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MacDill Matters: Iron Man suit out at SOCom, but new innovations still needed for commandos
A competition with an entry deadline of Feb. 15 seeks innovations in 12 areas, including artificial intelligence for psychological operations, improved human performance and undetectable video manipulation.
[...] Last week, James Smith, SOCom's acquisition executive, announced that the final product, known as the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, would not match the initial sales pitch, according Patrick Tucker writing in Defense One.
"It's not the Iron Man. I'll be the first person to tell you that," Smith told the crowd at a key D.C. special operations forum. The exoskeleton, Smith told the audience, is "not ready for prime time in a close-combat environment."
Instead, Tucker writes, the technologies developed, including lightweight body armor and situational awareness in helmet displays, will be chunked off and used elsewhere, if wanted.
(Full disclosure: I work for tampabay.com - and normally would not submit articles from the site, however, in this case I think the technologies and decisions about how to use them discussed in the articles would be of interest to the community.)
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Turning Workers Into 'Super Workers' With Robotic Suits
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Friday February 15 2019, @09:40PM (12 children)
Currently heavy body armor seems to focus on chestplates. There are both tempered steel alloy plates and composite (ceramic plus) plates that will stop 7.62 nato or better. The obvious workaround is to aim for something other than the chest of course - or get a flanking shot - but they cover head on shots to the heart and lungs and you can see how that would reduce casualty rates.
These plates are pretty expensive and the exact compositions don't seem to be disclosed. The best homemade versions I've seen were clearly inferior to those plates, but still better than your typical soft kevlar suit. That's the next level down, and the only thing that seems to be being used outside of that small chestplate area. That's usually only good against pistol cartridges, and not even the most powerful of those.
Of course that's still very worth wearing on a battlefield. If I recall my statistics correctly, fragmentation causes as many if not more injuries on the battlefield than direct fire, and even the old nylon flack jackets reduced that danger significantly.
I imagine they want to make the armor heavier - and there isn't much reason to make it heavier *per square inch* than those plates already are, but there's lots of reasons to want to expand the coverage a bit. And soldiers are already pretty heavily loaded. Overloading is bad. Exoskeletons are an obvious 'easy' technological fix - but they are far from ready from that role at this point.
If I had some venture capital I'd be tempted to see if I couldn't come up with a better interim solution than a plate in a vest pocket though. Even the weight distribution is awkward.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 15 2019, @09:47PM (5 children)
I always thought super-suits were a stupid pie-in-the-sky idea like lasers and railguns.
If you're a soldier in battlefield conditions, you need a lot of agility to run and perform the more finer tasks like tucking and rolling or kneeling to tie rope to a vehicle or something. Super-suits are more for terminator-style attacks, where the brute just stands up with bullets bouncing off him and explosions going off all around him while he mows down enemies with his minigun. And if a solution like that was needed in the battlefield then Boston Dynamics or any other defense contractor could whip up something like a humanoid robot or a remote-controlled mini-tank or something.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Friday February 15 2019, @11:00PM (3 children)
Yes, you do. Armorers worked from the bronze age if not before all the way through late medieval times solving the problem of how to make armor stronger without making it more encumbering. Then when firearms got popular they stopped, they found other professions, they died. Because even the best fully articulated plate wasn't heavy enough to make much of a difference against a musket.
Now we're reinventing the stuff. We have materials that can repel small arms fire without being unfeasibly heavy, so it's back in fashion. But still kind of crude, in terms of weight distribution.
"Super-suits are more for terminator-style attacks, where the brute just stands up with bullets bouncing off him and explosions going off all around him while he mows down enemies with his minigun."
I wouldn't try to make a "super suit" - at least not now, not without much better exoskeletons to make it work at least. For modern body armor I think you have to start from the understanding, first off, that NOTHING you could conceivably wear into battle is "bulletproof" - only bullet resistant. To put it another way - any suit that will stand up to heavy, sustained fire will just be too heavy, no matter how cleverly it's done. So that's not the goal. The goal is not to stand up to heavy, sustained fire, it's to provide a safety cushion that reduces casualties, that improves your chance of surviving something that would otherwise kill you outright.
