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Wanted: Special-Ops Battle Suit With Cooling, Computers, Radios, and Sensors
An anonymous reader writes "U.S. military researchers are asking industry for ideas on a futuristic uniform for Special Operations warfighters that involves agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems. Among the technologies Special Operations Command officials are interested in most (PDF) are advanced armor to protect warfighters from bullets, shrapnel, and other battlefield threats, while preserving their mobility. The suit also may involve powered or unpowered robotic exoskeletons to improve warfighter performance and endurance, while enabling the warfighter to operate silently and unseen."
Didn't Tony Stark already invent this?
Dude, I want a suit like that for myself!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Sounds like they've been playing too much Crysis.
Tony Stark was preceded by a few decades by Robert Heinlein's Mobile Infantry in Starship Troopers.
Where do you pee?
That is what would make me feel really safe (preferably as an internationally enforced soldier uniform world wide)
It would also be much cheaper!
Is there something wrong with the word "soldier"?
Why air conditioning? Wouldn't it be simpler, lighter, and more efficient to cool with conduction than convection? I'm thinking pads that stick to the skin running water to a heat pump or even Peltier devices to make the whole thing solid state.
At least they have the focus tighter. They used to call for these goodies for the general troops, but ordering it only for SOF sounds much closer to the mechanized infantry of ST.
Now if we could only get those drop pods.
Sharkskin jackets with lasers - Contact DoD.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Prevent broken bones, keep the armor in place, provide mounting points for peripherals, redistribute weight more efficiently.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
One the Army gets them, the nazis over at the DEA will want them too, and in no time at all Andy Taylor and Barney Fife will get a Homeland Security law enforcement grant so they can add this to their local sheriff's arsenal of M-16's, M-60's, and infantry fighting vehicles...so they can morph into Judge Dredd and fight the swarms of evil terrorists we see on every street corner.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
It's what we used to call a suit of armour.
Now get thee hence from mine lawne!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm still trying to figure out why everyone argues that we should spend the money elsewhere instead of simply using it as a reduction to our deficit-plagued budget.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Material science is lagging behind too much.
Also on the list, a pony. Preferrably one with a frickin' laser beam on its head.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Morphine administered.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Okay... so it's not particularly good art, but it is art nonetheless. If they invent e-balls as well, I totally want to see one of these in action!
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
Because a soldier isn't technologically advantaged to disincentivise enemy combatant functionality utilizing post-9/11 paradigms.
Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?
... a futuristic uniform for Special Operations warfighters that involves agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems. ... officials are interested in advanced armor to protect warfighters from bullets, shrapnel, and other battlefield threats, while preserving their mobility.
Problem solved. Some mobility may be limited.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I thought Troy Hurtubise was trying to shop around a suit of armor similar to what they're looking for. Seems like a crazy guy, but the documentary about the bear proof suit was cool.
anti-ballistic, computerized, walking.
Pick 2.
Float...
Not obscure the vision of the wearing when enemy fires "flour bombs" at wearer...
Also work in the dense jungle (we know how well our high-tech worked against the pajama wearing VC...
Hell, *I* want Mospeada!! Those Cyclones are damned cool!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_Climber_MOSPEADA
sounds like they want something like the Terran Marine Suit in StarCraft
Actually, both were beat out by real devices! Powered Exoskeletons
In addition, (according to wikipedia) the first fictional reference was E. E. Smith's Lensman series in 1937, although devices were being built before then.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
so when are we dumping "defense department" and going back to "department of war" ? And does that mean we're going back to slaughtering the natives and taking their land?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
... the mechanized infantry of ST.
I think it was "mobile infantry" in ST. In Heinlein's day the term "mechanized infantry" was already in use, troops riding in vehicles along side tanks.
Now if we could only get those drop pods.
Personally I'm hoping for something to drop those pods from. :-)
Thanks for the correction. Time to read the book again, it's obviously been too long.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sire, once he is clear, shall the raise the shields? .... What about the drawbridge? Oh, and the oil... shall I put the fire out? Or were we expecting more company?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Comment from the 'Starship Troopers' wiki entry: ... In 2012, an article on the US military buying ballistic face masks specifically referenced the "big steel gorilla[s]" of Starship Troopers...
And Starship Troopers use of the term "big gorillas" was in reference to WW1 (1914-18) slang. IIRC anti-ballistic steel face masks were also tried out in WW1. There is a little history mixed in with that fiction.
...or maybe not...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
" agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems."
And low observable - infrared, RF, you know.
Oh, wait. That is gonna be harder.
How long before the battlefield is cluttered with little RF bots crawling around pretending to be communicating with themselves and Central Command, attracting DIY drones and quadcopters spewing hostile fire? And of course lighting themselves up to be found and neutralized by other drones loitering for just such a chance, to strike anything afloat in the 100'-1000' range, doing less than say 50 knots that doesn't ping back IFF that is recognized?
