Obviously, there's nothing good about war. You've got untold devastation, countless deaths, the crippling of peaceful relations for decades to come, and none of the fighting technology looks even remotely as cool as the vehicles and weapons we see in our favorite comic book and science fiction films. It just doesn't make any sense, right? BAE Systems agrees. The world's largest defense contractor decided to stop screwing around and design a war machine based on the most incredibly useful yet vaguely plausible film gadget we've seen in the last few years: the Batmobile.


Prompted by a remark from a nerdy journalist, BAE's Future Protected Leader Hisham Awad digressed from a press briefing on the future of tanks to discuss enthusiastically his team's inspiration for what's called the Raider, which he happily admitted was the Batmobile aka Tumbler as seen in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

BAE Systems' "The Raider"


Wayne Industries' The Tumbler

As reported by The Engineer, a journalist at the Raider presentation was heard saying, "I like that. Looks like the Batmobile."

"Ah!" Awad replied, reportedly with a grin. "Glad you said that. That's what we based it on."

There is some precedent for this sort of thing. J. Michael Straczynski has claimed that NASA expressed a desire to adapt the Stafury design as seen in Babylon 5, and The Engineer's Stuart Nathan pointed out that modern troop carriers bear a resemblance to those from James Cameron's Aliens, which was designed in cooperation with the Pentagon.

Naturally, a working Batmobile is much cooler, although it is presently unknown whether a Bat-pod-like device ejects from the main vehicle.
You see, it turns like a motorbike and it has the same wheel configuration. Why not [take inspiration from Batman]? In all seriousness, we decided that we didn't have a monopoly on inspiration, and if we saw something in a film that we thought might be a good idea, why not take a look at it and see if there's something practical we can develop?
Loathe as we are to liberally excerpt even more from Mr. Nathan's enviably cool report, we felt it critical that ComicsAlliance readers know that given BAE's talent for identifying excessively cool movie vehicles to make real, the Engineer writer asked Mr. Awad if he'd seen Tron: Legacy. His reply?

"No, haven't seen that one yet, but I want to. Anything good in it?"

You can read more about the BAE Future Protected Vehicles Briefing at The Engineer.

[Via Bleeding Cool]