Japan making power exosuits for real...

[Manedwolf]

Anything that is "just wear it" controllable is "just wear it remotely" controllable.

The end result of that is to make war so safe that no one gets killed or hurt which ends up with war becoming pointless or something that's done all the time or...

Well - y'all fill in the blank.

Wasn't it Robert E. Lee that said something to the effect that it is a good thing war is so terrible lest we become too fond of it.

Not really. It'd just protect our guys. Suicidal jihadists in various ickystans can't afford that sort of thing, nor would they use it. If they want to splatter themselves all over our guys in exosuits, who would merely be grossed out but not injured, they could go right ahead.

It would give our forces a decided advantage against more primitive, but effective urban guerilla warfare.

[Regolith]

Watch this DARPA "packbot" making un-choreographed movements outdoors in unpaved environments.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3G-UE1HwGI take special note at about 0:30 sec where the man walks up and kicks the packbot, and it "stumbles" and regains it's balance. It's eerily like a "real" quadraped animal when it does so. The software and microcontrollers are making those decisions on the fly. Often there even isn't a "central" program at all, just nested series of reflexes that function in a hierarchy. Quite possibly giving insight to how insects are capable of doing so much with so little in the way of neural matter.

That's kind of creepy, actually.  That thing moves TOO naturally.  Notice it doesn't like to get its feet wet, though (1:05). 

Look at the work that's being done with "swarm bots". Robot's who's individual intelligence is quite limited, but they have rules for interacting and producing emergent group behaviors to accomplish tasks.

Last year, our university decided to hire a new Computer Science professor. There were two candidates, and both of them gave presentations to the CS faculty and students as part of their interview process.  One of the candidate's presentation was on linear math used to control stop light algorithms.  The other's was on swarm robotics, which he had worked on while he was at the University of Wyoming.  Guess who got the job? 

Swarm robots are where its going to be at, is my guess.  It substitutes one single, expensive, slow to learn robot with multiples of cheap, agile robots that can communicate with each other and learn from each other's mistakes. Since each is cheap, they are somewhat expendable, but there are so many that the job is more likely to get done than not. Imagine having a dozen or hundreds of those DARPA pack dogs or unmanned AI vehicles out there doing search and locate or search and rescue missions.  Or perhaps they could be in the form of aircraft or insects or any other dozens of forms, whatever is cheap to manufacture and still get the job done.  Conceivably, you chain together any autonomous system together to form a swarm, so you could even link up dozens of the expensive robots, if you had the cash and need to do it.  Lots and lots of potential for this kind of stuff.

[Perd Hapley]

An anti-tank weapon that will take out a present-day AFV would almost certainly obliterate a powersuit.

If you can hit it.  A tank is a nice, big target.  A "powersuit" not so much. 

[Joe Demko]

If one thing has been demonstrated quite nicely in our nation's last few wars, it is that our expensive war machines can be defeated by primitives who are armed with much cheaper, simpler weapons.  Throw enough rpg's at an M-1 tank and eventually one will score on a vulnerable spot.  Fling enough non-guided rockets into the air and you can bring down a multi-million dollar helicopter.  Explode a big enough IED and you can destroy a light armor vehicle.
Since the armor suits are largely hypothetical now, I can't give specific methods for destroying one.  I am confident that relatively inexpensive weapons capable of destroying them will follow hard upon the heels of their deployment.

Given the level of complexity involved in something like power armor my main concern is whether they would offer such an advantage in the field as to make them worth the R&D costs and the cost-per-unit for production.  Is something that works out to give about as much advantage as an armed hummer worth spending billions to develop, manufacture, and deploy?

[Mabs2]

This all kind of reminds me of the US Govt supposedly researching VF-1 Valkyries from Macross (When it came to the states in the butchered form of Robotech) to see if they'd actually be able to build them.



Except this time, looks like something from anime really is possible.

[MechAg94]

I agree that weapons systems powerful enough to defeat an exo-suit would be easy.  To be useful, an exo-suit type system would need some sort of armor capable of shrugging off small arms and small explosives.  I doubt we have anything light that can do that now so it is pretty far off to be real useful.