There was an incident in Iraq, probably several like this but this was captured on video and it was a perfect demonstration of what you want from modern body armor. US Soldier was shot by a sniper - stalked, lined up, pegged right in the chest from straight on in front. He drops, presumed dead, but a second later he scuttles off on his hands and knees behind cover. He had one of those plates in, and it was his lucky day.
Of course, if the sniper had waited for a side shot - and they did learn.
So the obvious next step is to extend the protection to cover against flanking shots. It's not all that hard to do - of course it has to add weight but if the weight is better distributed it wouldn't need to be more cumbersome.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 16 2019, @04:55PM (2 children)
>if the weight is better distributed it wouldn't need to be more cumbersome.
True - though managing to do that in a "a-few-sizes-fit-all" fashion would be a real artform.
However, the weight would still be an issue. A soldier can only carry so much gear, and every kg spent on armor is a kg that can't be spent on other equipment.
That where some of the recent advances in agile leg exoskeletons get interesting - we're not quite to the point of doing battlefield scrambles in them (so far as I know), but can do walking and running in a pretty natural fashion. It's not a full power-suit, the upper body is a far more articulated challenge, but augmented legs alone can greatly increase your carrying capacity and long-range endurance.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:20PM (1 child)
:)
"It's not a full power-suit, the upper body is a far more articulated challenge, but augmented legs alone can greatly increase your carrying capacity and long-range endurance"
They certainly could. With augmented legs you could arrange for it to support most of the the upper body armor directly. I'm afraid this wouldn't work very well if you tried to go prone however.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:58AM
Very true - however, at least up to a point you could deal with the weight well for brief periods, and leg augmentation would allow you to enter an engagement without being fatigued from carrying your armor and gear.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 16 2019, @03:29AM
They proposed to the Marines that their Robot Dogs be used to pack supplies over terrain that was too rough for vehicles.
That would have worked _really_ well has those DogBots not been so noisy that they'd be dead-certain to give their positions away:
The energy density required to not make the dog's power-pack too heavy, as well as the great strength required to bear heavy loads led Boston Dynamics to power its Dogs with Internal Combustion Engines.
I Am Absolutely Serious.
Real Soon Now I'm going to write a Wall Of Text entitled "The Failure Of Imagination". I'll name Boston's Dogs as an example. Anyone who's every watched a War Movie let alone ever been in an actual War knows very _well_ the vital importance of Keeping Fucking Quiet when you advance - or when you're trapped.
In the case of Boston, just to send a few observers into the field in Iraq or Afghanistan, or to have a few Active Duty Troops or War On The Brown People Vets come to hang out for a day or two while they demo the DogBots would have fixed that particular Corporate Fuck-Up.
"The Failure Of Imagination" is actually inspired by the business failure of the _only_ place where I could hang out all day long in my neighborhood; now I have to take the bus downtown to Starbucks; Tonalli's Donuts And Cream was operated by it's sole proprietor.
What failure?
That Donut and Cream Shop should have been called "Tonalli's Ice Cream And Lattes".
They should have had a large Free WiFi Logo in their window.
The never _once_ advertised in _any_ way. Just five hundred handbills to just the nearest neighborhood residents could have kept their shop prosperous.
I - quite sadly - discussed its impending doom with the assistant manager, who completely _flummoxed_ me when she pointed out that "There are already a lot of Mexican Bread stores in this neighborhood".
In fact, one such Mexican Bread shop was _directly_ across the street.
In Mexico, "Pan" - literally "Bread" - "Pan" stores sell regular bread encrusted with lots of heavily encrusted, festively dyed granulated sugar. While Pan occupies the same Ecological Niche in Mexico as Donuts do here, Donuts are in no way anything like Mexican Breads.
Their store's sign was not lit up at night as are its two neighboring stores; to conserve on its electric bill, the lights in the back are kept shut off during the day, and it's employees just about _always_ sat in the back of the store so they could listen to music - that's where the store's speakers were.
They generally shut off that music when a customer would enter.
They _finally_ clued in to that for the front to be empty lead many prospective new customers to conclude it was closed, so only in the last three months did its employees sit in the front when they weren't serving customers.
They had a restroom, but with a sign posted on it that said "Employees Only". It's _only_ because just _some_ of Tonalli's staff permitted me to use it anyway that I became a Regular there.
They don't sell Wholesale Donuts - there's lots of cafes and breakfast joints that would have happily bought some every morning.
