US Army Furthers Development of Robotic Suits

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on advancements in the US military's robotic exoskeleton program. It's being spearheaded by Sarcos, a research laboratory in Utah. The firm has designed the XOS exoskeleton for US Army use, a lightweight frame that gives the user greater strength and endurance. 'With the exoskeleton on and fully powered up, Rex can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos, more than he weighs. For the army the XOS could mean quicker supply lines, or fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly. Initial models would be used as workhorses, on the logistics side. Later models, the army hopes, could go into combat, carrying heavier weapons, or even wounded colleagues.'"

Comments

Battle of the Future

[locokamil]

I'll bludgeon you to death with my wounded comrade!

Re:Battle of the Future

[OldMrToad]

R. A. Heinlein would be PROUD!
"Starship Troopers"
(the book, not the movie)

Re:Battle of the Future

[garlicbready]

in a robot with a teadybear head
(for anyone that remembers the last story that went through)

Re:Battle of the Future

[dolphinling]

I'll bludgeon you to death with that exoskeleton's user person!

..."User person"? Seriously, who writes these things?

Re:Battle of the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't. Actually there are 10, I see so many people screw this joke up badly.

Re:Battle of the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

whoosh.

Re:Battle of the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps what you're seeing is the result of the joke which is more humorous than the original.

Re:Battle of the Future

[WED Fan]

Just what I thought, AC's are incapable of getting the joke.

Re:Battle of the Future

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, where this now says "...lightweight frame that gives the user greater strength and endurance", it originally said "...gives the user person greater strength and endurance". How nice of them to read the comments and ruin the joke.

Re:Battle of the Future

[locokamil]

I actually just finished reading Starship Troopers... I'm pretty sure it will inform how I think about politics for a long time to come.

No Iron Man tag?

[dreamchaser]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too?

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Moraelin]

Nah. This is clearly a BattleTech Elemental armour. Or will end up used as one.

Now what I want is a proper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mech. I mean, they just need to make this thing 10m tall and give it a nuclear reactor as a power source, right?

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Abreu]

Instead of Iron Man references, I'd say instead that the US Army is now in charge of Gundam

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[dkleinsc]

Here I was thinking this was intended for the Mobile Infantry. Go get 'em, Juan Rico.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

never going to happen. There just isn't much use for large bipedal tanks, sorry. Too unbalanced. You might end up seeing a four (or more)legged armored vehicle for rough terrain use, but I can't think of any valid reason for two legs.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[crawling_chaos]

Look up "high center of gravity" and get back to me on why Mechs are a colossally stupid idea.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[sumdumass]

There is plenty of use in close quarter inner city style combat situations. The exoskeleton allows for heavier armor that isn't limited to the bodies normal strength or physical endurance constraints. It can also allow larger volumes of ammo to be carried which means smaller unit teams could last longer in firefights making the use of manpower somewhat more efficient in these situations where a larger tank wouldn't do well.

You might even have the ability to mount 360 degree video directly transmitted to a remote location for processing with the ability to carry the extra weight of a larger power source. You can now employ bulkier sensors like Infra red and electro magnetic imagine with a friend or foe acquisition system that could allow the soldier to see threats through walls and make judgment calls about someone holding an AK47 or with a couple of pounds of Semtex and grenades under their shirt.

It might not be too difficult to make them bomb/explosive proof/resistant either. Maybe by employing a explosion deflection shield as something heavy and carried in front of the soldiers that can be dropped and used to divert the energy of some blasts around them.

I agree that it is usesless in open warfare. You would be better served by larger and more efficient tracked or wheeled vehicles or maybe even an all terrain quadrupedal implementation carrying multiple soldiers at one. But I think the special tactical situations of close quarter urban combat lends some uses that could be somewhat useful even if it is to carry robots that do the dirty work. Can you imagine a bomb disposal bot carried in a rucksack on one of these things that a soldier could carry on foot patrol and use to check out suspicious items on found in their paths? It would be especially nice if the costs was less then outfighting a Humvee for the same missions but could cover the same number of troops with as much confidence. Drive them in, drop them off, and let them get busy.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too

      Possible, but it comes only with a dreadlocks
mounted helmet...

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Cjstone]

Stay on the bounce, ape.

Heinlein was either able to accurately predict the future of the military, or he directly inspired it. In fact, a Marine Corps general stated that the corps' future equipment and organization needed to emulate the Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Cjstone]

You're not thinking big enough. I'd take an eight foot tall suit of power armor with smart-guns, a variable-beam-width plasma weapon, bombs, rockets, and tactical nuclear missiles. To top it all off, there would be a jump system and orbital drop pods. In other words, a suit of Marauder power armor from Starship Troopers.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[jollyreaper]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too? The problem is that you're still a squishy human inside. It would make more sense to operate robotic weapons platforms remotely, in conjunction with decent enough local AI on the unit itself. The scifi example would be from Night's Dawn where the are no starfighters per se, that role is taken over by combat drones called wasps. The mothership releases the wasps and those unmanned units perform the high-G maneuvers that would turn humans to jelly. The mothership than then move along a saner flight path, not having to worry about combat G-loads on the passengers.

Harry G. Stine's old Warbots series seems like a more realistic view of high-tech combat in the future, not as much Starship Troopers, though I would dearly love to have a combat suit like that. :) In the Stine setting, VR jacks into the human nervous system have been perfected. Soldiers could operate in the field in conjunction with unmanned warbots. These were not wise-cracking droids, they had all the personality of a Predator drone. The humans could fight in conjunction with these robots, sending them ahead to draw fire, directing them with a greater level of precision than could be had back at base. They could also use a limited VR to give more precise instructions than could be achieved with verbal commands. For very complicated ops, the operators could use a VR immersion device like the chairs in Matrix to go under and teleoperate the robots.

The other factor that made these weapons so effective was a god-like view of the battlefeld thanks to sensory fusion software and tiny observation robots. You know how you can see everything so well in video games but generals on the ground are stuck with maps and radio reports? Imagine having a view of the battlefield as detailed as the video game, and pushing the fog of war back to boot. That's what they're already working on at the Army testing ranges today, using low-observable drones to loiter over the battlefield.

Now if we ever get the quantum entanglement stuff sorted out and can come up with an untrackable instant communication technology like the ansible of scifi, then hooooooly shit. Right now the biggest drawback to remotely operated robots is that the AI's just aren't good enough yet to rely on local control in the event contact is lost. Predator drones can continue their mission on autopilot and fly back in range but the last thing I want to see is an armed combat bot on the ground trying to pick targets without a human to say "no, not a target, bad robot!" If they default to inactivity when jammed, that just means the enemy gets to pick them off as their leisure.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[emilper]

so, humans are a "colossally stupid idea" too ?

Bipeds are a lot more efficient for walking, it just requires some extra computing power to keep them balanced: I suppose this is the reason you find bipedal animals, other than the humans, only in places where saving energy is really important, such as dry savannas or deserts.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[boris111]

They need to make Neosapiens first.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[emilper]

Heinlein was in the army in his youth. No need to predict "the future of the military": armor has to be heavy to be truly effective, but if it's heavy, it limits the mobility of the soldier. Generals have been drooling for ways to make soldiers able to carry bigger guns and thicker plates for millennia.

Tanks are only a compromise, since you get only one cannon for 4 to 6 crew: crew members are much harder to replace than tanks or cannons, and they would be a lot more effective and less vulnerable if you could spread them instead of having all 4 in the same place.

During WWI, before armored vehicles became used, old style armor was tried, but it was too heavy: one example here (not in English, but the pictures don't need translation) http://historiasconhistoria.blogia.com/2008/021401-luchas-medievales-en-el-siglo-xx.php ...

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[GodInHell]

but I can't think of any valid reason for two legs.

Psychological shock value

navigating narrow alleys / urban warfare generally

Intuitive combat tactics

BECAUSE IT'S COOL

okay, that last item sounds like fanboi-ism, but bear in mind that one of the roles played by military equipment is recruitment. Drive a mech!, shit, I might have to enlist. -GiH

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, there will be a military application for bipedal robots, but they'll be limited in size to maybe 7 feet tall (enough to get in a doorway in an urban environment), and be of 'exoskeleton' form, as in TFA. There's really no feasible reason why we'll ever see bipedal "Mechs" (i.e, a robot large enough to have a cockpit), due to center-of-gravity issues, and no real advantages for having only two legs.

large(>3m tall) legged military robots will most likely look more like "spiders", "centipedes", or "centaurs", rather than "giant humans"

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[glasshalfemptylc]

I can't even imagine the mayhem that would result from mounting a chainsaw on one of those bad boys...

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

usually, 'fuel economy' isn't the first thing the military has on it's list of demands.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[DerekLyons]

Heinlein was either able to accurately predict the future of the military, or he directly inspired it.

Or maybe he just paid attention to developments around him - the Army was researching exoskeletons years before Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers.
 
 

In fact, a Marine Corps general stated that the corps' future equipment and organization needed to emulate the Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers.

Again, back to the history books... The USMC (as a combat arm and as opposed to what is now the FMF) was a lightweight fast moving infantry force - until it got bloated by WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War in general. Heinlein, a keen student of history and warfare, was undoubtedly aware of this.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Aussie]

Heinlein was in the army in his youth. Navy, Heinlein was in the Navy until medically retired.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Sibko]

Just felt like pointing out, the average crew for a modern tank is between 3-4 people. I've not personally heard of a tank with a crew of 6.

Tanks also have more than one weapon. On the Abrams for instance, there's the main cannon, the co-axial machine gun [It points where the cannon does.] and a pintle mount on top for a manned gun. As well, the soldiers inside the tanks have their own weapons. The pintle mounted gun is sometimes replaced with an electronic turret.

The Russian BMP-3, an infantry fighting vehicle [Not to be confused with a tank.] has a 100mm cannon, a 30mm cannon, and three 7.62mm machine guns.