Closer to today would be wearable light armor that can shrug off most small arms.  That would be something to shoot for.  Todays army is so mechanized these days, I doubt individual armor suits would be necessary unless they could move pretty fast. 

I have seen some robotics stuff on TV showing some of the mass insect concepts.  Pretty cool and potentially pretty scary if fully developed.

[MechAg94]

On suicide bombers and IED's, I think the army will come up with some bomb sniffing/detecting stuff before long to detect common explosives.  I think that is much more likely than some sort of IED proof body armor. 


The weapons shows on the military channel are full of so many anti-armor weapons that I would hesitate to put something like that in the field unless it was very fast and capable or armored very well.  Much better to focus on conventional armor and weapons that enhance the firepower of the soldier. 

[CAnnoneer]

The enabling techs for power armor would be a compact power source and compact actuators putting out significant force. The protection part (various ballistic plates stuffed in kevlar pockets) are already in existence. The sensing parts (IR cameras, binoculars, light amplification) are in existence as well, while communications have already miniaturized.

Current power sources are inadequate for the task because batteries are heavy for their power output and have to be recharged often, while internal combustion engines are easily detected. Current actuators, e.g. electrical motors and step motors, have to be made big and heavy to get the kind of force or torque output necessary.

From a military perspective, if the armor is not significantly bigger than a soldier, while offering superior protection and strength without impeding mobility, it is difficult to see how the armed forces would not be all over it. Note that the chief complaint to current armor is that is it too heavy, rather than too bulky. In a power suit, the weight problem will be solved. Also, as best I can tell, losing limbs currently happens due to shrapnel wounds or due to outright tear by the force of the explosion. A power suit with interlocking plates covering almost the entire body would stop almost all shrapnel, while the underlying strong mesh of the exoskeleton will keep the limbs from being torn off. At least as far as the plates are concerned, we know it works, because soldiers have a much higher rate of survival nowadays exactly due to armor protecting the vital organs in the torso.

The counterargument of research expense is not valid, IMO. We spend over 100b per year in Iraq. I think the armor can be researched for a lot less than 1b in total costs. A modern warship costs more than that just to build. Also, the research is a one-time investment, rather than a recurring cost. Add to that the hundreds of patents on enabling and lateral techs and the resulting companies and tax revenue for the state, and the gov may even get out ahead on that.

The counterargument of countermeasures is literally valid but ultimately impractical. There will always be countermeasures. Just because there are shaped charges, RPGs, and kinetic missiles, we have not stopped making/using tanks, and just because there are SAMs, we have not stopped making/using aircraft. Their use is affected by the countermeasures but by no means negated or forestalled. Yes, if the terrorists cram a van full of explosives and ram it into a GI in power armor, the GI will not make it, but so what? If that would be the only way for them to kill our soldier, the armor has been astoundingly successful.

Finally, a tech like power armor has significant benefits beyond the physical. Decreased casualties sap the morale of the army and the society at a far slower rate, while the enemy is both frustrated and intimidated by his shrunken ability to be effective in combat.

[jefnvk]

Everybody always says "the power supply is the problem". unfortunately, it's only one problem...

Hmm, there appears to be hydraulic lines.  What happens when those blow, does this thing all the suddenly become a trap for whomever is inside it?

[Joe Demko]

Countermeasures have resulted in the removal of various military equipment from use.  When the countermeasures make a given vehicle a death-trap that vehicle (and that's essentially what power armor is) is either upgraded or retired.  How many countries started off WWII with armored cars and light tanks?  How many were still using them by the end of the war?  How many countries still use piston-driven fighter aircraft?  Etc.
When you start putting in requirements like it has to be not much larger than a soldier, relatively light, permit mobility, and so on; I'll be impressed if they come up with something that Johnny Jihad can't punch a hole through with an old-fashioned anti-tank rifle.  You want to talk about a blow to morale?  How do you think the American people would react to video of their sons (clad in million-dollar armor) getting killed by primitives with big, clunky rifles?

