Real powered armor

[Son_of_Thunder]

It made me think of this book. Fantastic!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I don't imagine mansized units will be ressitant to machine gun fire to any large degree, there are some pretty powerful machineguns out there.

Hmm, I don't know. Current body armor is pretty effective against small arms fire, except obviously for areas that are not covered by the armor plates. The only reason our current body armor isn't saving more lives than it is now is because it's heavy, and it has gaps.

I would think that if you could enclose the suit entirely, and thicken the plates, and provide the actuators to move around in all that armor, you'd be largely immune to any army less sophisticated than the US military (which, by the way, is everyone, at the moment).

I still wouldn't recommend walking into heavy machinegun fire, grenades and RPGs and such, but the effect it would have on assymetric warfare would be incalculable.

Can the suit withstand .50 caliber fire?
Can the suit withstand an anti-personnel mine or grenade blast?
Can the suit withstand flame?
Can the suit withstand chem/bio weapons?

That's my checklist for "As good as it needs to be."

 

[zen_hydra]

Watching the video, all I could think about was the smart guns from Aliens. With enough additional strength and mass, a soldier could accuratly weild a machine gun from a standing position. Do you remember all of those crazy 80's movies like Rambo or Predator? I am all for anything that makes a man-portable mini-gun a reality, or possibly allows a man to fire a .50 BMG round from a standing position without killing himself.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Carrying a modern pack long distance is hard on the body. This would be a great bonus to the infantryman, especially if it had a way to cool someone off or a self contained chemical agent filter, no more need for MOP suits or carrying them. I'm sure there is a lot in the works that we don't know about,

The thing is that range is going to be the biggest problem with this thing. Until energy storage technology gets better I'd guess that it's going to need to be refueled/recharged at least twice a day.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The thing is that range is going to be the biggest problem with this thing. Until energy storage technology gets better I'd guess that it's going to need to be refueled/recharged at least twice a day.

Let's assume the troopers are plugged into their vehicle until they arrive on site...

To your larger point I think twice a day is very generous! I would be happy if they could get 1 hour of continuous activity at a stretch.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

The thing is that range is going to be the biggest problem with this thing. Until energy storage technology gets better I'd guess that it's going to need to be refueled/recharged at least twice a day.

Did they forget to mention the fusion generators that power the armor?

 

[Nebulous]

Amazing. I didn't realize they were so close to having power armor like available. Looks like within the next decade that stuff will see battlefield use.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Can the suit withstand .50 caliber fire?
Can the suit withstand an anti-personnel mine or grenade blast?
Can the suit withstand flame?
Can the suit withstand chem/bio weapons?

That's my checklist for "As good as it needs to be."

Add to that "can the suit withstand explosions from IEDs" and you're there. Heck, swap out .50 cal fire and chem/bio weapons, even (although I'd be surprised if you couldn't achieve the latter quite easily with this kind of construction). Anything that allows trained soldiers to be effectively immune to attacks from insurgents, guerillas, or criminals vastly improves the odds in favor of the "trained soldier" side in 90% of the armed conflicts out there.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

If soldiers can be made strong enough to move small autos and other obstructions out of the way there would be a definite combat advantage on a battlefield. Being able to grab a wounded soldier and run with him would also be useful. Leaping high enough to get into a second story window would be a cool trick as well.

Or with some climbing hooks just dig them into the wall with that machine driven strength and drag yourself right up the side of the building.

I don't imagine mamsized units will be ressitant to machine gun fire to any large degree, there are some pretty powerful machineguns out there.

The goal wouldn't be to make them immune to enemy fire it would be to add just enough that common small arms have a much smaller chance of inflicting damage. To shrug off light shrapnel, common small-caliber rifle rounds in common use as infantry weapons. RPGs and other light anti-armor weapons are still going to be nasty to light armor as always and powered armor is VERY light armor, the main advantage is it can use terrain for cover and concealment in the fashion of traditional infantry while gaining some benefits of mechanized armor.

Powered Armor isn't traditional infantry and wouldn't fill the same role, it's place is akin to a very light support IFV. Able to withstand fire that would be unsurvivable for infantry but able to use its size to engage in areas traditionally limited to infantry using heavier weapons than infantry can carry.

Concurrent with the increased armor that added strength enables heavier weapon loads to become possible. I'd expect to see such early suits of powered armor carrying traditionally mounted weapons such as AGLs or HMGs as standard weapons (miniguns are nice but they eat ammo too fast for infantry), heavier missiles or rockets would become portable. TOWs, Hellfires, and the smaller 70mm pods become portable under this scheme. Even without the armor I expect mortar crews and artillerymen to clamor for these exoskeletons. Anyone who's ever dealt with mortars in leg infantry knows what I'm talking about, even the 60s are bad enough to shift any great distance overland and the 120s are monsters without mechanized help.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The singular problem of their introduction will be power sources. Batteries are a no-go. They need something more than just stored power. There's already a small multi-fuel fuel cell for laptops in the testing phase. A brawnier version of that would be ideal because fuel cells operate pretty much silently.

Failing that a generator and capacitor/battery backup like a small-scale version of diesel-electric subs would have to suffice. Either way it needs to be easy to deal with the refuel/recharge issue. And so long as it runs on a common substance like diesel or alcohol that you can potentially get just about anywhere it's good.

IDEA: Anyone else here seen those gas-powered jump boots the Russian invented that had a soldier running better than 20mph with 12ft+ strides? Incorporating something like that into an exoskeleton would be interesting to see. So many uses, leaping into 2nd story window, no more breaching shotguns just activate and kick the door, etc.

EDIT: Chainsaw Sword-they wouldn't be practical. A chainsaw doesn't cut metal well and is prone to snapping or shearing under the sort of stresses involved in bashing things while operating. What the protection and strength would make possible is something more like a chunky pick with a spike for punching through hard objects.

And something that's been one of my pet ideas, the HEAT Hammer. There are nailguns that are on the end of a fairly long handle so you can reach inconvenient places. Now take this idea and instead a basic t-shaped frame using a similar mechanism to feed small shaped charges up to the face of the "hammer head." Like a nailgun you strike something and the charge goes off, only in this case its a light shaped charge that will penetrate armor or blast a hole right through an unarmored person.