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Real-life ‘Iron Man’ showcased his jetpack technology to military teams.

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A former Royal Marine strapped on jet engines and flew off the deck of Britain’s newest aircraft carrier — in front of the admirals who might one day send troops in wearing one.

Richard Browning, founder and chief pilot of Gravity Industries, brought his body-controlled “Jet Suit” to HMS Queen Elizabeth off Annapolis, Maryland, launching and maneuvering across the flight deck of the 65,000-tonne carrier for senior UK and US defense officials. The demonstration came during the Atlantic Future Forum, hosted aboard the ship near the United States Naval Academy in December 2019. Dubbed the “real-life Iron Man,” Browning used the moment to pitch the suit’s tactical potential directly to the people who decide what the military buys next.

• Browning, a former Royal Marines Reservist, flew his Jet Suit off the flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth during the Atlantic Future Forum near the US Naval Academy in Annapolis.
• The suit’s micro gas-turbine engines, mounted on the arms and back, produce over 1,000 horsepower and are steered through natural body balance and thrust vectoring.
• The showcase followed Browning’s November 2019 record run, where he broke his own Guinness World Record for fastest speed in a body-controlled jet engine suit at over 85 mph (136 km/h).

Flying Off a Supercarrier

HMS Queen Elizabeth isn’t a small stage. At 65,000 tonnes, it’s the Royal Navy’s flagship, and Browning used its open flight deck to show exactly what the suit does under real operational conditions rather than in a controlled hangar test. He launched, hovered, and repositioned around the deck in front of military leadership from both the UK and US, framing the flight less as a stunt and more as a proof of concept for how quickly a person could move around a ship’s deck without a runway, a rotor, or a crew.

The Engineering Behind the Suit

Gravity Industries’ patented system relies on micro gas-turbine jet engines strapped to the pilot’s arms and lower back, generating more than 1,000 horsepower combined. There’s no joystick or throttle handle in the conventional sense — the pilot steers by shifting body weight and angling the arm-mounted thrust, a control scheme Browning has repeatedly compared to riding a bike, just in three dimensions instead of two.

Riding a bike in three dimensions.

That intuitive control is the whole pitch. A soldier doesn’t need months of flight training to get airborne; the balance-based system is designed to translate almost directly from how a person already moves.

Military Surveillance Operations Revealed

The Atlantic Future Forum exists to put emerging technology in front of the people who set defense policy, and Browning’s flight was built to answer a specific question: what could a jet suit actually do in a fight? Gravity Industries has pointed to rapid boarding actions, tactical insertion onto ships at sea, and clearing obstacles that would otherwise slow a unit down, all while letting the operator shed the suit quickly once on the ground. It’s a different category of tool than the drones and rotorcraft the Pentagon and Ministry of Defence already field — smaller footprint, one operator, no need for a runway or a flight deck crew to recover it.

Readers who want the deeper technical rundown, including how Browning talks through the suit’s flight characteristics with engineers, can see his follow-up appearance covered in Cisco LIVE Europe 2020 – Jet Suit Flight & Talk by Richard Browning. The broader push to get exotic hardware like this in front of defense buyers is also part of a pattern covered in CRAZIEST New Technology Used By The Military Today!.

The Speed Record Behind the Headlines

The carrier demo didn’t come out of nowhere. Weeks earlier, in November 2019, Browning broke his own Guinness World Record for the fastest speed in a body-controlled jet engine suit, clocking more than 85 mph (136 km/h). That record run is part of why the Jet Suit was taken seriously enough to get an invite onto a Royal Navy flagship in the first place — it wasn’t just a flying suit, it was a documented, record-certified one.

Browning’s next move is the same one it’s been since Gravity Industries started: get in front of more institutions that could actually deploy this thing, whether that’s a navy boarding party or a search-and-rescue outfit. The carrier flight gave him admirals and defense officials as an audience instead of a trade-show crowd, and that’s the upgrade that actually matters for where this technology goes next.