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High-speed insertion on land and sea

Kiwi, U.S. companies team up to build new high speed amphibious vehicle.

Mark Rutherford
The military establishment's ever increasing reliance on technology and whiz-bang gadgetry impacts us as consumers, investors, taxpayers and ultimately as the defended. Our mission here is to bring some of these products and concepts to your attention based on carefully selected criteria such as importance to national security, originality, collateral damage to the treasury and adaptability to yard maintenance-but not necessarily in that order. E-mail him at markr@milapp.com. Disclosure.
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Mark Rutherford
Gibbs Technologies

Remember those guys who would ride their Stingrays off the end of the pier? Well apparently they're finally in charge over there at the military industrial complex, and the aquatic world of hooah is all the better for it.

Case in point: a Gibbs Technology and Lockheed Martin team has announced the development of three new, high-speed, amphibious prototypes for use in littoral and riverine special ops insertions.

"High performance on the water, high performance on the ground and the transition between the two is seamless," brags Kiwi Alan Gibbs, chairman of Gibbs Technologies of his high-speed amphibians (HSAs).Yes, they're fast, up to 45 mph on water and over 100 mph on land. But the eye opener is the water-to-land transition time--5 seconds. That qualifies as seamless in our book.

And for the duck hunter that has everything, Gibbs already makes a few consumer versions of this unit. Drive into the water, push the button, step on the gas, the wheels rise up and you're on plane in less than 12 seconds, according to Gibbs. We're partial to the 007-ready Gibbs Aquada model, a three person amphibious sports car, perfect for picking up Pussy Galore.