Armour-clad and armed to the teeth, this is the soldier of the (near) future
Posted on 04/09/2007 6:15:08 PM PDT by Tatze
U.S. military develops Robocop armour for soldiers
By MATTHEW HICKLEY, Defence Correspondent
22:21pm on 9th April 2007
We may have seen it all before in science-fiction films. But the bionic warrior is in fact a vision of real-life warfare in the 21st century. U.S. defence chiefs hope to have their troops kitted out in the outlandish combat gear as soon as 2020.
Included in the Pentagon's Future Warrior Concept are a powerful exoskeleton, a self-camouflaging outer layer that adapts to changing environments and a helmet which translates a soldier's voice into any foreign language.
Armour-clad and armed to the teeth, this is the soldier of the (near) future
The future soldier will also benefit from 'intelligent' armour, which remains light and flexible until it senses an approaching bullet, then tenses to become bulletproof.
Perhaps worryingly, several of the planned enhancements seem to owe more than a little to Hollywood blockbusters such as Robocop, Aliens and Predator.
But officials are quick to point out that many of these systems are already working in prototype form, or are refinements of proven technologies.
Some of the blueprints will be unworkable without eagerly awaited advances in nanotechnology, but researchers remain confident. And perhaps with good reason.
The sheer scale of U.S. military research spending and the pace of recent advances in aircraft stealth technology and guided precision bombs are staggering.
Project specialist Jean-Louis DeGay, a former captain in 75th Ranger Regiment, said: "We're already trialling equipment and technologies that did not exist a few years ago.
"The air force has just debuted its new stun gun and five years after the concept of an exoskeleton was first discussed, we have fully functioning prototypes."
He told Soldier magazine: "Five years ago, nobody thought we'd have a portable hydrogen fuel cell, but we've got them now.
"They're functioning, and we're just trying to make them smaller. And if I'm honest, nothing speeds up the development of technology like war."
If the U.S. military's vision of the future is even half-right, Britain's armed forces will have their work cut out trying to keep up.
Even comparatively understated attempts to improve our troops' battlefield technology, such as the Bowman digital battlefield radio system, have been blighted by years of delays and embarrassing technical blunders.
KEWL!!!
Yeah, but I never did understand the Stormtrooper’s armor. It didn’t seem to protect them from anything.
A lot of heavier weapons already use a muzzle brake, which diverts some of the gas pressure that follows the bullet to help absorb the recoil of the weapon. Also keeps the muzzle from climbing to allow faster follow-up shots.
On a slightly different track, the effects folks that did the "Alien" series of movies adapted a Steady-Cam rig as a weapon platform. The Steady-Cam harness and mount are a system that allows a portable mini-cam to be moved very smoothly. I am not sure if anyone actually tried to fire a real firearm from the movie prop...
Who will protect the tyrannical government from an ambitious military?
(I'd say "I'd buy that for a dollar!", except I know that stuff costs more.)
What the hell does it matter when our pos politicians castrate our military?
Perhaps the US Constitution and the Officer’s Oath to preserve, protect and defend it. It has always been what has kept us from tyranny. It will do so far into the future.
LLS
I should hope that if our government becomes a more tyrannical one, an invincible military would step up and restore Constitutional rule. It would surprise me if it happened, however.
Because she couldn’t resist...
LLS
Also, will this high tech stuff hold up after 30 days of use in any environment with grunts leaving it laying around in the mud, dirt, rain, etc?
Infantry types aren't known for taking care of delicate equipment. If it's breakable, a grunt can (and will) break it.
For a hypothetical future military to overthrow a tyrannical civil government would require the officers in charge to 1) think WAY outside the box, and 2) act on those thoughts.
It would take a genuine over-the-top condition of civil injustice for that to happen.
They could outfit some of our special forces boys with them, though.
“It would surprise me because today’s military is trained first and foremost to obey orders...”
They’re trained to obey legal orders. Also, if all the books I’ve read on soldiers are true, they have no problem thinking for themselves.
“For a hypothetical future military to overthrow a tyrannical civil government would require the officers in charge to 1) think WAY outside the box, and 2) act on those thoughts.”
Aren’t those some of the things special forces are trained to do?
Yes, but...I'll believe it when I see it, and hopefully I'll never hope to see it.
Our military officers and men aren't Star Wars clones. They come from our communities, sat next to us in school, maybe dated our sisters. If any tyrannical government faced a popular uprising so severe that the military was called in to suppress it, the soldiers and officers would face the decision on whether to fire on their neighbors, or people a lot like them, or to turn against Washington.
There hasn't been a successful revolution since the American that didn't involve large factions of the military changing sides (and even in the American revolution, which wasn't really a revolution, many of the key officers had some service to the Crown under their belts). In France and Russia, conscript soldiers had more sympathy for their kin than for their officers, and in China, the communists essentially were part of the military, having teamed up with the nationalists -- all the while beefing up their recruiting and fighting skills -- to fight the Japanese.
It would take a genuine over-the-top condition of civil injustice for that to happen.
Isn't that the way we want it? I'd hate to live in a country that has a military coup every few years over relatively mundane political disagreements.
Like I said...hopefully I’ll never hope to see it.
Right. Nothing in Newton mandates that an equal and opposite reaction has to be in the opposite direction along the same axis. Just fire a Walther PPK (I have; my great-uncle brought one home from WWII) and a modern 9mm, and you can feel how much of a difference modern refinements make. They can't eliminate the reactive force, but they can redirect it.
On a slightly different track, the effects folks that did the "Alien" series of movies adapted a Steady-Cam rig as a weapon platform. The Steady-Cam harness and mount are a system that allows a portable mini-cam to be moved very smoothly. I am not sure if anyone actually tried to fire a real firearm from the movie prop...
I doubt that it would work. The way a steadicam works -- or the optical image stabilization in some camcorders -- is that it's all very loose and fluid. It makes sure that the bumps and jars when the cameraman walks are dampened before they reach the camera.
That fluidity would be a problem with a gun - you need some rigidity if you want the second and third shots to go pretty close to where you pointed the first one. Of course, since we're talking about sci-fi technology here, you could have not just recoil suppression, but recoil correction -- servos that actively push the barrel back down to correct.
Well, only sort of. A lot of the Founders would be horrified by the size of our standing army -- they thought militias could do the job, and were much more democratic. Washington, on the other hand, knew from hard-won experience how poorly hastily-assembled militias performed against professional soldiers.
“It would take a genuine over-the-top condition of civil injustice for that to happen”
Raise your hand if you believe something like that’ll happen if Hitlery becomes President. *raises hand*
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