Honestly, in my personal opinion tanks won't go away even if we have troops equipped with exoskeletons, carrying more armor and better weapons. The ground-pounders still won't be able to haul around a 120mm cannon, nor the armour that a tank does. At best, you'd be looking at protection from small-arms, perhaps up to 14.5mm. But when you need a mobile bunker to assault a fortified enemy position, tanks will be there, doing the job.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[Bender0x7D1]

Yeah, Mechs are a stupid idea - until you need to drive your tank over a 10' deep crevasse or up a steep river bank or you have to duck. Then the design idea doesn't look so bad. It's also good if you have to pick up anything.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[sumdumass]

Yes, I guess I can agree with you. I wasn't considering size as much as functions. Although it would be nice to have several layers of armor to protect an isolated person but as you mention, that would be easier accomplished by more then two legged robots.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[crawling_chaos]

And you find arachnids everywhere. Even in deserts and savannas the quadrupeds far outnumber the bipeds. Bipedalism is an evolutionary accident, not a necessarily superior solution to efficient movement.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[emilper]

Correct ... where I live the concept denoted by "army" includes "navy", "aviation", "infantry", "armored ..." etc.

Re:No Iron Man tag?

[emilper]

But when you need a mobile bunker to assault a fortified enemy position, tanks will be there, doing the job.

How about just going around the "fortified" enemy position and cutting it's supply lines? It has been done a lot during the last world war. Tanks are for squishing infantry or other tanks, not for taking out fortified positions, since fortified positions can use bigger guns than the tank car survive. Once you have an infantryman than can carry more than a few RPG round with him and some protection against air attacks, tanks are obsolete: look up the beginning of the Yom Kippur War.

Some of the early tanks had more than 10 crew on board. You are right, the tendency is it decrease the number of crew, which only proves my point: the ideal situation is to have one man for each armored vehicle, since it takes 20 years to "make" a man, but a lot less to make a tank.

So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "aliens"

[zappepcs]

Seriously, this is a good thing but I think some of the 'planned' uses are a bit optimistic. I'm more than willing to be surprised though.

Anything with useful commercial life would need power like a forklift, and that is about as small as you can make a useful 'suit' for lifting that is self powered.

Who knows, maybe granny will walk again one day soon. What we do know is that she won't get to compete in the olympics with her new suit!

Won't somebody think of the illegal immigrants? This thing could put the day laborers out of work.

No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get :)

Crysis anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maximum Armor...

obligatory quote...

[Walruzoar]

"Leave her alone you bitch!"

Re:obligatory quote...

[Nick Number]

"Obligatory" in this case meaning "incorrect".

It's "Get away from her, you bitch!"

Re:obligatory quote...

[Kaleidoscopio]

"Aliens" - Great movie, awfull sequels...

Re:obligatory quote...

[fitten]

It's prequel was pretty good, too. But yeah, the sequels kind of blow.

Re:obligatory quote...

[Anonymous Coward]

o.O
Aliens was the sequel you insensitive clod.

Re:obligatory quote...

[halivar]

I wanted to tag it getawayfromheryoubitch, but my funny tagging efforts only ever go for naught. Alas...

Re:obligatory quote...

[halivar]

And, indeed, its sequels sucked.

They should ask Robert Downey Jr

[Rik Sweeney]

His photo is on some bloke's MySpace page, gang signs and all because he doesn't mind you throwing them up.

I really need to get back into my street talk...

The designing engineers.

[AltGrendel]

The designing engineers were primarily from Japan.

Re:The designing engineers.

[Constantine XVI]

They just got frustrated with not being in charge of Gundam.

I wonder though

[hey!]

Why a suit, instead of an armed, semi-autonomous ROV? Why spend weight (and thus battery) protecting the squishy bits inside, when those bits can back home at an army base working eight hour shifts and going home to their families?

I realize that troops have to carry an ungodly amount of gear, but by the time all the technical challenges of a truly battle-ready suit are met, surely putting a person in it would be a waste.

Re:I wonder though

[frith01]

How about Electronic warfare? or worse yet, losing a robot & having it turned on you ? [ Obviously a manned exo could be captured too, but you would figure that the soldier would do their best to stay alive] Once they get the weight capabilities increase, I am sure they will start providing armored upgrades.

Re:I wonder though

[dreamchaser]

Remote control will probably never be quite as good as having a human brain inside guiding it. The idea is to augment a soldier's physical abilities. As we know they already have battle robots that are operated remotely. This fills a different need. It's hard to judge how fast technology progresses or will progress, but I can conceive of Starship Trooper (the book, not that horrid movie) style gear in a hundred years or less.

Re:I wonder though

[DarenN]

Because the meat inside gives it decision making capabilities that cannot be matched by AI either now or in the foreseeable future.

Also because the human body is remarkably flexible in its movement and our brains are evolved to be quite good at this type of movement. An augmentation system doesn't have to necessarily PROTECT the wearer - that's what armour is for. It's about enhancing the natural strength of the soldier, who is still one of the most effective weapons in nearly all combat situations. The ability to lift heavier objects (weapons, for instance), and presumably to throw things like grenades further will be useful.

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective!

Re:I wonder though

[TimeTraveler1884]

I can see a couple of reasons:

• Balance and dexterity of humans is available to the machine.
• Human decision making, feature recognition, senses and empathy are all available to the machine.
• Resilience, if the machine is damaged, the squishy bits can crawl out and still fight for a brief extended time.

Computing and robotics are not yet to the state that any of these can equate to the level of human ability.

Re:I wonder though

[Itchyeyes]

I have to disagree. While robotic units are gaining an increasingly important role in combat operations we are a very, very long way from completely eliminating the human element of the battlefield. So long as human beings are involved in warfare, protecting them will have a key role.

Not to mention that while this kind of technology is being developed for the battlefield, it has uses far beyond combat. Suits like this could increase productivity and decrease injuries in any hundred of industries that require workers to lift heavy loads.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Remote control will probably never be quite as good as having a human brain inside guiding it.

Why not though? I'd like to see an airtight argument that practical powered armor is, net, more effective than an ROV. It's not that ROVs can, in the near future, replace soldiers, but in any case where you can imagine a suit like this being practical, surely an ROV would be more practical.

After all, soldier carry a lot of stuff, basically as much as physically possible without being a net impairment. The suit and its battery simply add to this, so surely such a suit would have to multiply the soldier's muscle power considerably. In that case, moving about is accomplished by muscles controlling actuators, and would, I'm guessing, be limited by that. So while I can imagine a scenario where a lightly but appropriately armed soldier outperforms either an ROV or suited soldier, I am doubtful that a suited soldier will outperform a solider running an ROV, especially considering the lower hazard the ROV operator encounters.

Now here's another possiblity. If a practical power suit is possible, why not issue every soldier a robotic mule to carry his stuff, or possibly even him?

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Does the meat inside suddenly lose its decision making capabilities if it is, let us say, a few hundred meters away?

And so far as the human body's flexibility is concerned, that argument goes out the window once you encase that body in what is to all purposes a ROV, except that the operator is tucked into it like spam in a can. If the suit does not protect the wearer, I can only imagine it makes him less mobile and more vulnerable.

Re:I wonder though

[Itchyeyes]

I don't really think that carrying supplies are a good application for a system like this. Things like heavy body armor and the ability to carry higher power weapons would be better uses. In which case you get a soldier that retains most of their mobility and dexterity, but is much more efficient in combat.

Re:I wonder though

[Colonel Korn]

Because the meat inside gives it decision making capabilities that cannot be matched by AI either now or in the foreseeable future. I've developed a new AI that can achieve the necessary level of decision-making and mechanical control. Basically, I set up a lot of parallel processes that constantly sample and rewrite each other based on experience and focus on self preservation at all costs. I think that these giant mechanized killing machines would be a great way to test my new AI in the real world.

What a recipe for success!

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Suits like this could increase productivity and decrease injuries in any hundred of industries that require workers to lift heavy loads.

Well, that may be the case, but I doubt that a suit would be an optimal design in any case. Why not a forklift with a well designed robotic arm, or some similar design that carries more lifting power for less complicated and energy intensive mobility?

Re:I wonder though

[Itchyeyes]

Because there are a lot of exercises that still require a lot more dexterity and range of motion than equipment like a forklift can offer.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Either way you're running a robotic arm. There's nothing magical I can see about putting a person in a can attached to that arm, unless you can somehow manage to extend his proprioception into the arm. Doing this means that the arm must envelop the operator's arm, yet retain its approximate dimensions.

It seems to me that it's a lot more practical to use a VR setup; you could even scale the system to allow workers to assemble bridge girders like Legos.

As far as the fork lift is concerned, it doesn't have to be a wheeled vehicle. It can be a four legged walking contraption that would provide a more stable and safer platform from which larger forces could be applied.

Re:I wonder though

[TheBig1]

Remote control will probably never be quite as good as having a human brain inside guiding it. Which is a fact which all good Cybermen know beyond doubt. YOU WILL BE UPGRADED.

Re:I wonder though

[dreamchaser]

Not if I have anything to say about it *heads to the Tardis to form his plan and get his screwdriver*

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Sure, but don't higher power weapons translate into more rounds fired or higher kinetic energy per round? That's weight. I'm also suggesting that you probably can't add heavier armor without removing other things the soldier carries, or having the soldier's mobility restricted by the system. If he needs to move faster, he'd need to remove the added protection. If the system failed, even partially, he'd have to choose between mobility and protection.

Not that it wouldn't be cool to have power armored soldiers, of course. I'm just suggesting that maybe complicating the decisions a solider has to make in combat by making him dependent on a technology like this for mobility and protection might not be a good thing.

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not though? I'd like to see an airtight argument that practical powered armor is, net, more effective than an ROV. It's not that ROVs can, in the near future, replace soldiers, but in any case where you can imagine a suit like this being practical, surely an ROV would be more practical.

Well, since we haven't waged war against particularly sophisticated enemies in the last couple of decades we haven't seen any state-of-the-art jamming techniques.

