a lot in-between cases.
1. Flying Platforms
Developed by Hiller Helicopters in the 1950s, the VZ-1 Pawnee was a one-person flying platform kept aloft by two rotors housed in a duct, allowing a single soldier to fire from the air. The vehicle lacked fixed wings or a tail rotor, so if the pilot wanted to bank to the left or right, he had to do so by shifting his body weight. (Think Marty McFly's hoverboard in Back to the Future Part II.) Although it performed well during tests, the U.S. Army never deployed the VZ-1 Pawnee because it considered the craft too slow, too small, and too delicate for combat. Nowadays, the concept lives on in quirky recreational vehicles.
2. Stealth Helicopter
Combining stealth technology and high-speed data links, the RAH-66 Comanche was supposed to be the armed scout helicopter of the 21st century. But all it did was leave a US$6.9 billion-size crater in the U.S. Army's budget. Three things killed the Comanche program: the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of drones, and the fact that this helo was an engineering mess.
Still, the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on the Osama bin Laden compound spurred excited media talk about stealth helicopters. Had they made a comeback? According to Army Times, the modified MH-60s used in the raid belonged to a short-lived program that ended in 2000. So, no.
3. Rocket-Bullets
In the 1960s, MB Associates developed the Gyrojet, a family of experimental guns that fired tiny rockets instead of bullets and did so in near silence. Despite making a cameo in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, though, the Gyrojet ran into plenty of problems. The rocket-bullet picked up speed only once it left the barrel, so the gun was useless at close range. It also jammed frequently and was not very accurate.
Nevertheless, alternatives to the conventional bullet still pop up now and again. Just last year, Sandia National Laboratories researchers developed a laser-guided, dart-like bullet that can hit a bull's-eye a mile away.
4. Tailsitter Aircraft
How does one get a plane off the ground with very little runway? That question drove the development of the experimental tailsitter aircraft of the 1950s. Tailsitters, as their name implies, took off from a vertical position and then turned horizontally in the air, reversing the process when landing. This proved challenging even for expert pilots, and the idea was soon abandoned.
Eventually, engineers found better ways to tackle the runway problem, with aircraft such as the Harrier jet and the tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey. But some in the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) community have revisited the tailsitter idea for small drones. Perhaps what proved too much for human pilots is within reach for machines.
5. Brilliant Pebbles
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a grandiose program for a grandiose time. One element of this Cold War program - and not even the craziest part - was a space-based system called Brilliant Pebbles. Instead of trying to zap intercontinental ballistic missiles with a laser, Brilliant Pebbles would lob watermelon-size pieces of tungsten at them. All a defense-minded nation needed to do was seed space with 4000 armed satellites. Alas, before the program was completed, the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Brilliant Pebbles was cancelled in 1993.
6. Flying Laser Cannon
Described as the "closest thing on Earth to the Death Star," the Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Test Bed was a failed attempt by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to develop a megawatt laser that could destroy enemy ballistic missiles. The main problem was that the chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) modules meant to power the weapon were too heavy. The YAL-1, a converted 747 jet, could carry only six of them.
Last year, the government pulled the plug on the YAL-1 program. But lighter solid-state lasers are advancing where chemical lasers faltered. So we just might see directed energy weapons on the battlefields of the future.
7. Armed Ground Robots
The MQ-1 Predator took its first lethal shot back in early 2002. Since then, armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have played a significant role in the U.S. military's activities in the Middle East. Meanwhile, armed unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) have been kept on the side-lines. In 2007, a few modified, gun-toting TALON bots did deploy to Iraq, but they never saw combat. This fed rumours of a haywire UGV pointing its barrel willy-nilly. But an industry source tells PopMech that what really happened was that a ground robot's remote locked up during a demo and it kept rolling forward without human guidance.
Whatever the case, the Army is only now looking at armed ground robots again, this time with the Mobile Armed Dismount Support System.
8. Rotor Cars
During WWII, the British came up with the Hafner Rotabuggy, a flying jeep with a rotor, tail fins, and a sublime name. This ungainly contraption never deployed, because plane-towed gliders were a more practical way of delivering ground vehicles to remote areas.
Yet some ideas never die, especially flying cars. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has revived the concept, this time as a Humvee with folding wings and collapsible rotors. But at least one defense contractor participating in the Transformer TX program is pushing in a more realistic option: a drone wing that drops off wheeled vehicles and other cargo.
9. XM29 Objective Individual Combat Weapon
It looks like a weapon drawn for a video game, but the XM29 Objective Individual Combat Weapon was a real, badass prototype that could fire both regular 5.56-mm bullets and programmable, exploding 20-mm rounds. Its target: the venerable M-16.
Ultimately, though, the bulky XM29 was broken in half. The XM8 rifle part continued development until 2005, when it was cancelled, while the XM25 airburst weapon (sometimes called the Punisher) lingers on. Maybe. The Senate pulled funding for the XM25 this June, but Army is still talking about going into low-rate production.
10. Spy Airship
It was supposed to float high above the battlefield like the eye of God. The Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) was a 250-foot-long hybrid airship that combined the buoyancy of a blimp with the aerodynamic lift of a plane. According to designers, the optionally manned craft would carry a 2750-pound sensor payload and keep an eye on a location for three weeks at a time. But citing delays and cost overruns, the Army cancelled the LEMV program early this year. It probably didn't help that the giant airship wouldn't even be ready until the very end of the Afghan war.
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