Their Portland location failed too.
Despite all that, their original Vancouver location - far from me, I'm sorry to say - is quite profitable, so they're just sad, not overcome with grief: they will try yet one more time - their only Portland shop failed too - with some other location.
But what they _won't_ do is....
Learn From Their Mistakes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 16 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)
World War I bullet-proof vests were made of silk, it's just that there weren't enough Mulberry Trees to go around.
Don't think DARPA isn't looking into GMO Worms.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday February 16 2019, @12:38PM
Silk armor was more useful against arrows. It wouldn't necessarily stop them, but they could enter the body without penetrating the silk, making it easier to remove them. There are anecdotal accounts of this happening with bullets - but again, only when they're going very slowly, either from an antique pocket pistol with no power, or perhaps at extreme range. More effective, perhaps, against shrapnel.
Silk was used after that - in the T40/M6/M7 "Flyers Vest" which was WWII era kit. But it wasn't just silk - it weighed nearly 15 pounds and most of that was aluminum plating. And again, it was designed more to protect against fragmentation/shrapnel (from airburst flak guns) than from direct small arms fire.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 16 2019, @03:10AM (3 children)
It takes a special kind of soldier to wear so much heavy gear in the desert.
I know from actual experience just _why_ traditional Arab garb actually works: in the Summer of 2012, I walked two hundred miles from Santa Cruz to Oceano Dunes State Beach, just South of Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County.
While not actual desert, the Southern San Joaquin Valley is semi-arid. While a rich agricultural region, that can only happen due to its abundant and shallow ground water. Decades of artificial fertilizers shot that ground water completely through with such high levels of Nitrates as to be toxic to humans, so I only drank from garden hoses when I was _desperate_.
One guy who saw me walking went to a store then brought me TWO GALLONS of ice-cold spring water. "I commend you for what you are doing."
I was looking for my brother; I have some reason to believe he is in Latin America, was in 1979 he was a Circus Roustabout. The Circus has largely died out in the US but remains popular in Latin America. And yes: I fully intended to spend the rest of my life south of the border; I _still_ might.
I started traveling as the Arabs did and the Bedouins still do: I slept by day then walked by night. I also started eating cactus, flower petals and flower leaves. Once a man who spoke no English passed by in his Taco Truck then gave me a _free_ plate of plate of Hot Tamales:
"Food?"
"No dinaro!"
"Gratis!"
"VIVA LA MEXICO!"
That I the locals were so very generous helping me to walk _south_ led me to realize that it's just as common for the undocumented to go home as it is for them to come here.
But back to the turban and robes:
When I was walking on a particularly hot day, I rested in the shade for a couple hours then put on _all_ of my clothes, including a turban made of - yes - a towel!
Then just to make sure I could take the heat, I took off my shoes and socks then walked down the middle of a gravel-strewn asphalt street. As a car was approaching, it's occupants looked quite puzzled, so I started marching instead, then as they passed I smartly saluted them.
They saluted me _back_.
What it is about such heavy clothes is that it absorbs all your sweat but then _regulates_ that sweats evaporation at the surface of the cloth, so it has the effect of sweating at a constant rate rather then so-quickly is it would were your skin directly exposed to the sun, or if you only wore a t-shirt.
While it's _quite_ hot to wear Arab Dress, it really _is_ far cooler to wear it than it is to wear a t-shirt then run out of water in one's body.
That's Heat Stroke, and is _deadly_. Heat Exhaustion is the exhaustion of Sodium and Potassium in one's blood, and is the reason our troops eat salt tabs like they were M&M candy.
But if you have Heat Stoke, your _only_ hope for survival is to Drink Water - IMMEDIATELY! It _won't_ help to get into the shade.
My very life was saved by a rural church's garden clothes. I even saturated my clothing then attended it's service.
And I really _did_ thank the Baby Jesus, because that day was one of the days my time had come the very closest to Meeting My Maker.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 16 2019, @08:24AM (1 child)
Why are you talking like _this_? I *really* want to _know_.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 16 2019, @07:53PM
Because html formatting tags are a pain.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday February 16 2019, @12:44PM
Yes, traditional outfits of desert dwellers from Arabia to Mexico take advantage of that.
And armor screws with it. Just one more factor to consider in designing modern armor.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?