Fast rope, as a ‘‘real world” requirement, is the standard method used by military personnel for getting in and out of helicopters during certain types of military operations. A squadron can deploy several persons within 30 seconds without landing a helicopter.

A military person with a heavy load on his back, including a weapon and all the equipment needed to do the mission, was experiencing discomfort from the friction caused by sliding down the fast rope as the rope was used to exit a helicopter.

‘‘Military personnel were burning their hands from the heat generated as they attempted to slide down the rope with their gloves on,” said Todd Anderson, an Aerospace Scientist and technical lead at NAVAIR’s Cargo and Special Operations lab. ‘‘A team from Special Operations Command came to us and asked us to design a better and improved rope to dissipate the heat from the rope itself as the military person was going down the rope.”

Anderson said he and his team went through several different iterations of fast ropes designs to mitigate the problem but was not getting the results they wanted by changing the characteristics of the rope. They then decided to work on designing a different type of glove to address the friction problem.

Anderson teamed up with Kuchera Industries Incorporated, a contractor hired to produce high tech gloves. As a result, they were successful in designing a new glove that resolved the heat problem associated with the friction.

While this work was being researched, personnel from a local squadron requested assistance with a problem they were having with their own fast rope deployments. The challenge involved the erratic movement of the fast rope as it was deployed from the aircraft. ‘‘The downwash was the big issue as the rope would not stay directly below the aircraft when it was uncoiled,” Anderson said.

As a result of this new challenge, Anderson and his team decided to direct their efforts to produce a Fast rope that would better resolve the problem regarding high downwash situations, which is the turbulent airflow produced from the helicopter’s rotors over land or water. That in turn makes it difficult for the person to connect with the rope while attempting to leave the aircraft.

After two years of testing and research, Anderson and Doug Mousseau, an aerospace engineer in the Cargo and Special Operations lab, in conjunction with Novabraid, came up with a new technology. They produced a Fast rope that included a lead inner core. This resolved the downwash problem which is the result of the patent application.

Mousseau said that the weight added did not produce a ‘‘crazy heavy” rope but the extra stiffness will provide a lot of benefit by allowing the rope more firmness and stability during the operations for which it will be used.

‘‘We didn’t want to kick out a hunk of metal because guys have to haul this stuff,” he said. ‘‘We wanted to produce a rope that wasn’t too heavy and this product has met all our requirements.”