Re:I wonder though

[Terminal Saint]

As a matter of fact, that's part of the plan.

If you watch this more detailed video from back in November: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=109_1195663753 they even mention that long term they plan to enable the suits to be autonomous. Soldier steps in and it's an exoskeleton, soldier steps out, it's a humanoid robot.

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

So that we can operate inside Faraday cages? So that a powerful jammer evens the playing field instead of disabling your army?

Re:I wonder though

[stubear]

Soldiers, in fully protective battle armor, can make decisions in the field that ROV operators are unable to make due to their distance and disconnection to the situation. Was that airtight enough for you or were you planning on completely panning this concept, trusting AIs to make decisions better then humans?

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Well, sure. The robots could be jammed, just like your guys can be killed by a massive fuel air-bomb or a biowarfare agent. It's the same concern, but the costs are different.

The ROV operators can try even harder than the power armored soliders to avoid capture. They can afford to "die".

I'm not suggesting for an instant that ROVs replace live soldiers. I'm saying that the technology to provide practical powered armor to troops could also create highly effective ROVs. It may be that the best choice would be a force with a mix of conventional, power-armored and ROV forces.

On the other hand, it might also be that such a force wouldn't be much if any better than a mix of conventional troops and ROV units. Certainly it would cost more, and at some point that becomes a limiting factor in providing the best equipment.

Re:I wonder though

[Unordained]

All that comes to mind are giant remote-controlled versions of Gundam suits, being used for construction, lifting debris (search and rescue) ... oh, and tearing through cities on a rampage, while the operator sits in a VR room back home.

There was some research I came across a while back saying that humans in a VR environment adapt quickly to using their limbs in abnormal ways, if the VR environment "coaches" them -- they could learn to move their elbows a special way to control the movement of a six-legged creature, for example. So it's possible we could design 'bots that aren't necessarily anthropomorphic that we could still retain control over via VR. Four-legged would be one option, but so would 3 or 6 or whatever is appropriate for the mission. The benefits of VR are more than just "not having to protect the operator against bullets" -- heat, cold, water, toxic vapors, chemical weapons, biological weapons, and G-forces (for pilots). It also means you could swap out operators on the fly -- when they become tired, distraught, or if the mission requires knowledge, skill, or cunning best provided by someone else.

You would probably want the operator to have a good idea of the status of all parts of the robot -- without his skin and bones reporting damage, the operator might not realize the robot is incapable of achieving something because it's damaged, and take it into a more dangerous situation than he should, wasting it. A sense of "pain" would still be important. A "check engine" light would be insufficient.

It seems most people in this thread missed the part where we're discussed a tele-operator robot, where someone is sitting in a suit back home that isn't powered (except maybe enough for force-feedback), and remote-controls a robot that is powered, but isn't carrying a human operator. We're not talking about AI. The main complaint then is communication -- if it were "robots on mars" it could be a lag issue, but here it's mostly a noise issue, someone jamming the signal. You'd also want to protect against theft -- it's one thing to reprogram a human, it's another to reprogram a bot.

It'd make it much easier to have discussions about the "value" of a given soldier, where it's a purely mechanical construct. Currently, there may be estimates on how much it costs to "operate" a soldier, in terms of training, food, lodging, medical care, transportation, etc. but it's difficult to discuss it publicly -- because it quickly starts to sound like losing N soldiers in battle was a cost/benefit decision, and their lives were only worth $X each. With bots, at least the numbers aren't emotionally-bound. (But then someone would want to verify that this was a cost-effective solution for war, and we'd have to compare the numbers, leading back to the same question. I think it's obvious to everyone that replacing each and every soldier with a $1billion machine would cost too much -- but they'd still be unwilling to discuss the point that a soldier is only worth, say, $300k, in terms of replacement cost. Any number would be too low.)

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Why?

If the armor is "fully protective", why couldn't that soldier be in a VR simulator that can tilt and rotate and provide force feedback? And the delay created by a thousand kilometers distance is nothing compared to the delay created by the servos responding to his inputs.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. The kind of armor we're talking about is probably decades in the future. However ROVs are here today, albeit in crude form. I'm betting that ROV technology and strategies for using it will mature far before anything like combat ready power suits become practical.

Re:I wonder though

[Chris Burke]

Why a suit, instead of an armed, semi-autonomous ROV?

Because we are a long, long way off from developing a robot as flexible and dependable as the human body in the field. Asimo can barely climb stairs, a soldier can bound up them, scramble over a pile of rubble, and perform all other manner of ad-hoc behaviors that no robot could duplicate and no remove control system is sophisticated enough to convey.

Augmenting the human soldier will yield much greater dividends sooner than trying to go for an ROV.

Re:I wonder though

[Lord_Breetai]

Now here's another possiblity. If a practical power suit is possible, why not issue every soldier a robotic mule to carry his stuff, or possibly even him?

This is sort of like a a robotic mule. OK, it looks more like a headless dog, but still...

Re:I wonder though

[CowboyCapo]

All of a sudden, I'm starting to hear one of the orchestral arrangements from Brad Fiedel running through my mind unwanted... You know, the soundtrack from The Terminator. Then it queues into the opening theme for Battlestar Galactica.

Thanks, guys. I needed that.

Re:I wonder though

[bazonic]

I'd like to see an airtight argument that practical powered armor is, net, more effective than an ROV

I think the question becomes, "what is practical powered armor?"

As it stands, ROV is useful in a limited roles. They have performed well in the air, and we're getting closer to ground vehicles, but on the human-level, there are situations where it is just not practical.

Going house to house, room to room in urban operations requires going over a large number of different surfaces; stairs, jumping fences, crawl spaces, etc. Same with a jungle operation. The current ROVs, which run on tracks, just don't have this capability. Assuming we could make a humanoid ROV, I would agree with you. The operator would wear an apparatus that would essentially put him/her in the ROV with sight, sounds, and pressure feedback (if I put more weight on this floorboard, I will fall through). By the time we can do all that we'll probably be talking about neural implants for the operators or semi-autonomus, self-aware AI ROVs.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

I have to admit, it's a pretty impressive demonstration.

Note, though, that the suit is tethered to a practically endless supply of power. That is why I think these things will not be practical in combat in most of our lifetimes. Muscle power is limited, but incredibly efficient. A solider can carry enough energy on him to keep him at peak performance for days.

Any practical untethered system would only be usable for a very short time, or it would be designed around the need to carry a massive power source. I can imagine specialized uses for a suit that worked for ten or fifteen minutes though, although higher endurance ROVs could perform many of the same functions.

Re:I wonder though

[techpawn]

Instead of a suit why not a gas that augments the solder or an injection. Maybe call it a Super Solder Serum? I mean, I'm sure the unencumbered solder would be far more agile than one in a suit. In fact, maybe they could even blow them away with pumpkin bombs during a test flight just to prove that they're better and deserve the defense contract...

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

OK, I'm playing devil's advocate here.

Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare? Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, robotic sapper-rats, robotic wall battering elephants.

It's not that I can't imagine a force of power armored commandos that can do things that normally equipped ones cannot. It's that I can't imagine the technology that makes that practical not creating even better choices.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Well, I'll only say that historically, the undependability of the human body has been a major determining factor in warfare...

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective! Actually this is quite useful in combat when you consider the weight of body armor, ammo, etc. If you could double the weight you carry of both of these, you'd have a formidable advantage in combat.

TFA specifically mentioned logistics as a first use, but the usefulness of this to the combat soldier would be immediately evident to anyone who's ever gone out with a full load of gear in Iraq.

Re:I wonder though

[backwardMechanic]

Sound a bit like you're describing a tank?

Re:I wonder though

[wbaxter1]

The suit would lessen injury to logistics personnel. It could be useful for moving boxes, loading and unloading bombs from aircraft, and the sort. Now that the Navy is striving to cut man power with it's, Smart Ship it means less people are needed to do work of what use to take the whole ship during underway periods. I wouldn't use this in the field though unless, it been in production for a while. Combat is a dynamic enviroment, and often takes place in the most punishing places. The last thing I would want is an untried piece of gear which might break miles from safety while my life was in danger.

Re:I wonder though

[sumdumass]

Why not make the suit the field transportation unit for the robot. I mean attach the thing to it, the soldier takes it on patrol and employs it when necessary. You can rig the suit with tons of sensors that can find weapons under clothing, perhaps sniff nitrates or other explosive traces when approaching a possible IED or road side bomb. The alarm goes off, the soldier pushes a button, the robot detached and investigates. He could perhaps transfer control to a remote location so the robot could participate in a fire fight independent of the soldier on the ground too. Imagine a patrol of 4-6 of these that if attacked or engaged, could effectively become a 8-12 man unit for the duration.

I think a situation like that could free up the complexity and man power requirements for operating remotely control robots where the field soldier controls it for the most part and someone at a remote command can assist and possible control 12 robots at once instead of one or two they do now. The soldier in the field would be replacing the majority of what the remote command does until things get hairy which is a small part of the time.

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the astro-spies, (or was it spy-nauts?) that the military trained to sit in a satellite and push a camera shutter when they flew over Russia.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

I think this is certainly the most easily imaginable near term use for this technology, given a workspace with plenty of available power, that is designed for approximately human sized and shaped workers handling a variety of things not built with efficient robotic movement in mind.

Shipboard use might fit this description perfectly. While nearly everything this suit could do probably could be accomplished more effectively by other means, I see one application where the flexibility of having a humanoid form would be extremely helpful, namely responding to battle damage. In that case, the environment is altered outside its design parameters, so robotic forklifts aren't really an option.

Still, in the long run, remotely operated vehicles and immersive VR technologies could do anything a suit like this could, with less risk to personnel, but I can imagine a tethered power suit being adapted for use on aircraft carriers without having to do a lot of redesign.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Except there wouldn't be any people in it, so you wouldn't need the cost and weight of the armor fancy reactive armor that's supposed to protect the crew from things like EFPs. And because you don't need to house and protect the crew, you could make it any size or shape you want, starting from something the size of a radio controlled car all the way up an M1 tank, minus the crew space, and maybe with things like robotic arms to do minefield clearance and deploying pontoon bridges.

