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Army Testing Robo-Parachutes That Don’t Need GPS

Military cargo-drops to places like forward operating bases in Afghanistan need to go off perfectly. When they don’t, soliders have to expose themselves to dangerous fire to retrieve the package that missed its target. But there are a lot of things that can get in the way of a precision drop. Increasingly, that includes insecurities in the global position system.The Army is testing a new joint precision airdrop system, or JPADS. The ultimate goal is a system that can be fitted to cargo that the military can drop from 25,000 feet and from as far away as 20 miles to a specified location, all withoutGPS. So far, the Army has tested the new JPADS at 10,000 feet in Arizona and they’re planning on tests at higher ranges to confirm that it will work as expected.