[Nattering Nabob]

[youtube]sM7QkB2Cjxg[/youtube]

[Typhoon]

This kind of technology seems to be getting very polished, the suit follows the movements of the man very well, but I always think that these kind of developments would be better suited to the warehouse than the battlefield.

[Wolfman]

I agree with Typhoon. This kind of thing should not start on the battlefield, but in warehouses. Then move into mines, and similar places of mild hazard. I don't want to trust my life to something that hasn't been put through it's paces. However, it's still a really cool idea.

[killim]

I have seen an adavanced kit for nursing care in Japan, to avoid the usual spinal and back disorders.

[Igor Antunov]

There is one major obstacle for an autonomous unit such as this, an ironman-esque realisation of sorts. Can anybody guess what it is?

Nevermind I'll tell you what it is: Portable power source.

Our portable power supplies suck ass. The 'battery' would be super heavy, and it would carry you 10 minutes on a single charge. Hydraulics don't magically run themselves.

I spit on the future of this technology, until portable power supplies are vastly improved.

Now, if they made the suits much bigger, sort of like mechs, then you could have some real power sources. Sadly this would be utterly innefective in a real combat setting. A walking tank with legs is dead-meat on the battlefield. You COULD give it wheels or tracks but then you would be right back to making conventional tanks/armored vehicles.

I agree with typhoon, this will be used in factories and shit.

[lovertothemoon]

Oh! Some engineers read Heinlein. Mobile Infantry in the near(ish) future?

But in all seriousness, as awesome as this is, it really seems rather unfeasible at this point. I'm sure technology can make it possible later on, but even then, I'd rather we make some sort of unmanned defense/attack more efficient then risk our men, even in such cool suits.

*edit: spelled Heinlein wrong at first. sorry

[Igor Antunov]

I've often wondered why they don't make unmanned armored vehicles. Tanks for example would fare far better without having to contain a crew compartment, with the auto-loaders eastern tanks use men are positively not required, they are merely a liability. Tanks could be cheaper, lighter, faster, thougher, just plain better.

The driving and aiming could be done far from the battlefield with a controller/joystick and monitor. The vehicle could even have an artificial intelligence which would work much better autonomously on land than it does in the air because operating a vehicle in flight is far more complex for man and computer.

[Jarlaxle]

This reminds me of Dale Brown's "Tin Man" commandos...but the suits aren't exoskeletons. They are FABRIC capable of stopping an anti-tank round from 50'. And they carry railguns that fire projectiles that travel at 50,000 feet per second.

Considering some of the things in his books...I truly wonder how much has some truth to it.

[Igor Antunov]

They are FABRIC capable of stopping an anti-tank round from 50'

[Jarlaxle]

Hey, I'm not saying that is real...but you just have to wonder sometimes...

[Godstud]

Why laugh Igor? Fabric can stop bullets already(Kevlar). I doubt 75 years ago that people would have thought fabric could stop bullets either.

Better look into biomimetics, since spider silk is being considered for creating armoured fabric that could stop rifle rounds, perhaps even of high calibre. They appear to even have gotten close to figuring it out too.

Scientists have been investigating how to mimic spider silk for years. The seemingly delicate threads actually have a tensile strength five times greater than steel, and the possibilities for using a similar material in everything from buildings to bridges to cars and even clothing, are practically infinite. The only problem is, the stuff seems to be impossible to replicate. However, researchers have uncovered a key aspect in how spiders make silk, and they may be one step closer to man-made spider silk.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05 ... pinner.php

[Jarlaxle]

Brown cooked up something way wierder than even that: Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process fabric. A special polymer with a specific electrical charge run through it...it hardens instantly at any hard impact. That might even be a cooler concept than the railguns.

[Rodion]

There is one major obstacle for an autonomous unit such as this, an ironman-esque realisation of sorts. Can anybody guess what it is?

Nevermind I'll tell you what it is: Portable power source.

Our portable power supplies suck ass. The 'battery' would be super heavy, and it would carry you 10 minutes on a single charge. Hydraulics don't magically run themselves.

I spit on the future of this technology, until portable power supplies are vastly improved.

Now, if they made the suits much bigger, sort of like mechs, then you could have some real power sources. Sadly this would be utterly innefective in a real combat setting. A walking tank with legs is dead-meat on the battlefield. You COULD give it wheels or tracks but then you would be right back to making conventional tanks/armored vehicles.

I agree with typhoon, this will be used in factories and shit.

Completely true. On the other hand, the technological bottleneck means we'll have a specific "future" date - the day they come up with a cold fusion, antimatter or any other next generation energy source you can put in your pocket. Once engineers get that power boost, all bets are off. Exo suits and flying cars and Dr friggin' Doom are just one step away.

We could get a similar result from efficient wireless energy transfer, but jetpacks just aren't the same when they depend on AT&T coverage...

[Zerogouki]

Ballistic Electro-Reactive Process fabric. A special polymer with a specific electrical charge run through it...it hardens instantly at any hard impact.

Military shit just keeps getting cooler.

[Igor Antunov]

This one requires no power supply:

[youtube]IdPpWy_O09k[/youtube]

Granted there is lack of mechanical advantage due to only having human muscle power and lack of motors, but I wonder, could something substitute motors?

[U184]

I do not have the time at the moment, this however is an area that I have been working in with DARPA. Power sources are a problem, but less of one than you might think. The Human Performance Augmentation project was going the right way, but had set backs. Since then, we have gone toward joint protection and something similar to a pulley system. I will go into more depth this weekend when I have more time.

[eon]

Scientists have already been able to replicate spider silk in a lab. The problem is it is currently impractical to create large amounts of it. There was actually a good pbs show about this recently. IMO nanotechnology such as this will be the future of all construction and will make "starcraft" marines a possibility.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/ ... 7670.shtml

[Wolfman]

^ The solution I've seen proposed is to genetically manipulate goats to produce spider silk instead of milk. Sounds like the opening to a bad horror movie.

[Social_Critic]

As military technology advances in this direction, there will be answers found in other fields. Let's consider the case of Iraq, where the fairly low tech IED defeated the US*. The IED emerged to blunt the US attack, causing thousands of casualties and nearly a trillion USD in costs, so, as we move our technology forward, something else will emerge to blow back in our faces.

Imperial arrogance is fine if it can be backed with the money to pay for imperial armies, and if the imperial game pays off, but this game we play overseas is gaining us nothing. It doesn't even make us safer. A lot of the money being spent on this gadgetry would be better spent on nothing - meaning the country will be a lot better off if we stop borrowing money to satisfy our urge to be all we can be.

*I know some of you think the US won, but we never found the WMDs, and the current Iraqi regime is led by shiites who run torture camps and will, in the end, be more loyal to the Iranian born Ayatollah al Sistani than to their supposed American masters.

[eon]

This has always been the nature of arms vs armament throughout the world. When someone decided they were gonna strap plate armor to a guy and put him on a horse, people figured out you could just give any random farmer a musket and he would be able to kill this well trained and expensively armed warrior. Think about how many casualties to IED's there would have been if the US government hadn't been pushing out vehicles designed to take the brunt of their explosions or develop technologies to remotely detonate them with robots.