[MechAg94]

On casualties, I have read a number of scifi books that talk about uniforms that act as body armor over all they cover and also help mask detection.  I imagine something like that will come along sooner than powered armor.  I heard that the new camo uniforms actually have some help against IR detection.


I am not really saying that armored combat suits aren't possible or practical, I just think they are a long way off and presuppose a lot of development that isn't there yet.  If they could be made independently mobile, strong, and armored well, they would certainly be useful and have a place on the battlefield.  If anything, something like that robot mule in the link earlier would be useful for carrying supplies or heavier weapons where tanks couldn't go. 

In the end, who knows what will be around in 50 or 100 years.  I doubt a lot of the weapons we have today weren't imagined 50 or 100 years ago.  Go read the original War of the Worlds book.  It predated Kittyhawk.  Artillery was the only long distance weapon they had.  With today's weapons, we could have kicked their ass except for maybe the poison gas canisters. 

[AJ Dual]

Everybody always says "the power supply is the problem". unfortunately, it's only one problem...

Hmm, there appears to be hydraulic lines.  What happens when those blow, does this thing all the suddenly become a trap for whomever is inside it?

To me, especially on the back of the legs, they look to be bundles of PC-style ribbon cables, probably for sensors and stepper motors, and it's probably a lot bigger than it needs to be, giving modularity for troubleshooting and prototyping.

There was a story of another Japanese Exoskeleton wearer carrying a paralyzed man on a hike up to the top of a mountain....

Not a lot of robotic applications use hydraulics anymore. Not precise enough for fine work, and not rapidly "twitch" adjustable for the constant "walk by wire" adjustments needed for bipedal locomotion, or the negative feedback systems needed in the exo-suits control interface with it's wearer.

As to all the engineering challenges, power, and mechanical limitations of getting workable combat suits, I agree, they're formidable.

However, it's also possible these challenges will be solved out of the desire to get the suits. And then those discoveries could have extraordinary applications in other fields. Who knows? Perhaps DARPA work on powered armor could solve the "Electric car problem".

Or, it works in reverse too. Someone working on new laptop batteries might, solve the electric car and the power-suit problem.

Perhaps power-armor will come to nothing, but will revolutionize construction, rescue work, and treatment for paralysis victims and the infirm.

"Grandma? I need to change a flat, can you help me and lift the car up please?"

"Why sure sweetie!"

WHIZZZZZ-THUNK
WHIZZZZZ-THUNK
WHIZZZZZ-THUNK

(groaning metal)

"Where do you want it dear?"

[CAnnoneer]

Countermeasures have resulted in the removal of various military equipment from use. 

Only to be replaced with more advanced versions, in most cases along the same line of tech advance.

When the countermeasures make a given vehicle a death-trap that vehicle (and that's essentially what power armor is) is either upgraded or retired.  How many countries started off WWII with armored cars and light tanks?  How many were still using them by the end of the war? 

You might want to read up on tank tech and tank warfare. Armored cars and even light tanks (if fast enough) were used as recon vehicles until the end of the war. On the "battleline", older tanks were replaced with up-armed, up-armored, up-powered tanks, while the old chasis were used as the basis for self-propelled anti-tank and artillery. Even the appearance of Panzerfaust did not stop or even slow down the production of medium and heavy tanks.

How many countries still use piston-driven fighter aircraft?  Etc.

To be replaced with jet-engine upgrades and swept wings.

When you start putting in requirements like it has to be not much larger than a soldier, relatively light, permit mobility, and so on; I'll be impressed if they come up with something that Johnny Jihad can't punch a hole through with an old-fashioned anti-tank rifle.  You want to talk about a blow to morale?  How do you think the American people would react to video of their sons (clad in million-dollar armor) getting killed by primitives with big, clunky rifles?

If the only way the jihadists could harm our soldiers would be with a single-shot bolt-action 2-meter-long rifle that weighs 40 pounds and near-dislocates their shoulder every time they fire it, I think we should be jumping with joy. Then again I would not underestimate any pinkoliberal's capacity to shed crocodile tears...

[Joe Demko]

I'd prefer this not turn into yet another "let's bitch about leftists" thread; but I've said pretty much all I have to say about as-yet hypothetical power armor anyway.