CHENNAI: An Indian Army engineer, who was posted in Siachen and Kargil, has worked towards developing a jet pack – a device that would allow soldiers to fly using backpack rockets. According to the designers, the device could possibly save Army personnel from disasters like the recent avalanche at Siachen.
According to Major Lakshyajeet Singh Chauhan, who is serving the Electronics and Mechanical Engineers (EME) wing of the Indian Army for nine years, the jetpack can help soldiers skip climbing treacherous mountain terrains, and flee avalanches or landslides.
It can also be used in counter insurgency, recovery and security operations, even at very high altitudes, according to the former M Tech student at IIT-Madras.
Recently, the project has also been proposed to be taken up under the ‘Imprint India’ initiative supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
Speaking to Express, Chauhan pointed out that in general avalanche and crevice prone zones are 0.7 to 1 km in length. Using these jet packs, soldiers can cross these areas in a matter of seconds, as the optimum travelling speed is 60 km per hour or 17 metres per second.
“During the Kargil war, maximum casualties were reported when the Indian Army tried to climb the final 300-500 metres of the peak, where the Pakistan soldiers started firing and throwing stones from the top. Since the visibility is poor at such high altitudes, with these devices, the soldiers could have jumped off to a safer location,” he said. The device also has immense potential in multi-terrain hopping. While crossing mountains or valleys, instead of an entire company coming down and climbing up for hours, two soldiers wearing this can fly in a matter of few seconds and build a rope way between cliffs.
Though the concept of jet packs has been around for sometime now, the project guide from IIT-M, professor PA Ramakrishna claimed that their device would be safer and easier to use compared to the American designs. This is because the present one makes use of hybrid rockets which have long been acknowledged to be safe. It is also less expensive and more efficient than the devices manufactured by the United States for ceremonial purposes. “While the available devices can fly only for 30 seconds at a stretch, our model provides three times more ‘flight time’ with an ignition time of less than 0.6 seconds,” Ramakrishna told Express.
Instead of using conventional solid or liquid rockets having safety and controllability issues, the IIT design uses a hybrid rocket operating on solid fuel and liquid oxidiser combination to stabilise the combustion process. “Consequently the manufacturing cost has come down from `1.2 crore to `30 lakh,” said Ramakrishna. The researchers also said that since this 50-kg device operated at a 1800 Newton thrust, it allowed a soldier weighing 55-60 kg to carry an additional load of 20 kg, which could be arms or fuel to be refilled in case of longer travel. The Military College of EME, Secunderabad, has forwarded a proposal for inclusion of this project under the Army Technology Board.