Brian is so going to hate me for having all the cool stuff to write about this week! He is going to want to add one of these to the Lohnes family driveway for sure, and will enjoy blasting by the Duck Tours in Boston Harbor no doubt. It’s a 1/5 scale DARPA Captive Air Amphibious Transporter or CAAT for short. We can only assume that the Captive Air portion of this refers to the “paddles” that are attached to the tracks on this thing and the fact that they must be filled with air in order to provide enough buoyancy for it to travel on water. The 1/5 scale version weighs 4 tons, and we have no idea what the engine is that powers it, but we do know that we want one.
And are we the only ones that think the wheels on it look like a set of Weld Superlites?
The tracks make this thing ultra maneuverable, and the paddle shape seems to make it move quickly on water while still allowing it to run over just about everything. We approve. Can we get one for some testing. Please DARPA? Okay, pretty please…?
Thanks to Scott Payton for the tip on this one. We dig it.
Check out the video below.
Interesting, but what do you do with it? Reminds me of that old clip of an old tractor fitted with screw drums that could float over deep snow and seemed to maneuver quite well. It was in the 1920’s if memory serves.
The idler wheels do look like Superlites.