The SWAT Team's Human Cannon

June 22, 2006 | Post Archive

On the surface, kooky gadgets and law enforcement don’t seem to mix. If the riot slimer wasn’t enough, now police are talking about shooting SWAT members out of a cannon. Well, kind of -- the man-cannon's looks are more reminiscent of a medieval catapult than a circus cannon.

Backed by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the cannon would be used for catapulting law enforcement and emergency personnel quickly atop high structures that would otherwise be difficult to reach. According to the patent application, the developers’ goal is to create “a controllable launcher for propelling a payload through a predictable and repeatable trajectory to a desired height.”

With the proposed cannon, a person sits in a chair-like carriage that slides along hollow rails. Compressed gas fed through a pneumatic tube linked to an air pressure reservoir propels the carriage. Then it sends the person rocketing toward its destination, which is, apparently, controllable. The plans include an alignment scope capable of determining the proper height of trajectory. To do this, the scope measures the horizontal plane of the cannon and that of the intended destination.

How they’ll get the human body to behave predictably once freefalling toward rooftops is beyond me. But just the same, if they can make it all work, the man-cannon will make getting to inaccessible rooftops a much quicker, less complicated ordeal. According to its developers, reaching a rooftop five stories high will take a mere two seconds.