It's a parachute! It's a glider! It's a plane!

Just saw this on Engadget: a parachute with wings, basically making it a glider. The prototype can fly up to 25 miles, fast, before you have to open the chute; the product version is intended to increase that range to 125 miles, and the next generation is planned to incorporate small "turbo jet drives", developed for UAVs. The idea is to let the military drop soldiers a long way from their targets and then sneak up under the radar, but I suspect we'll see some more creative uses—say, a New York-to-Boston courier service. :-)