Newest 'Bond Gadget' Premiered in Aero-News Last Year

We told you about this little movie star in August of 2001, when we described the newest product of the off-center genius, Jack McCornack (who also brought us such aerial wonders as the Pterodactyl ultralight). We said, "The PHASST (Programmable High Altitude Single Soldier Transport, pronounced 'fast'), flew three test missions in January, launched from a Skyvan jump plane and landing in desert rangeland near the Picacho Mountains, east of Eloy (AZ). All three launches were at 12,000 feet, with development pilot Allan Hewitt separating from the PHASST at 6000 feet and landing in rattlesnake country under his own canopy."

Interestingly, McCornack met Hewitt when the stuntman was flying the Parahawk in the 19th James Bond film, The World is Not Enough.

McCornack talked Hewitt into being the test pilot. "We needed someone who would be a quick study, since we couldn't draw from a pool of pilots who had flown this sort of thing," said McCornack. "There is no, 'this sort of thing.'"

ANN Editor-in-chief Jim Campbell noted last year, "I gotta tell you... I've done a bit of test-jumping in my career... but nothing in my resume compares to this thing..." Apparently not -- it's now one of the hottest new "Bond gadgets," right alongside the Aston Martin DB-4, the Disco Volante compound boat from Thunderball, and the rocket belt. As we told you last year, "The PHASST pilot flies in a "tracking" position (prone, head forward), the aircraft is dynamically stable in all three axes, and like a parachute, has no elevator, rudder, or aileron input. Instead, the pilot has brakes on each wingtip, which control direction and drag, much like the brakes on a ram-air parachute."

Hewitt has tested the PHASST at speeds of nearly 200 mph. The wearable airframe outglides, outspeeds, outmaneuvers, and just plain 'out-does' anything a parachutist can do by himself -- except land -- it's just too phasst!

The cute little airplanes in the Die Another Day (the new James Bond movie, going into theaters Friday, November 22) trailers sure look like the Kinetic Aerospace PHASST (Programmable High Altitude Single Soldier Transport), don't they?

As McCornack said, "Aero-news carried a nice piece on the first PHASST test flights." ("PHASST Makes First Flights," 8-07-01, ANN).

Confronted with the trailers and television ads for the new Bond movie, and with the photos Aero-news carried in 2001, he said, "Well, we can't deny it, but we can be evasive for another day."

Says PHASST designer Jack McCornack, "If we did supply the Bond producers with aircraft, then presumably we would have a non-disclosure clause in our contract, and we'd be greatly limited in what we could say before the movie is released to the public. I can say that last Monday, our president David Rogers, his wife Carmen, our tech rep Sharon Wescott, and I went to the World Premier of Die Another Day at the Shrine Auditorium, courtesy of MGM. I guess we'll know Friday when the credits roll."

Well, the credits have rolled, and Kinetic Aerospace was indeed included, for the cute little "Switchblade..."

FMI: www.jamesbond.com, www.kineticaerospace.com