The coming battlefield will be full of autonomous machines looking for opportunities to deal with obvious, plain threats, stuff in kill boxes and even in more fluid spaces. And countermeasures. At some point, visible spectrum or even infrared video-based drones may be blinded by a bright source, just left there to deny surveillance over a certain area as troops etc move through. By the time the drone(s) clear their vision, the troops are through. The visible/IR 'jammer' may even be smart enough to shut down, hide, and then catch up with its owners, to repeat the cycle. Other handy devices may just crawl along behind carrying supplies and being close enough to be helpful, far enough away to survive an attack or give away positioning.
What a mess. You will need sensors, mapping, etc, just to keep track of your friends.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Is it going to be shielded from RF stuff. I'm thinking HERF here but any directed energy weapon will do.
Thanks for the correction. Time to read the book again, it's obviously been too long.
I used to recommend reading Starship Troopers (Heinlein), Forever War (Haldeman), and Armor (Steakley) back to back. But I've decided to add Old Man's War (Scalzi) to that suggestion list. The later doesn't have the armored suits of the others but I think fits in well in its own way.
Where are they going to get the beskar to make these?
I could lock my armor knees and it would hold me upright. Helped in those interminably long bridge battles.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Well I said good bit, not all of it...they definitely don't need all of it.
That said, the educational system is doing a piss poor job of getting people ready to enter the workforce of 15 years ago, say nothing about the one today or going forward into the future.... so if they were to spend gobs of money on fixing that, I would at least have trouble saying it didn't go to something worthwhile...
Something other than supporting the share price of military contractors.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The book, not the movies.
When an unmanned drone can walk into a building, kill hostiles, and retrieve friendlies then let me know. Until then, you'll need a human.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Well I agree they're doing a piss-poor job of it, but it seems that the more federal involvement we see, the worse both the education and the bang-for-the-buck get. Ronald Reagan once said, "If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide children with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that youâ(TM)re liable to be given more money to do it with."
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This will happen as soon as a reliable power source with adequate capacity is developed. Bear in mind, this is the same thing needed for humans to move away from fossil fuels en masse. Interesting that the vested interests keeping fossil fuels relevant may be outdone by the military-industrial complex.
Arm Big Dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZPRsrwumQ&noredirect=1
Drones will(are) changing the need for the particular tactic in many cases. For others, it will not be unheard of in a decade.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...Honestly one 30Kiloton bomb on whatever city we think that scumbag running Syria is and the whole thing is over. AS soon as it drops, we need to make a world brodcast where the president says only one sentence...
"That is what happens when you fuck with us."
Uh, they're not fucking with us. We have no dog in this fight. They're basically killing each other.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
the materials are fine, what we don't have is the power to run the exosystem.
If you're going through all the trouble of building an articulating exoskeleton with most of the range of human motion, then why stuff and extra 80kg of meat-sac in it? Just replace the human with some remote controls and you can throw out all that inconvenient padding, air conditioning, and restrictions on G-forces. Then you basically have a land drone.
Why do they use the term "warfighter" and not the term "soldier?"
"one 30Kiloton bomb"
So, you're saying to drop a nuke on the capital so they won't use chemical weapons?
Uh...
Listen to the doctor. Take the Xanax he prescribed, look at the pretty flowers and listen to soothing music.
Though the policy may not have been officially changed, it was strongly signaled during the 90s (Clinton admin) that chemical alone was not a reason for a nuclear strike. Also, that would have been an attack on US, South Korean or NATO troops all comfortably under the US nuclear umbrella. So far, this is Syrian citizens and irregulars from various places.
Yeah, it's still NBC to me as well (was a battalion NBC alternate while I was in Korea in the mid 80s. Main job was RATT operator. When were you in?)
Either Germany or Korea would have gone nuclear almost immediately regardless. A number of the ADM charges were already in place. I can't believe they would have let a massive advance get past those without blowing them.
As you say, using a nuke in anger would be a huge thing. Suddenly, what had been thinkable only in case of a threat to regime survival would be much close to being just another tool of war.
This bothers me a bit. I wonder how much different our world would be if half of the resources spent on militaries and warfare were spent on other things like health care, research grants, scholarships, or transportation. I wouldn't be surprised if there are companies that make (or hope to) this stuff using the common sales tactic of making the mark feel like they need it and can't do without it. Why does the world benefit from better weapons when the underlying problems that often lead to the use of them aren't resolved? At a certain point, it is no longer about defense. A military needs to be just powerful enough to make an invasion or attack too costly to be worth while and deal with nuisances such as pirates (the boat robbers, not file sharers).
I don't see why this is trolling. I will admit that they went off on a tangent about the US getting involved in everything, this is a valid, relevant opinion. I will admit a super suit/exoskeleton thing sounds pretty cool. Just because it is cool and you disagree and think this is a worthwhile endeavor doesn't make TheCarp a troll.
Is the moderation process around here something like this:
Let p represent I agree with the poster's opinion.
Let q represent an up vote.
Let r represent a down vote.
p-->q
not(p)-->r
Ask the Japanese, duh.
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And if your in deep shit I am sure that average squaddie will be praising those paper pushing artillerymen who drop a nicely targeted "immediate suppression" on the bad guys - just dont cock up changing the batteries on your gps units though.
the coolant or body tempering media should not be air - in a NBC enviro with shrap/project protection, it may be something like advanced (vitamin rich) cloth.