A new jet-pack flying suit, that looks like something from the movie ‘Iron Man’, is perfect for emergency wilderness search operations. In a recent test in England, the jet-pack’s inventor Richard Browning completed in a few minutes a rescue search that would normally have taken several hours on foot.

Flying at a height of between three and six metres he zoomed over the hills and scaled England’s third-highest mountain in just eight minutes. The suit has a top speed in excess of 130kph, and is technically capable of reaching high altitude, but for safety purposes it is flown much lower. It is propelled by three micro jet engines, with one on each arm and one on the back. Browning says: “All the manoeuvrability comes from your own balance and coordination. If you point the jets down you go up, and if you flare them out you go down. It is very safe as you only fly at a height where if you fell you would be able to recover.” Browning founded the aeronautical company Gravity Industries in 2017 to pioneer a “new era in human flight”. He has done over 100 test flights in 30 different countries, and emergency response missions are just one of the areas that his company is actively pursuing. “We are just scratching the surface in terms of what is possible to achieve with this technology.”