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US Army to Try Out New, Anime-based Uniforms
PenguinRadio writes "This is being reported in a few places, most notably USA Today which has an article about the US Army teaming up with MIT to develop a new nanotechnology-based outfit for our soldiers that can detect bio hazards, injury, and other funky things. The 5 year, $50 million grant also wants to look at bending light around the uniform to create some sort of invisibility." CNET has another story. The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies has its own web page, of course.
But what happens when them come back down?
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
I'd imagine they could also use nanotechnology or piezoelectric sheets to generate enough electricity from body movement. I can't imagine nanobots use much power. Even while standing still, your body is moving a lot.
In other words INVISIBILITY!!
Or am I mistaken... Soldiers will still need light to hit their eyes to be able to see.. I guess a pair of floating eyes won't raise too much suspicion.
What about infrared? Soldiers will still glow in that region.
Jumping 20 ft with some sort of exoskeleton still seems unlikely to me - remember, the landing deceleration won't be too much different than jumping off a 20 ft building without any exoskeleton (that hurts!).
It just doesn't seem plausible. The only thing useful I could see an exoskeleton useful for would be to lift/cary heavy loads. Any other ideas?
..........FULL STOP.
You're Right!!! There's no way this will ever work.
Along with that...
- Man Will never Fly
- Man will never go to the moon
- No one needs more than 640 KB of memory
- Mainframes are dead
- Unix is dead
With all the technology and money being poured into this, why not just make better remote warfare technologies?
I mean why bother making a uniform that provides instant medical care for the soldier, when you can completely remove the soldier from the battlefield?
Some may argue, but the primary method for getting what you want in a war is to KILL, therefore people are necessary in a war.
I acknowledge this, but while someone must get killed, doesn't it make sense to let the enemy's soldiers get killed, while yours are sitting comfy drinking coca-cola and watching pr0n?
The whole premise seems like a massive waste of time.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Umm...just for the record, I have some friends (one in particular i know well) that are employed in the US Special Forces...Navy SEALS to be exact, ...go have a 12-pack with him sometime, hear the stories he tells (what he can talk about, at least), and tell me the US doesnt use soldiers any more. Sure we're not storming beaches like D-Day anymore, but you cannot have a military presence in an area without soldiers. Air/sea power can have an effect on the war effort, but when it comes to capturing and holding, infantry is the only answer.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
Somebody years ago may have made the same remark about small, solid-state personal radios with headsets that are commonly used by soldiers and police now.
Evil is the money of root.
Supercharged shoes could release energy when soldiers jump, propelling them over a 20-foot wall.
-What happens after the wall, is there also a parachute, or are you just supposed to land after your 20 foot fall.
A mini-parachute is a possibility, auto-deploying and auto-retracting. 20-foot falls aren't that bad, any paratrooper makes those all the time. Perhaps an auto-extending grapple-cord combo that quickly lowers you to the ground. . .
Micoreactors could detect bleeding and apply pressure.
-So that the enemies crackers can cut off circulation in battle to help their side
Assuming they CAN crack each individual suit, which would likely have its' own highly encrypted control override code. . . .can you say megabit RSA keypairs ???
Light-deflecting material could make the suit blend in with surroundings.
-So that the number of soilders hurt or killed by friendly fire increases.
Ever hear of IFF ??? Or perhaps beaconing on an obscure wavelength that is specially "watched" for and enhanced on the visor display ???
MIT's research centers had been working on nanotechnology ideas long before getting involved with the Army, but not with military applications in mind.
-Isn't that how it always happens, soon the MIT reasercher will make a peace time achievment award.
Military research often drives initial technology development. Transistors and microchips were developed for military purposes, for military satellites and suchlike... this is no different from a common pattern in research. . . .
As I said when I submitted this 5 hours ago(no I'm not bitter:-) ), is that this technology has potential for very good non-military uses. The enchancing of strength could help people with Muscular Schirrosis move around more freely, or help people who've had a leg smashed by a car or something walk again. Lots of fuzzy warm stuff could result from the development project that can benefit humanity(as well as letting otakus live out anime dreams of a exosuit).
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
Indeed, when I first heard of a proposal to do this, circa 1986, it was referred to as "chameleon cloth".
With the right software, I bet you could get by with perhaps just 4 cameras. The tricky part is having the fabric be durable, and having the signals that travel to the pixels be fault tolerant. Also, it's got to be non-stick. Otherwise, any damage to the fabric, or anything stuck to it ruins the whole thing. OTOH, if the enemy delivers bright green sticky stuff that rains down on the soldiers, it will also rain down on the terrain. Another possible tactic is to fire a flare that backlights the soldiers with a strobe. Any latency in the camo system will be detectable, although cave-dwelling terrorists aren't likely to have such tech.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"Bending" light is not impossible.
Fibre-optic cables do it quite effectively. In principle you could make a suit which used something like nano-scale fibre-optic cables to re-route photons around the suit wearer. Of course this can't be done with current technology, or even plausible near future technology, so my guess is that they have something like your chameleon suit in mind.
Infra-red (or any other part of the spectrum) cammo is also possible.
A simple passive system might use insulating material distrubuted in such a way that the shape of the soldier, in infra-red, would be broken up. You would still see the glow - it just wouldn't look much like a person. This is pretty much the same principle as regular cammo, and could be done with today's tech.
A more complex active system might use really good insulation combined with some method for disipating heat that makes the soldier look even less like a person. Think portable air conditioning. In principle you could even store heat, and dump it at convenient intervals (i.e. when you think no one is watching). This kind of thing is not beyond the possiblities of near future tech.
Unlike some other posters, at least you are in the realm of reality, so I think I'll respond.
Yes, fiber optics can bend light. The problem is that they are highly directional -- only incoming light from a very narrow angle will be piped. If you've ever had to splice two fiber optic cables together, you know just how difficult this is. So while a very narrow cone of light could be routed in principle, most light is just going to be reflected or absorbed as usual.
Infrared camo is more interesting. Yes, you could probably arrange for something like this. You'd effectively be wearing a thermos outfit, and it could potentially get very hot inside. It's unclear to me that you could built up heat for any significant duration without forcing the soldier into heat exhaustion. Yes, you could install an air conditioner, but thermodynamics tells us that even more heat is generated in the process.
Your best bet is probably not to try to capture all of the heat, but retain it briefly in an outer suit layer, and let it equilibrate to the mean temperature of the environment before releasing it. You would still be radiating in the infrared, but you would be nearly indistinguishable from your background.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Take a look at the image on the USA Today page, then take a look at this image. Look familiar? Radix 1
Oh please. Energy isn't the issue, it's acceleration. If you stiffen the armour, you just get smushed against the hard armour instead of the hard ground. In fact, stiffening is the last thing you want to do; you want as much articulation as possible to minimise the impulse. This "leap tall buildings in a single bound" claim is pure fantasy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.