US military developing medical missile full of med supplies.

The US military is developing a missile which will be packed will medical supplied and dropped off in the area of the soldiers. Say a group of soldiers are cornered by the enemy and are wounded but they have run out of medical supplies. Flying a helicopter to their are is to dangerous cuz it might get shot down. But loading this missile on a predator and dropping in on the troops position puts no one at risk. You guys think its a good idea? I personally like it.

A soldier gets seriously hurt in some lonely corner of Afghanistan or Iraq. There's no medic around for miles and miles. And the area is so hot that any medical helicopter flying over it has a good chance of getting shot.

What to do? Army researchers have an idea: fire off a missile, loaded with medical supplies, at the wounded G.I.

Built by the Aviation and Missile Command in Huntsville, Alabama, the 20 lb., 8-inch-wide, 32-inch-long Quick-MEDS projectile would be packed on an unmanned plane. The drone would linger over the battlefield. And if a soldier got seriously hurt, the flying robot would shoot the medical missile in his direction. It'd be packed with blood, bandages, an oxygen generator, burn packs, critical-care supplies, vaccines and bio-chem antitodes.

"The idea is to avoid losing rescue teams flying into heavily defended areas," Aviation Week notes. An Army researcher began working on Quick-MEDS after he "read an account of an Air Force medic, Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, who bled to death after tending others for 7 hours. He was a member of a relief force that was shot down searching for a missing Navy SEAL and was isolated until the fighting subsided."

Medical Missile

how about loading that payload in a TLAM and launching it at innocent children instead of HE?

drfunk

Its a good concept. The Brits also have one going. The Nimrod I believe has a rescue pod that can be dropped at sea for rescue. I however like the UAV role esp for covert battlefield resupply to SEAL and GB teams behind lines. Even beter if its stealthy.

I'm not really a fan of this one.

If you know where they are just go pick them up in a humvee or Bradley. It's not like we would be out gunned or powered. So why no just go in and get em, and kill who ever is trying to stop ya.

Do you really think it would be a better idea to drop a "Medical Pack" down to them. All that would do is tell the enemy where a hurt soldier is, and they would go finish him or her off.

[edit on 12-8-2004 by Murcielago]

They could be surrounded like in Vietnam when the Vietcong surrounded the marine base. All of the helicopters and C-13's that landed got shot down. By having this launch a pod full of med supplies you can do it without risk of life. This would be quicker than assembling Abrams and Bradly�s. UCAVS go about 250mph Bradly�s and Abrams 40-45 do the math. Like FredT said, a seal team or spec ops are badly wounded in a firefight on a covert mission in another country, you cant use you Bradly�s and Abrams cuz were not support to be there in the first place. But an aircraft carrier can launch a UCAV's and drop this in where the seals are.

Those days are dead and gone, no one would dare surround a US base these days.

As for special Ops wounded in a fire fight then that would be a good time for it. So I guess in some instances it could be used.

I was just saying like in Somalia if you were wounded and were laying down in an alley, hoping they didn't see you then a Med Pack lands 10 ft away, Boom, your dead.

Those days are dead and gone, no one would dare surround a US base these days.

Yeah this is true the one thing that we didn't have back then was GPS we had to wait ill the weather cleared before we could bomb the Vietcong positions now we can bomb nay weather any time of day or night. and its always good to have something than nothing in the case of the med missile.


[edit on 12-8-2004 by WestPoint23]

Its a good idea, until it 'accidently' rips through a hospital and kills 100 civilans, then explodes with piles of band-aids.

Oh the irony.

Mackiller first of all it is meant to be ejected from the UACV and then a small parachute will open at a set altitude and it will slowly fall to the ground. I don't know how that is going to rip through a hospital Next is contains no explosive materials, so I don't know how it would explode and kill your 100's of civilians

I like this idea

It would be good if the missle could be packed with things other then medical suplies, such as amunition or new weapons.

It would be too small to carry a significant amount of ammo. They use big crates to air drop ammo and weapons, although a 3 ton crate is not ideal for urban combat

What are the dimension of the size of this med pack?

I read that it's gonna carry blood in it so it can't be real small, Also I wonder if they will just carry the most common blood types and not the rare ones. Whats the point of donating blood if the plan to waste it like this?

I�m not sure about the size ill try to find out. And how is the blood going to be wasted? They can pack Type O blood which can substitute for all the other types without any problem.