Re:I wonder though

[k_187]

you're missing the fact that combat ready power suits are AWESOME

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Now, put a saddle on that sucker and you have a 21st century Hussar.

Which might not be a bad idea. It's ironic that we're talking about technology like this, when every grunt or soldier I've ever talked to has the same complaint: the Pentagon can't seem to come up with a decent boot.

Re:I wonder though

[Culture20]

Because this defeats the three enemies of hollywood robotics:

Stairs: Human legs, brain, and inner ear balancing
Oxymorons / Logical or Mathematical inconsistencies: Human brain to ignore logic
Time Travel: Okay, so the suit can't time travel since it's inorganic, but the pilot can.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

you're missing the fact that combat ready power suits are AWESOME

Not as awesome as bikini-clad fem-bots. Let's get our technology priorities straight here.

Re:I wonder though

[OldeTimeGeek]

He wouldn't, but don't you think that he may act differently if he was in the can rather than controlling it remotely? I'd think that an operator would tend to look at a remotely-controlled suit as more expendable and might get into situations where the suit is more likely to be "killed" if they didn't have to worry about being injured in the process.

Maybe a negative feedback system would work...

Re:I wonder though

[wbaxter1]

I don't know about battle damage. I have a hard time seeing a person wear this with his Scott air pack. Maybe if the Navy went back to the O2 Breathing Apparatus, but even then there would be lump in the from and the lump from the exo on the back of person. It would make it difficult to get through a scuttle(Small round hatch like device use to enter an isolated compartment from above) or man hole( piece of metal normally bolt over the access hole of a void). Also in conflags their are a lot of tight squeezes, and I don't thinks this will fit into those. Of course if it means one at every locker for a member of the shoring, salvage, entry, or some other team, than probably.

Re:I wonder though

[slashgrim]

The squishy bit inside helps us fight the run-amok robots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_robots

Re:I wonder though

[CrashPoint]

I'd think that an operator would tend to look at a remotely-controlled suit as more expendable and might get into situations where the suit is more likely to be "killed" if they didn't have to worry about being injured in the process.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. It means the operator can afford to throw his "life" away when the situation requires it, like self-destructing to avoid enemy capture.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

A Faraday cage has to be grounded carefully to work. That's were most people go wrong with their tin-foil hats. They neglect the alligator clip to the wire that leads to a six foot copper spike driven into the Earth.

Same goes for the various solutions for hiding the RFID in your passport. Yes, you can make reading it less efficient, but it is still physically possible.

Re:I wonder though

[emilper]

Why a suit, instead of an armed, semi-autonomous ROV?

Probably because of the "semi-autonomous" part, which I think is a lot harder to do right (and secure too) than the "weight-lifting" part. Until there will be "semi-semi-autonomous" Rumbas on the market, they work on the "weight-lifting" part.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Well, you wouldn't want anything lethal being part of the autonomous functions, but it as we've seen in the Mars rovers basic navigation is something that is achievable.

So when Sarge says get up on top of that ridge to lay down some suppressing fire, you can chart the approximate course, then get up and go to the bathroom, grab a coke and a bag of chips on the way back before you're needed.

OK, that particular scenario probably won't ever happen.

Re:I wonder though

[rantingkitten]

Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare?

In most cases, yes. Since the urban infrastructure was designed for the human form, a robot that needs to get around and use things in that environment should probably be pretty close to the human form.

In other environments this is probably not the case. A human form might not be the best for arctic or jungle combat. In such a case you'd probably want the robot to resemble (or draw from) an animal which is adapted for that environment.

Re:I wonder though

[GodInHell]

Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare? Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, robotic sapper-rats, robotic wall battering elephants. Sure -- but what's easier, building a frame for a human to drive, or designing tiny robots with tazers and a fail-safe AI to drive them? miniaturization is the beast in this process. Getting something human sized has taken them years and years. Your idea is great, but much further off. -GiH

Re:I wonder though

[WastedMeat]

uh, urban environments were specifically constructed to be easily traversable by humans.

Re:I wonder though

[emilper]

by "secure" I was thinking about the situation when either the satellite relying the orders gets shut down, or the link is jammed, and then it's "free advanced tech" for the other side :-). If some squishy fellow is inside, you can leave out a lot of sensitive, and fragile too, electronics.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

That's an interesting point.

Although ... we might learn from other species that have colonized urban settings and exploit its parameters for purposes other than what the designers intended. The troops make ad hoc, atypical uses of the urban environment. Some of these uses have been pioneered by species like rats, who are adept at finding shelter and moving stealthily in urban settings.

A robot rat, in particular, would never run out of "food"; it could function indefinitely by tapping into electricity.

Re:I wonder though

[DerekLyons]

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective!

Well, the Army does do things other than combat - like move mountains of supplies, perform maintenance on a variety of vehicles, etc... etc...

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

You wouldn't need fail-safe AI. Do you need fail-safe AI for a smart bomb? In the case of the taser equipped bees, the limited operational time of an autonomous robot would be an advantage. You'd throw them into a building and they'd taser anything that was man sized and moved; then you go in with your troops, whose clothing transmits a shutdown message to any robots that find them.

Half an hour later, the bees are running low on juice and render themselves useless by igniting a small squib that fries their innards.

Compare that to the starship trooper scenario, with heavily armored troops smash their way through the house. More danger and mess for everybody involved.

Re:I wonder though

[2names]

"Time Travel: Okay, so the suit can't time travel since it's inorganic, but the pilot can."

So wrap the pilot around the suit a la Wolverine.

Re:I wonder though

[AioKits]

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective!
It is if you have to work with artillery, mortars and rockets!

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

I promise I'm not trolling here: You didn't make an airgtight argument, or even an argument at all. You made an uncited claim. This claim's reasoning also borders on a false dilema (human/ground or AI/remote).

Re:I wonder though

[olman]

No.

If that was the case, no mobile phone or PDA would ever pass EMC testing.

Re:I wonder though

[GodInHell]

This isn't a starship trooper scenerio -- it's an exoskeleton.

The original specs the DoD put out called for enhanced lifting capacity, the ability to move at 3mph for more than an hour, 1 5-10ft vertical jump, and 300 - 600 lbs of lifting force.

One of the consistent complaints you hear back from Iraq about weapons tech is weight -- the tracking and communications tools weigh too much, take up space that could be ammo, and essentially aren't all that useful.

Your proposed technology is basically an expensive flash bang with knockout gas.

The DoD isn't into making robots because they're cool -- nor into flights of fantasy with 10 ton mechs lumbering around.. but they do like useful tools, and they pay an awful lot in the hope of producing 1 in 10 technologies that actually works right.

-GiH

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is the human form really the ideal form for urban warfare? Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, robotic sapper-rats, robotic wall battering elephants."

This sounds like a pitch for World of Warcraft 2190.

Re:I wonder though

[mortonda]

#ping remote-soldier-164457
PING 10.2.56.34 (10.2.56.34) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 10.2.56.1 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.2.56.1 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.2.56.1 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.2.56.1 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
From 10.2.56.1 icmp_seq=5 Destination Host Unreachable

Re:I wonder though

[Chris Burke]

Any practical untethered system would only be usable for a very short time, or it would be designed around the need to carry a massive power source. I can imagine specialized uses for a suit that worked for ten or fifteen minutes though, although higher endurance ROVs could perform many of the same functions.

That's why the Japanese are working on a combination tethered/untethered system for city defense. As long as the unit remains attached to the tether it can operate effectively indefinitely, but if the tether is lost (either because it isn't long enough, or because the tether is severed) then the machine can still operate for five minutes at full capacity (which may not seems like long but is fairly impressive considering the size of these weapons).

Here's an artist's rendition of the prototype and test type systems.

Re:I wonder though

[AeroIllini]

Why has no one mentioned VR yet? Why would you place the soldier in front of a screen with a joystick, when you can strap him into a suit full of actuators that simply record his movement and translate it for the ROV in the field? Combine that with sensors on the ROV relaying data to several of the soldier's senses (sight and sound most importantly, for an immersive environment) and you have a pretty nimble fighting platform that has the same intelligence capabilities of the soldier, but without all that business about dying when shot. When the ROV keels over, the soldier just flips a switch and powers up another one, ready to head back into battle.

I would imagine that this type of setup would be even better than soldiers in suits in the field, because the computing power needed to run the whole thing is not limited by size and weight; the ROV itself only needs to send and receive data/commands and the computing iron is sitting in a protected bunker somewhere next to the VR interface. The ROV could have wildly different body structures better suited to the environment than a bipedal human form (wheels, wings, treads, multiple pairs of legs, whatever), and the inputs from the soldier would be mapped to the new body structure. There has also been great research done in the field of sense mapping, where one "sense" can be mapped onto another, and a person can learn to gain a new sense. Why not map the ROV's sense of balance, for example, to an electrode that relays information to the soldier through the tongue? People can learn to use these new senses as naturally as their own existing five, and it would certainly give the soldier a good sense of his/her surroundings when fighting "as" the ROV, miles away.

The only limit to this technology might be lag time, but that can be mitigated by placing the command hub as close to the battle as possible while still out of harm's way. If there's one thing the Army is really, really good at, it's bringing equipment to remote locations and setting up shop.

Re:I wonder though

[budgenator]

That's still engineer think, Grunt think is "How do I bail outa thins low-bid piece of shit when it FUBARs, it's not like this is the Energizer bunny or anything"

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Your proposed technology is basically an expensive flash bang with knockout gas.

But less lethal. There has never been a "knockout gas" that isn't dangerous.

Re:I wonder though

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

in any case where you can imagine a suit like this being practical, surely an ROV would be more practical.

