There's a sweet-spot in innovation that SMEs occupy, the way mammals co-existed and eventually replaced dinosaurs. The company behind this CADDIS is one of those inhabiting such a space.
Military procurement, except maybe in times of war, is uninterested in individuals because the governments they serve are equally so; and the two are in a symbiotic relationship in which should the host suffer, then so might the parasite.
Thus it was that the inventor of the bouncing bomb could be courted in the 1940s, whilst the inventor of the hovercraft was dismissed by all branches of the forces in the UK a decade later... world war being the difference.
The only way for example that BAE Systems could pioneer products in fast-moving situations is to buy whichever company has developed them, as they had to do with Malloy Aeronautics.
The reason is several-fold, but rests largely upon the fact that we are herd animals and always prepared to sacrifice the individual for safety in numbers. Thus anyone in government is likely to run with the safest bet, in the form of the largest defence contractor, for fear of looking silly.
Conversely, that contractor is unable to develop anything off the wall for the same reason. Besides, taking any one concept in particular, only senior staff would be in a position to make choices as to what to develop, and old dogs rarely invent new tricks.
It gets worse, because new ideas have to be progressed as projects with a sizeable budget that have to be run past senior members of the corporation who are far enough "in" with politicians and sufficiently close enough to retirement not to stray too far off-piste.
Thus it is that whilst two-thirds of Russian tanks are being destroyed by Toys-R-Us drones, the largest defence contractors in the West will be working on incremental improvements to existing tanks, helicopters or crewed aircraft; a bit like improving the cavalry's tackle and oatmeal whilst the opponents are developing machine-guns.
This past week the Polish president marvelled at the UK's complacency in the face of military deployments around Europe's flanks, whilst the last UK Minister for Defence (who had actually been in the military instead of the media, which is novel for the UK) suggested it would only take ninety minutes of wider conflict before the country came under direct attack from Russia.
Meantimes we're focussed squarely on trying and failing to stop an inflatable navy, the way old people in care are unable to look too far beyond where tea and diapers are coming from.
The reason though that whatever I developing uses air- instead of water-screws is because they work in both, as I discovered when a prototype began to sink and yet could be steered to safety by such means.
The CADDIS pictured, developed by an SME in Portsmouth, can be sunk to a depth of thirty metres and yet pop up for flight using its rotors alone. The reason they can experiment in this way in the historic heartland of the Royal Navy ~ who cannot for the foregoing reasons ~ is because they are less worried about being spotted naked whilst wearing new clothes.
So we'll just keeping calm and carrying on, won't we Gromit?
Caddisflies are insects with a waterborne larval but airborne adult form; you'd think they include mosquito larvae ~ scourge of every water-butt ~ but don't.
