Red Bull Stratos and Ultra-HALO
History was made today as Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos team set a new World Record for a high altitude parachute jump. Baumgartner, wearing a full pressure suit, jumped from a pressurized gondola hanging from a balloon at more than 128,000 feet over Roswell, New Mexico, free falling for four andn a half minutes before opening a traditional parachute and floating to a successful soft landing. This surpasses the record set by USAF officer Joe Kittinger, set at 102,800 feet in 1960. Data are still being reduced -- I just watched the jump live and as I type this the final results are unconfirmed -- so the jury is still out as to whether Baumgartner will also set a world record for maximum skydiving speed. He was trying to exceed MACH 1 during his free fall. Interestingly, he missed Kittinger's record for maximum free fall (4:36) by about eight seconds or so.
It's an amazing feat of aerospace and medicine (given the extreme health risks at the upper limits of the atmosphere ); here's some footage of the 96,000 foot test jump:
So the question for this blog: is there a military application for this sort of Ultra-HALO (High-Altitude, Low Opening), or is this just a stunt?
Well, yes and yes.
HALO (where the parachutist exits an aircraft at high altitude, free falls, and opens a chute at low altitude to guide in to a target) as well as its companion tactic High Altitude, High Opening (HAHO) (where the parachutist opens the chute shortly after exiting a high altitude aircraft, and floats for a long time and distance under canopy), both stem from the same high altitude parachute research that involved Joe Kittinger's record jumps in the '60s. The USAF reserach program, which was focused primarily on survival of pilots ejecting from aircraft at high altitude, was also used to develop these specialized parachute insertion techniques first used in the Vietnam War, and which subsequently became common use for special operations forces across the globe. So from that perspective these extreme altitude parachute jumps have already had a military payoff.
Will this level of extreme altitude have direct military application, since higher altitude equals longer range insertions? I think it's highly doubtful in the near term, for a number of reasons.
First, though, one has to look at the value of HALO/HAHO in application. What do the tactics get you in military utility?
(1) Increased safety for the deploying aircraft. The aircraft can deploy its jumpers from above effective ground fire, or -- typically in the case of HAHO -- from across a border, or otherwise in a safe area.
(2) Reduced risk of detection of the entry. The short period of free fall and rapid descent make it less likely that the jumpers are detected during the drop; the HAHO approach event masks the sound of opening parachutes by doing so at high altitude.
(3) High level of deception about the target. Especially with the distances that can be achieve by HAHO -- as much as 30+ miles -- it is very easy to deceive an enemy about the intended target even if they detect the inserting aircraft, unlike traditional airborne insertions which drop directly above the intended landing zones.
Does Ultra-HALO add to any of the above benefits?
(1) Increased safety. In theory yes ... getting above 80,000 feet clears virtually every surface-to-air weapon on the planet. In practice, no, since no practical delivery aircraft can operate at that altitude.
(2) Reduced risk of detection. Not so much, as in this case the increased duration of fall exposes the jumper to greater risk of radar detection.
(3) High level of deception. This is about the same as current tactics, to whit:
(a) To achieve maximum range, the jumper must maximize glide ratio across the duration of fall, to be able to get the most forward distance out of the jump and thus get as far away from the delivery aircraft as possible -- to deceive about the intended target or enable the target to be significantly inside of a hostile border. Since the best freefall parachutists achieve about a 1:1 glide ratio (1 foot forward for every one foot fallen), which under canopy they can achieve a 5-6:1 glide ratio, the most distance is achieved not in free fall, but under canopy. Hence HAHO tactics -- pull at as high an altitude as possible. Let's say that's 30,000 feet (higher altitudes require more chute area to be effective, whcih then become impractical to pack as man-portable systems), and assume about 5:1 so the parachutist can achieve 30 miles of penetration once the chute is opened. Jumping from 120,000 feet at 1:1 leaves 90,000 feet of free fall and equal forward flight, for a little under 18 miles range. That's not bad, right? Almost 50 miles total?
(b) Except that 1:1 won't be achievable for most of that free fall period, since air density is too low to achieve an effective glide ... so real range is significantly less. Even eploying something like a wingsuit (2.5:1) to try and get more distance before opening the chute won't gain a tremendous amount, leaving the parachutists with the same 30-40 mile range already achieveable with current HAHO tactics. That of course neglects that you can't employ a wing suit due to the pressure suit required for the high altitude jump, plus the added drag of additional equipment carried ... the additional altitude quickly becomes a bigger problem than it gains you in cross-range distance.
So I don't expect Special Forces to start jumping at 100,000 feet any time soon (there's still the persistent problem of getting them back out once you put them in, which is the much harder problem if they are that far on the side of a border you don't want to be caught violating). From the perspective of expanding Ultra-HALO to military use, the Red Bull Stratos mission hasn't added much mroe than the pioneering USAF work in the '60s already achieved.
Which in any case should not diminish their accomplishments.
But maybe, just maybe, in the farther future, when orbital insertion becomes more practical, you'll see these sorts of Ultra-HALO "Helljumper" tactics. If you can put your SF team at suborbital altitudes, any point on earth is less than 45 minutes away. That requires a lot more development of a delivery vehicle, though ...