Yes, as applied to a specific role. But speaking to the concept of a powered suit, not necessarily this one, the suit enhances a soldiers ability to do anything that soldier is capable of doing. An ROV is capable of only that which it's streamlined design allows. Maybe it carries things, maybe it is a small tank for shooting things; or for recon. But can the tank scale a wall? Provide rudimentary first aid to it's comrades? Improvise? A soldier can do all those things, and more. You don't have to write a routine for it. Some things it can do better than a machine, some worse.

It would seem far cheaper to develop and maintain a system that generally enhances the mechanical failings of a basic soldier than to completely replace them with specialized machines.

(Philosophical objections toward turning warfare against other humans into an episode of battlebots in the minds of the voters non-withstanding)

Re:I wonder though

[ignavus]

"surely putting a person in it would be a waste"

I have often felt this way about war too.

Re:I wonder though

[GodInHell]

Tazers are dangerous. Multiple tazings, or those near the heart, especially so. -GiH

Re:I wonder though

[Rogerborg]

Bingo. All these tech demos are just super impressive, but let's see one where it's hosed down for 48 hours, thrown out of the back of a flatbed and rolled down a sand dune, then inspected and put on by a grunt, with a realistic amount (8 hours) of training, using a standard issue field manual, in 120 degree heat. Oh, and he's got 4 hours of sleep a night for the past 12 weeks.

Re:I wonder though

[bar-agent]

I did find it amusing that the first uses are hoped to cause "fewer injuries when soldiers need to lift heavy weights or move objects around repeatedly". Not much of a combat objective!

Well, the first versions are likely to be tethered to a generator. So, yeah, they'll stay in the supply depot.

Re:I wonder though

[hey!]

Yes. A Faraday cage must be grounded. You can shield things without grounding them, but that is not a Faraday cage an there is some leakage.

Re:I wonder though

[DarenN]

Does the meat inside suddenly lose its decision making capabilities if it is, let us say, a few hundred meters away? Of course not, but the heightened survival reflexes that are conditioned by training would probably be very badly affected. Reaction time in a dangerous situation is generally lower.

Also, no matter how many cameras are on a ROV you don't get the same effect as you do from eyes - they've evolved to act as excellent detectors with wide field of vision and massive processing capacity.

In short, a remotely piloted anything is nowhere near as effective as a person in a ground combat situation.

And so far as the human body's flexibility is concerned, that argument goes out the window once you encase that body in what is to all purposes a ROV, except that the operator is tucked into it like spam in a can. If the suit does not protect the wearer, I can only imagine it makes him less mobile and more vulnerable. Dunno why I bother responding to people who obviously have not RTFA. It's not encasing anything. It's a set of supports with the power to augment what the wearer is doing. The processing power is used to figure out very quickly what its wearer is doing and to add extra power to that. While I'm sure the first versions will be a little clunky, and the manufacturers have admitted that there is a power problem, it's already good enough to be worth a further look.

Re:I wonder though

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not a swarm of robotic bees with taser stings? Furthermore, you aren't restricted to one form factor. You can have robotic spy-flies, I don't know how well swarms of robotic bees and flies would do in urban warfare... but I'm sure the terrorists will think twice about hiding in the flower garden.

Re:I wonder though

[rantingkitten]

Sure, there's always more than one way to tackle a situation like this. But what happens when the robot, upon entering a building, needs to open a door or climb a ladder or something? :)

Considerations like that are why I say that in general, the human form is the best for urban environments, which are built around human forms anyway.

Re:I wonder though

[olman]

No there isn't!

I design medical devices which are by their nature isolated from ground. They're also verified much more thoroughly for EMI regulations than consumer electronics. Nothing goes in or comes out unless I say so.

EXO SQUAD !

[Anonymous Coward]

so the cartoon does hold some truth

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[moderatorrater]

No car analogy yet If it's any consolation, you sound like the guy that kept trying to wash my windshield yesterday while I was stuck in traffic.

Do not click on the above link

[Anonymous Coward]

As title...

You're the only one refering to nimp, you douche

[Anonymous Coward]

civilliberty.nimp.org, that's a fricken' laugh riot. Sorry, we aren't that stupid, you'll have to do better.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[zaax]

Parf, using a forklift I can lift up to 45' tonnes, and with my tug pull 50 tonne. Though my mates can do a lot better. with the ship to shore cranes

Re:Nice reference there.

[OldMrToad]

I'm glad SOMEBODY got it. Getting old is a bitch. The alternative is worse.

Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lifting stuff, we have forklifts for that. Much simpler and cheaper.

Heavy weapons? Is the US military's problem really a lack of firepower? I seriously doubt it. Maybe there is a lack of ethics and diplomacy but they can bounce corpses and ashes pretty high already.

Re:Why bother?

[Digi-John]

Drive heavy machinery much? It's not difficult once you get used to it, but being able to pick up, move, stack, etc. various heavy things using my hands instead of a rather crude and clumsy mechanical manipulator (forks) would be great.

Re:Why bother?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Lifting stuff, we have forklifts for that. Much simpler and cheaper.

Really, you've seen many forklifts in the field unloading Hueys or Blackhawks, or unpacking a palette from a Chinook or Hercules?

Heavy weapons? Is the US military's problem really a lack of firepower? I seriously doubt it.

OK, you obviously never saw the guy carrying the M60 and its ammo.

Re:Why bother?

[Chris Burke]

Lifting stuff, we have forklifts for that. Much simpler and cheaper.

But, but, that only works if you stack the stuff on a pallet first! How does the heavy stuff get on the pallet, huh? That's right, guy in power armor.

Heavy weapons? Is the US military's problem really a lack of firepower? I seriously doubt it. Maybe there is a lack of ethics and diplomacy but they can bounce corpses and ashes pretty high already.

They're sick of "Army of One" being a marketing slogan about how they teach you personal strength and confidence and such. Oh, there's widespread clashes between militias and police in Basra? Send in Private Pile in his Army Battle Suit!

Re:Why bother?

[PinkyDead]

I suspect that these kind of things have a less obvious purpose - as marketing tools to justify military spending.

Take NASA, for instance, people didn't mind huge amounts being spent on it when there was something exciting and heroic to see - such as landing on the moon. As soon as the job became routine and much more practical, no one was interested and they got their funding cut.

If the military regularly rolls out these futuristic and legitimately expensive pieces of kit - then the public interest is maintained and so is the funding.

It also forces (allows) foreign powers to (happily) up their game and raise the stakes further - giving further justification for more spending.

Re:Why bother?

[IdeaMan]

Lifting stuff = More armor

The problem is that the economics are off. It's gotta be way cheaper for the enemy to take one out (even if you lose 4 guys to do it) than for us to build one. If this thing can run up stairs or through a regular sized door, then I can see where this would be used.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother??? Why? Because there is nothing else to spend my taxes on.
Why not dump $90859059034.00 in a program that will never amount to more then prototypes and research?

Re:Why bother?

[jollyreaper]

They're sick of "Army of One" being a marketing slogan about how they teach you personal strength and confidence and such. Oh, there's widespread clashes between militias and police in Basra? Send in Private Pile in his Army Battle Suit! Soldiers already use vehicles to move equipment. When the road ends and offroad vehicles are stuck, they're left to hump it in rucksacks. With exo-suits and cargo droids like the Big Dog, we're talking about the robotic equivalent of a Jeep. Imagine loading up your anti-tank gun on the back of a Big Dog. You reduce the number of people involved in servicing the weapon, transporting the parts, etc. If you have a known supply run, Big Dogs can be loaded up and sent on their way.

The part that really makes this scary for the opponent is that something like a Big Dog should be able to be better armored than a soldier, thus requiring a heavier weapon to disable it. This means the enemy will have to bog themselves down with heavy weapons in order to guard against these things. Say you know a building where bad guys are holed up. You can move the Dog right up to it. They don't have the firepower to disable it and shooting at it just means it will shoot back. It gets close, can use onboard sensors to locate targets and engage them, the Dog will bear the brunt of the attack. They'll be damaged, possibly destroyed, but better to lose a bot than a grunt.

I think the combination of computers and robotics will be at least as revolutionary in the 21st century as the development of the airplane and mechanized warfare in the 20th.

Re:Why bother?

[Charcharodon]

I suspect that these kind of things have a less obvious purpose - as marketing tools to justify military spending.

Take NASA, for instance, people didn't mind huge amounts being spent on it when there was something exciting and heroic to see - such as landing on the moon. As soon as the job became routine and much more practical, no one was interested and they got their funding cut.

Current Federal Wellfare budget
Social security $544 billion
Medicare $325 billion
Medicaid $186 billion
mandatory $357 billion
(food stamp, unemployment, child nutrition, child tax credits, supplement security, student loan, retirement/dissability)
Grand total $1.412 Trillion

Oh the government doesn't need much help to justify spending money.

The whole $10 million dollars the XOS program is costing DARPA is probably insurance for when the Congressional budget makers come looking for yet another chunk out of the military's budget to help bribe the general public to letting them stay in power.

Even with all the big spending that is going on military is less than 1/3 of the wellfare spending.

Re:Why bother?

[Kelbear]

Well, I could see its use in awkward unusual lifts. I see pleny of pictures of port disasters where cargo is flung all over the place, 5-story cranes collapsing over ships half-sunk and half-flipped into the water of the pier. Or digging out a tank stuck in the mud before enemies close in on the pinned and expensive equipment.

It takes some specialized equipment to get that stuff moving and time can be of the essence.

Nevertheless I still agree with the main point that heavy weaponry isn't our problem. If a 50 dollar IED toasts a humvee and/or a soldier or two we just lost more than a million spent fielding and maintaining them, and are also even deeper in the hole for the raised security costs resulting from a recent attack in that area. Tossing more and more at the problem has its limits. You can shoot an insurgent, but all it takes is a book to convert a fresh body and another gun to point in our direction. Then we have to spend orders of magnitude more money to counteract that.

Re:Why bother?

