Iron Man Is Another Step Closer To a Reality

arshadk writes with this excerpt from an article at CNN: "Inside a prosthetic shell of metal and hydraulics, Raytheon test engineer Rex Jameson is putting an XOS-2 exoskeleton through its paces. As the crowd watches, Jameson uses his robot hydraulic arm to shadowbox, break three inches of pine boards and toss around 72-pound ammunition cases like a bored contestant on the 'World's Strongest Man.' The suit moves as he moves and amplifies his strength 17-fold. ... Raytheon is seeking to develop the suits to help the US military carry supplies, and claims that one operator in an exoskeleton suit can do the work of two to three soldiers. If all goes as planned, the company hopes to see 'Iron Man' suits deployed in the field by 2015."

Comments

Power

[falldeaf]

I think they're going to need a suitable power source before this is useful in the field. When are nanotubes going to bring that huge battery increase I keep hearing about?!

Re:Intended Use?

[Culture20]

"Raytheon is seeking to develop the suits to help the US military carry supplies" Cue: Power Armour in 3...2...1.

With what power? Supply tossing makes sense since the suit can be tied to a supply truck via power cable.

defense spending cuts should be happening

[Dan667]

The only thing I thought the whole time I watched this is US defense spending is way to over bloated to have this kind of useless spending.

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[Locke2005]

The goal, in practice, is to make tons of money for the military contractors, who don't really give a shit how well this technology works in the field as long as they get paid. Eg. David Brooks of DHB Industries.

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[ElectricTurtle]

There's an old saying among military officers: 'amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.' Go ahead and use the money to buy more guns. Find out what happens when they run out of ammo. If the US armed forces can resupply two or three times faster than another military because of advances made in logistics (like this one), then that's a formidable real advantage.

I'm glad the Pentagon has a broader perspective than yours. Modern armies, scratch that, ALL armies can only function on the back of efficient logistical support. The more efficient and effective that support, the more advantage that army has, even in the face of superior numbers or a harsh environment.

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[OzPeter]

A technology that allows 1 soldier to do the work of 2 or 3 is useless? How would you recommend spending the money?

How about not having the 2 or 3 in the first place?

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[CraftyJack]

If you can deploy three or four fewer people to an airstrip someplace, and unload a bunch of emergency medical supplies in a fraction of the time, you're reducing costs, not adding to them.

Color me skeptical. If you really are deploying fewer people, great. But I suspect that something like this has a serious logistics tail. If it takes three people to operate and support the thing, that's no good. If you have to wait two days to get it working again when it breaks down, you're back to square one - without the number of people you need to accomplish the task at hand.

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[ScentCone]

Remember: time is money, too. If this is more nimble than a standard forklift, you might have that cargo aircraft sitting on the runway for a few minutes less, guzzling less fuel, and holding up fewer other incoming flights. There are a lot of indirect costs avoided by speeding up logistics operations. If it takes an operator and two support guys to do work in half the time, compared to a fork lift driver and one support guy, it might still be cheaper.

If there are things you can do with something like this which you simply cannot do with a forklift (which seems very likely - especially in rough terrain and lots of emergency response type scenearios), then you might avoid the entire cost of (and personnel involved in) enhancing a remote airstrip.

Re:defense spending cuts should be happening

[ScentCone]

The is a solution searching for a problem so that this defense contractor can get paid with US Taxpayer money

Yup just like those scam artists who came up with so-called "helicopters" and "two way radios" and "satellite communications" and "automatic weapons" (those damn machine guns are so much more complicated than a musket ... typical defense contractor and arms dealer nonsense).

Re:Intended Use?

[Linsaran]

This is not exactly new, they've been working on this for a while now. The only thing stopping them from putting armor plating on it and turning it into power armor is the battery life of the suit. Even with the most expensive batteries we can manufacture, there's a maximum opperational time of about 30 minutes on the XOS-2 when disconnected from an external power source. Needing to be plugged in to operate sort of limits their military applications to grunt work and MAYBE defensive deployments. Still if someone can work out the power issues, functional and deployable power armor is really only a manufacturing run away.

Re:FTA - ``tethered to hydraulic power''

[ElectricTurtle]

Considering that the proposed use right now is for faster cargo handling, the power could be provided by the truck hauling the cargo. The suits don't have a battlefield purpose yet, so tethering isn't much an issue when you consider that everything these are likely to be used for is within feet of a big vehicle of some kind.

Re:Skynet

[immakiku]

The "ironman" part of that equation is much easier to produce than the "- man" part of it.

1 man does the work of 3. And at the cost of 50.

[VShael]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

War is not the only application for this.

[MsGeek]

The Japanese have been developing this for decades. They knew a demographic bomb was going to go off, and they knew that nurses were going to need some help in dealing with the elderly. So there are now production power suits geared towards assisting nurses in lifting patients.

Also there is a very strong possibility this technology can be applied to assistive systems for paraplegics and quadriplegics. Imagine someone who was "sentenced to the Chair" for the rest of their lives being able to walk again. I mean, neither application is particularly sexy, not like super-soldiers and being able to do the last battle in Aliens for real, but I would say that this would be a boon for humanity far greater than any military application.

Re:1 man does the work of 3. And at the cost of 50

[Americano]

Frankly, if this thing was worth a damn, it would be all over the civilian logistics industry by now.

Is this based on the premise that military research is never taking place on the cutting edge of technology, and never generates anything that turns out to have useful civilian applications? Because I could swear that's what you're suggesting.

And if you are, please explain the Internet, the Hummer, and the host of emergency trauma treatment techniques, prosthetics, and other medical developments that have been developed as a result of defense spending?