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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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(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.