[ductonius]

If industrialization has taught us anything it's that people are the most expensive part of any system. Hideously expensive machines can and do pay for themselves if the replace enough people. Extra protective equipment for people pays for itself by preventing injuries. The preservation of 'knowledge resources' - people - is well worth almost any amount of money.

Re:Why bother?

[IdeaMan]

You're right, but what this means is that a much smaller army than ours can bankrupt us.
This is precisely what is happening in Iraq.

Yeah, but..

[Rob T Firefly]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Re:Yeah, but..

[NeutronCowboy]

Oh, come on. Someone mod this guy funny. I got a chuckle out of twist to an old meme.

Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Bohnanza]

"Rex can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos, more than he weighs." Ignoring the fact that the kilogram is a measure of mass, not force, this sentence still makes no sense. I can "pull down" double my weight with my little finger. Pulling it UP would be hard.

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Itchyeyes]

this sentence still makes no sense. I can "pull down" double my weight with my little finger. Pulling it UP would be hard. Except when the weight is on a pulley system as it clearly shows in the video. Who the hell modded this as insightful?

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[qw0ntum]

Pull down refers to some type of weight exercises. I'd imagine that's what he's talking about in the article: pull down machines are for this.

And about the kilos, that's how the weight on those machines is measured in countries that use the metric system. So while it's not technically correct, it's conventional to refer to the weights on the machine in terms of kilos, since that's how they are labeled. Everyone knows what a 90kilo mass is and how hard it is to pick up. Less so for an 882N weight.

Perhaps it's not fair to expect the /. crowd to know much about weight training though. :P I kid, I kid...

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Kijori]

If you watch the video it makes more sense. They're using a gym-style setup where you pull a bar down to lift a weight. I'm guessing they do it like that because it avoids balance issues.

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Chris Burke]

Ignoring the fact that the kilogram is a measure of mass, not force, this sentence still makes no sense. I can "pull down" double my weight with my little finger. Pulling it UP would be hard.

Translation: "I've never seen the inside of a gym before."

It's okay, this is an understanding crowd for such things. ;)

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Culture20]

I can pull down twice my weight with my little finger if the pulley system is set up right. Of course, it would take a lot of time and rope.

Re:Weight of more than 90 kilos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not check your brain out at brain.com

brain.com

Popsci

[howjan]

There was an article in this month's Popular Science about suits like this. If this kind of thing trips your trigger that article is worth a read.

Re:Popsci

[Anonymous Coward]

Never tell people you read Popular Science. That is like saying you rode the short bus to school.

Starcraft II

[AHumbleOpinion]

I want an advanced armored exoskeleton. Make it fly too. I can do without the repulors if I MUST, but please do give me a big flamethrower and a chaingun on my model. Maybe some shoulder mounted RPG's too?

And here we have another person that will seem to drop off the face of the planet once Starcraft II ships. Please remember not to play for 48 hours without sleep while consuming only nachos and soda, we wouldn't want you to permanently drop off the face of the planet. OK, maybe not "we" but "somebody" out there would care. ;-)

Re:Starcraft II

[dreamchaser]

Thank you. I needed a good laugh today :)

I am actually addicted to Medieval 2: Total War at the moment, but I am anticipating losing many hours to Starcraft II. I usually accompany my gaming with better fare though. A nice homebrewed IPA and some cheddar perhaps, or even some smoked salmon.

Re:Starcraft II

[Anonymous Coward]

That last sentence demands to be read in Comic Book Guy voice.

Prior Art

[greywire]

The big question for me is, can Stan Lee claim prior art against any attempt to patent this device?

Re:Prior Art

[nonsequitor]

I think Heinlein has dibs. This sounds more like the Mobile Infantry than it does Iron Man. Though I don't think they'll be deploying troops from orbit in suits like this anytime soon.

Re:Prior Art

[Count_Froggy]

Even Heinlein had others to give him ideas. I know that E. E. Smith's Lensman series had powered suits before Starship Troopers.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[xleeko]

No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get :) And of course, since it is in military use, we must sing a rousing chorus of "He tried to kill him with a forklift!"

- Wolf Raider Dave

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[AHumbleOpinion]

No car analogy yet... forklift was as close as I could get :)

Who needs a car, just run down the freeway at 60 mph in the exoskeleton. :-)

What about Troy?

[MyrddinBach]

Why don't they use this guys suit - it's already built and even tested!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3CzYw5-qdA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPS2l5fQ55A

I welcome our AI overlords

[CyberData4]

The Cylons were created by Man. They Evolved. They Rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a Plan.

Re:I welcome our AI overlords

[AHumbleOpinion]

The Cylons were created by Man. They Evolved. They Rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a Plan.

I take it you missed last Friday's episode. The Cylons no longer have a plan. :-)

Re:I welcome our AI overlords

[lufo]

WARNING - Father contains S P O I L E R !

Re:I welcome our AI overlords

[CyberData4]

Nah, I stopped watching after they had Starbuck jump the shark on the Season 3 finale.

Re:I welcome our AI overlords

[Chris Burke]

The Cylons were created by Man. They Evolved. They Rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a Plan.

And then it turned out the Cylons were just normal dudes in body armor, and they were pissed because we kept trying to feed them oil instead of food.

Re:I welcome our AI overlords

[Culture20]

There's a dude named Shark on the show? Who's left, Adama?

Have you seen the video?

[Manic Miner]

If you watch the video you will see this in context of using a "pull down" exercise machine, basically weight lifting, not quite sure of the relevance other than safety (much safer to use a pull down as strength test as if anything goes wrong the weight drop inside a controlled machine, rather than onto and squashing the poor tester and machine) as this mostly just shows how heavy the frame is.

Re:Have you seen the video?

[Itchyeyes]

There is an article in Popular Science that describes the pulldown exercise much better than this one. Basically he can pull down that weight indefinitely, without becoming fatigued. The PopSci article says he has done up to 500 reps and even then quit from boredom not because he was tired. It's the same thing with the ammo lift exercise that they show. What it didn't show very well is that there are 3 men pulling the ammo down off the crate while he puts them back up and they still can't keep up with him.

The suit doesn't so much as make him super strong as it makes it so he can lift normal weights with almost no fatigue. Something like this is ideal for carrying heavy loads for extended periods of time, like heavy body armor for instance.

loading bombs/missiles

[trybywrench]

this would go a long way in loading bombs or missiles on aircraft. I would imagine in a cramped environment it would be more agile then a forklift or whatever it is they use now. Also, it would be useful when doing stuff like changing a truck tire. Those things are heavy.

Re:loading bombs/missiles

[couchslug]

The bomb lift trucks used to load missiles are actually simple, stable, easy to use, and precise.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=981

http://musee.1wing.free.fr/VHC/VHC%20023.htm

OTOH, changing truck tires sucks, as does changing track. Mechy strength would be useful there.

Jamming for one

[dreamchaser]

Why not? The potential for the control signal to be jammed, for one. I'm sure there are many other valid reasons.

Re:Jamming for one

[hey!]

That's a good point, but in many ways we're already down that road, IIRC. We rely on communication and coordination as a force multiplier. While breaking the force down into multiple autonomous units is more practical when those units are people, it's probably more strategically costly to have that happen to people who try to fight on at cross purposes than to robots who execute some kind of return to base failsafe.

Re:Jamming for one

[dreamchaser]

We rely on it as a force multiplier, yes. That's different than having your force totally immobilized. There will always be a place for individual soldiers in the field, at least until when and if we get 'real' AI. Even then, do you want non-human intelligences controlling weapon's platforms anymore than they already do (AEGIS for one). Given that fact it makes perfect sense to augment the individual soldier's physical abilities and level of protection.

the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[peter303]

The book, not the campy movie, introduces these power suits. (I'm guessing the movie drops this much in the same way Spiderman is always pulling off his mask- the suit hides the humanity of the characters.)

Re:the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[lymond01]

Starship Troopers (the book) should be the main scifi reference to powered suits. Iron Man is fine, but Heinlein describes the idea very well: "You don't control the suit. You wear it, like putting on your shirt in the morning, you don't really notice its there. Except this suit makes a battalion of Sherman tanks look like cockroaches to a bazooka." (I...very badly...paraphrase.)

Build a bigger, badder suit, armored head to toe, so it can carry the power supply as well.

Re:the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Starship Troopers (the book) should be the main scifi reference to powered suits.

Supplemented of course with Haldeman's The Forever War. Some interesting additions to the concept in there.

Re:the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or Stakley's (sp?) book Armor.

Re:the path to Heinlein's Starship Troopers?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, the reason the director gave for not having the suits in the film was that it was too difficult. He hadn't read the book either!

Malfunctions could be painful if not deadly

[DJ Jones]

This sounds like a great idea until the exoskeleton suit malfunctions (from an outsourced software bug of course) and ends up forcefully hyperflexing ones knees with 90 lbs per square-inch of force.

That's a video I personally don't want to see on youtube.

Re:Malfunctions could be painful if not deadly

[Anonymous Coward]

Because surely they wouldn't be mechanically designed or have hardwired interlocks to prevent things like that from happening.

Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Universal Soldier didn't have robots. They were flesh and blood. Not even cyborgs.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[interval1066]

By the time these things are ready we won't need to put bodies in them. Then soon after the other side will have them. Then maybe war will become a harmless spectator sport. Of course some one will have the bright idea of "...well, since we're waging a war, we might as well put the losers in gas chambers..." (a la that Star Trek TOS episode, if anyone remembers...?) War is such a dark, stupid game.

What terrain would be suitable for powered suits?

[TheHawke]

Here's that ages-old question: Where are you going to be able to safely and efficiently operate a powered suit without sinking up to your waist in muck, tipping over due to unstable or uneven terrain, and be able to lift a working payload at the same time.

'Suits have this problem called weight distribution. Their footprints are about on par with a small car overloaded. When try to move loads on poor terrain, you'll wind up either getting dug out or being picked back up because the soil could not hold you up. Tracks that can handle twice their load can dance on that kind of terrain, even BobCats with tracks can handle soft sands that would try to swallow an average joes' foot.

I can see powersuits working on prepared grounds, Asphalt, cement concrete, macadam with treated substrates, but not thrown into a active combat situation where they would have to slog through mud or soft soils.

Robotic suits?

[davidwr]

I always suspected there was something un-human about DoD civilian upper management.

Re:What terrain would be suitable for powered suit

[piemcfly]

Don't worry, that's where the anti-gravity boots another department is working on come in handy!

Top Secret?

[street struttin']

Why is an article about state of the art US military equipment on a bbc.co.uk web site?

Future uses...

[weirdcrashingnoises]

i want to see something like this in fallout 3, only it's a guy wearing one that walks around shouting... "Bring out yer dead!!"

First the power armor

[Anonymous Coward]

When they start building government ran underground vaults I'm asking to be transfered to the nearest government ran oil rig.

nuts

[zogger]

There's no foot replacement for good hands (the reverse is true as well). Mountain goats are fantastic climbers, but monkeys and men are better. Two legs/feet and two hands is a better fit for extreme maneuverability in climbing and traversing rough terrain. I've done a lot of climbing and having hands is just nifty... The only reason it isn't used yet mechanically is that no one has built a good enough model. That opposable thumb idea caught on a long time ago because it "just works". And being able to travel on two points on less rough ground frees up the other two points to "do stuff" like tote things, swing a weapon, whatever.

Re:nuts

[Idiomatick]

The physics involved when you are a good 1000tons and 10m tall is totally different. Hands... shockingly not that necessary... what would you be holding that wouldnt get obliterated while you picked it up? Plus if you had feet you frigging break everything you walked near, 500t per foot would definitely sink into concrete... on mud or sand you probably make it knee deep. Anyways if you are a multi multi billion dollar machine i'm sure obstacles are no problem. Hell you could make it a highway-laying KILLING machine.

Better yet, just mod one of these: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Bagger-garzweiler.jpg

It already has a 22m saw blade on it! though it weighs in at 13,500t so it might be sluggish.

Re:nuts

[budgenator]

Wow, Real Daleks don't climb stairs do they.

Re:nuts

[BlueStrat]

The physics involved when you are a good 1000tons and 10m tall is totally different.

Well, if one keeps to the BattleTech battlemech visions ala MechWarrior, a light 'mech would be in the 15-30 ton class IIRC. An "assault class" 'mech was in the 80-100 ton class. Maybe a small dropship might weigh 1000 tons.

Also, the 'mechs used "myomer" muscles and were powered by thermonuclear power-plants (not nuclear) encased in a magnetic bottle and also heavily armored (would kinda make sense). No clumsy hydraulics or cripplingly-heavy, inefficient, and relatively low-powered energy source.

Given the huge amount of energy one could presumably get from a thermonuclear power-plant, coupled with relatively efficient muscle-type actuators and a neural link with the pilots' brain and inner-ear nerve bundles for balance and control, the physics could allow for a fairly nimble machine, although maybe not quite as nimble as what is modeled in the MechWarrior-genre games.

I did find it rather strange though that in the BattleTech universe, there was sufficiently advanced knowledge and computing power for a neural-interface-based balance and control system, yet targeting and guidance systems in many cases like missile systems, didn't even equal what's available today.

I'd love to see a novel written in which someone digs up an old US airbase on ancient Terra and finds an F-22 Raptors' missile guidance and targeting system or an Apache helicopters' systems and adapts it to battlemech targeting and weapons guidance systems. A bit of a twist on the "Lostech" plot tool.

Heck, while they're at it, take a page from one of Star Treks' original series episodes, and have them also find an ancient copy of the US Constitution and have a new United Star Systems democratic representative republic formed based on it, only with better implementations. Just please don't let the Clans get hold of any of the recent US politicians' ancient DNA and make any clones!!

Cheers!

Strat

Re:nuts

[KDR_11k]

A 15-30 ton, 10m mech would be shredded by fairly light weapons. A main battle tank weights 60 tons and can barely withstand a tank shot despite having a much lower profile (critical to avoid hits and use cover) and a much smaller area facing the enemy so less armor needed for a given thickness. Imagine how much armor you could fit onto a mech of that size without going over 15-30 tons. You'd probably hit that limit with just the motor system and weapon loadout.

Re:nuts

[BlueStrat]

A 15-30 ton, 10m mech would be shredded by fairly light weapons. A main battle tank weights 60 tons and can barely withstand a tank shot despite having a much lower profile (critical to avoid hits and use cover) and a much smaller area facing the enemy so less armor needed for a given thickness. Imagine how much armor you could fit onto a mech of that size without going over 15-30 tons. You'd probably hit that limit with just the motor system and weapon loadout.

Granted, the light 'mechs don't carry a lot of armor. They depend mostly on speed and maneuverability and generally carry a relatively large suite of ECM electronics and anti-missile systems, as well as "jump-jets" which allow a 'mech to become airborne for short hops, reaching as high as 350 feet, as well as the ability to cover a significant distance horizontally. This allows a "jack-in-the-box" tactic of popping up over cover, delivering a weapons salvo, and dropping back behind cover to move to another location, as well as also jumping terrain obstructions like gorges to escape. In the classic BattleTech universe, their main uses are as scout 'mechs, fire-support 'mechs, and anti-personnel units. Light 'mechs start at around 7 meters height, and are capable of "crouching" behind cover.

In the Mechwarrior game, light 'mechs can be quite effective against the larger, slower, heavy- and assault-class 'mechs because their high speed makes them very hard to hit. Back when the MechWarrior 3 and 4 game series were current, I had great fun in online team play piloting a light 'mech (the "Uller" was my preferred light 'mech chassis) and teaching newbies, who tended to go for heavy or assault 'mechs with lots of armor and weapons, the value of light 'mechs. I usually chose a single medium-strength weapon with a fairly rapid fire rate, and configured the 'mech for maximum armor and speed.

I'd then select my "victim", and use tactics and cover to get close, many times working with a "lancemate" (sometimes even two or three) in another light 'mech. Then it was a matter of maxing the throttle and circling the target close-in, while concentrating fire to a single, more thinly-armored section.

The rapid incoming fire the enemy pilot experienced also "bounced" his 'mech around spoiling his aim, hence my logic in selecting a lower-powered but faster-firing weapon. These tactics were very very effective, and tended to frustrate and fluster the enemy pilot in the heavier, more cumbersome 'mech, which just made things worse for him. I got called some very bad names quite often (heheh).

Just like any weapon, there's a place and situation for it, and a proper set of tactics to maximize its' effectiveness. In a firefight between two (or more) 'mech forces mainly composed of heavy and assault class 'mechs, a few fast light-'mechs in the enemy forces' lines causing havoc can and has tipped battles.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:nuts

[KDR_11k]

This is about the practicality in real life combat, a 7m tall machine with paper thin armor will get torn apart by any vehicle mounted weapon. A gunship (say, an Apache) would turn a squad of these into scrap metal in no time just by using the AT machine gun. Even 100t mechs would be highly vulnerable to ATGMs due to the large area they'd have to cover with armor.

Your mech would be highly visible from the air and ground, even just a simple RPG launcher would be enough to destroy it so you'd have a huge disadvantage, you cannot see infantry easily but infantry can see and shoot you. Finding a 3m cover to hide your mech behind isn't easy outside of urban combat either and in urban combat you're again just RPG bait.

And hell, when you're fighting an MBT, what are you going to do? Jumpjets? You'll get blown to bits at the apex of the jump. Go into cover and pop out occassionally? Your light armor would allow the use of suppressive fire against you and make you an easy target for artillery while hiding in cover, go out and you'll get shot.

You won't get much powerful weaponry on that mech either, the bigger the gun the more recoil you get and a biped won't be able to take much of that.

Re:What terrain would be suitable for powered suit

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't seriously think that they would limit the suit just because of the terrain do you? We have wheeled vehicles and we have vehicles with tracks. Ever seen a camel? A snowshoe? A duck? Just make a boot/foot attachment/replacement for various terrain. Voila, problem solved.

Captcha: Gelled. Hah, gellin' like a felon.

technology doesnt win wars now

[Anonymous Coward]

why the emphasis on yet more sci-fi style equipment. Is there any evidence that the technologically superior side always gets its own way? if so, how come the US didn't win in Vietnam, and isn't winning in Afghanistan or Iraq. You are fighting guys with old fashioned RPGS and AK47s and they are keeping the US army hiding behind protective walls, scared to patrol.

If you invade someone else's country, no amount of tech will win over the population. Spend that money on good reasons not to have to invade other countries in the first place, like energy efficiency and independence at home.

Can I get the contract?

[Chairboy]

I built one a couple years ago, useful around the house. Great for lifting heavy boxes, but if you try to pet a kitty, you crush it, so be careful.

Here's a pic of me in it

My page has more info. Now, do they just write me a check? Or is there a form I need to fill out? Probably a form. They might want to replace some of the styrofoam, I'm guessing.

The 2nd Amendment

[Charcharodon]

I hope the 2nd Amendment covers these things when they start being released commercially.

The right to bare Robot arms shall not be infringed!

Re:The 2nd Amendment

[halivar]

Charcharadon, I'm writing in your name on my ballot this November. Clearly, civilian use of armed power suits will represent a crime deterrent, and this should be the single greatest campaign platform this year.

I will, however, need "carry and conceal" permits for all the hidden orbital bombardment cannons.

Re:The 2nd Amendment

[Charcharodon]

I will, however, need "carry and conceal" permits for all the hidden orbital bombardment cannons.

Do you want to live in world were the government can knock on your door and take away your hidden orbital bombardment cannons without even charging you with a crime? That's what will happen if the Democrats get elected to office this November.

Billary: "What I support is sensible restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."

Obama: "the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear hidden orbital bombarment cannons" applies to individuals, not just the "well-regulated militia" cited in the amendment. In the next breath, he asserts this constitutional guarantee does not preclude local "common sense" restrictions on hidden orbital bombardment cannons."

Join the NHOBCA (National Hidden Orbital Bombarment Cannons Association) who supports John McCain for President, before the Democrates rip the 2nd Amendment out of the heart of our beloved Consitution.

Re:The 2nd Amendment

[Charcharodon]

I sorry but I just couldn't help myself.

JOIN the NOBCA (National Orbital Bombardment Cannon Association) TODAY!

We support John McCain for President!

John McCain believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear Orbital Bombardment Cannons is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right that we have a sacred duty to protect. We have a responsibility to ensure that criminals who violate the law are prosecuted to the fullest, rather than restricting the rights of law abiding citizens. Orbital Bombardment Cannon control is a proven failure in fighting crime. Law abiding citizens should not be asked to give up their rights because of criminals - criminals who ignore Orbital Bombardment Cannon control laws anyway.

Orbital Bombardment Cannon Manufacturer Liability

John McCain opposes backdoor attempts to restrict Second Amendment rights by holding Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers liable for crimes committed by third parties using a Orbital Bombardment Cannon, and has voted to protect Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers from such inappropriate liability aimed at bankrupting the entire Orbital Bombardment industry.

"Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons

John McCain opposes restrictions on so-called "Hidden" Orbital Bombardment Cannons and voted consistently against such bans. Most recently he opposed an amendment to extend a ban on 19 specific Orbital Bombardment Cannons, and others with similar characteristics.

Importation of High Capacity Magazines

John McCain opposes bans on the importation of certain types of ammunition magazines and has voted against such limitations.

Orbital Bombardment Cannon Locks

John McCain believes that every Orbital Bombardment Cannon owner has a responsibility to learn how to safely use and store the Orbital Bombardment Cannons they have chosen, whether for target shooting, hunting, or personal protection. He has supported legislation requiring Orbital Bombardment Cannon manufacturers to include Orbital Bombardment Cannon safety devices such as trigger locks in product packaging.

Banning Ammunition

John McCain believes that banning ammunition is just another way to undermine Second Amendment rights. He voted against an amendment that would have banned many of the most commonly used hunting cartridges on the spurious grounds that they were "apocalyptic" in nature.

DC Personal Protection

As part of John McCain's defense of Second Amendment rights, he cosponsored legislation to lift a ban on the law abiding citizens of the District of Columbia from exercising their Constitutional right to bear ROBOT arms.

Criminal Background Checks

John McCain supports instant criminal background checks to help prohibit criminals from buying Orbital Bombardment Cannons and has voted to ensure they are conducted thoroughly, efficiently, and without infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens.

Background Checks at Gun Shows

At a time when some were trying to shut down gun shows in the name of fighting crime, John McCain tried to preserve gun shows by standardizing sales procedures. Federal law requires licensed Orbital Bombardment Cannon sellers at gun shows to do an instant criminal background check on purchasers while private Orbital Bombardment Cannon sellers at gun shows do not have to conduct such a check. John McCain introduced legislation that would require an instant criminal background check for all sales at gun shows and believes that such checks must be conducted quickly to ensure that unnecessary delays do not effectively block transactions.

The Orbital Bombardment Cannon Purchase Waiting Period

John McCain has opposed "waiting periods" for law abiding citizen's purchase of Orbital Bombardment Cannons.

The confiscation of Orbital Bombardment Cannons after an emer

Re:The 2nd Amendment

[Hillgiant]

What about our right to arm robot bears?

Re:The 2nd Amendment

[halivar]

Banning Ammunition

John McCain believes that banning ammunition is just another way to undermine Second Amendment rights. He voted against an amendment that would have banned many of the most commonly used hunting cartridges on the spurious grounds that they were "apocalyptic" in nature.

What? Hunting the moon with my OBC is not apocalyptic! Friggin' liberals...

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[nuclearpenguins]

I too was thinking of that Star Trek episode, as well as the 1990 movie: Robot Jox.

You made one really good point

[hey!]

Human decision making, feature recognition, senses and empathy are all available to the machine.

What I'm talking about here is a human operated machine, so the ability to make tactical decisions isn't factor. Balance and dexterity aren't that crucial, because you aren't limited to the human form, and as far as weapons use is concern, taking the trigger out of the equation means on less interface.

As far as resilience is concerned, true, but the robotic answer to that is replaceability.

The one thing that is undeniably true is that by taking the human operator out of harms way, tactical and strategic thinking changes in subtle ways. Perhaps we will have fewer Hadithas and My Lais on one hand. On the other the operators have no personal connection to the place; nor do the strategists have to consider the cost of operations except in a dollars and cents way.

A really effective ROV army would be the greatest instrument of tyranny imaginable.

But who holds the IP rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sense and intellectual property suit between the US Army and RoboCop.

Am I the only one who thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exosquad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exo_squad

I, for one, am wondering where our neosapien overlords are...

Re:Am I the only one who thought...

[Mursk]

Glad someone brought this up. References to Heinlein and Starship Troopers are, of course, well-deserved, but ExoSquad deserves some love, too.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[Blakey Rat]

By the time these things are ready we won't need to put bodies in them. Then soon after the other side will have them. Then maybe war will become a harmless spectator sport.

So you're going from Aliens to Robot Jox?

NOT a step-up! Let's stick with Aliens.

Army recruiting in junior high school is needed!!

[jameskojiro]

How else are we supposed to find suitable angsty teenagers to pilot our newly developed Gundams robot warriors.

Of course the more angst they have the better pilot they make, so that means that army bases will now need to open Hot Topic supply depots on their bases.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[Atzanteol]

Best post ever! Mods are on crack...

Where is my rocket launcher?

[PenGun]

It's a Strogg.

These things suck.

[Kingrames]

Playing around with them is fun, except for the floating disembodied hand that keeps clicking you until you say something funny.

Gundam (was Re:No Iron Man tag?)

[realinvalidname]

I call dibs on the first Zaku off the assembly line.

What a letdown.

[vestigialboy]

I initially read the headline as "US Army Furthers Development of Robotic Sluts." Totally dashed my hopes for machine gun jubblies.

Great, you just gave Microsoft a great idea...

[imyy4u1]

for Halo 5 (assuming this won't be around when Halo 4 is released).

Everybody wearing robotic suits in real life, fraggin' the crap outta n3wb5 that just learned how to put on their suit. Only one problem: how to make the suit reincarnate you...

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[The Great Pretender]

The thing that disappoints me here is the video footage. This company needs way better marketing. All I see in the 'video' demonstrations is a guy in a halloween contraption moving things (and what's up with the bike helmet?). There's nothing that makes me feel that it's even powered up! The activities are capable by humans now. I mean were is the heavy lifting? I can only conclude that at this moment the concept is the advancements in dexterity, which can't be translated by video. In which case don't show me the video...I watched it and thought, that's it? Now I'm not a robotics expert, but I would like to get excited by this. It felt like being at a 10 second peep show looking at a fully clothed chick.

Spartans? where do I sign up for genetic testing?

[interactive_civilian]

Yes, there are a lot of other Sci-Fi precedents, but I have to say that my current favorite is "Mjolnir" from Halo (though I wouldn't object to being recycled like the Marathon Mjolnir cyborg after I die).

According to the books, they operated without energy shields for a good many years and kicked some serious ass, so...

Where do I sign up?

Of course, if it is like Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", the same question applies. ;)

Heh

[Moraelin]

Heh. Dude, it was a joke. I _know_ Mechs aren't a good idea for the military. Think "bloody huge, thinly armoured target" or "pressure on the feet" as even bigger problems than the centre of gravity. The centre of gravity can be worked around, as other posters pointed out, and evolved again and again in nature anyway. (All dinosaurs are descendant from a bipedal ancestor, for example.) So it can't be too horrible a disadvantage. Being a huge target with paper-thin armour (if you do the tons per surface maths for BattleTech mechs, for example), now that's bigger problem.

But anyway, it was just a silly joke. Trust me, I know they're not a viable weapon platform.

And it may blow your mind, but also when I spew wisecracks like "Valuable RL lessons from playing WoW: 1. keep your demon on passive in a group if you're a warlock", I'm kidding too. You don't need to tell me why it's a bad idea to summon demons IRL ;)

Space Marines

[orkysoft]

Do they come with bolters and a great variety of helmets and shoulder pads?

EMP and NNEMP

[Satanboy]

Could the military be significantly slowed down if the enemy were to employ electromagnetic pulse weapons?

It seems they are possible to be made without nuclear explosions these days.

It seems to me, with all the technology on the battlefield, someones going to try this stuff out. If our soldiers relied on machinery to get the job done and be successful, we might find ourselves at a very real tactical disadvantage.

Skynet on? Suit moved without wearer in background

[Barryke]

Curious to why, but the suit appeared to move on its own while suspended in the background while the prof. talked.

Go see that 2nd video and say i'm wrong. PLEASE.

All hail skynet.

Re:What terrain would be suitable for powered suit

[Sibko]

Maybe you ought to take a look at the youtube video of this suit?

Boy! That sure does look like a small walking car to me!

Re:What terrain would be suitable for powered suit

[sean4u]

When I read "can easily pull down weight of more than 90 kilos", the picture in my mind was the operator trying to escape after a bad foot placement put this thing in the canal.

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[Stoutlimb]

Anything with useful commercial life would need power like a forklift, and that is about as small as you can make a useful 'suit' for lifting that is self powered. Perhaps the first 'mechs will be the size of forklifts?

Re:So, it's official, we're nearly ready for "alie

[Malakusen]

Perhaps the first mechs were forklifts. I know when I would use a Bobcat around the power plant when I was in the Air Force, I felt like I was in a mech.

Obligatory.....

[IHC Navistar]

Go go Gadget Arms! No! I said Gadget ARMS, not Gadget Copter!