Been a while since I have been at the forum, been busy, but now that some time has passed...

What do you think now of the potential of powered exoskeletons/power armor for military applicaitons?

Years ago when I first metioned them peopel were like go back to your sci fi book, impossible...

Then a few years after that it was yeah, it can be made to work, but it impractical.

Now we have units going into production in Japan for civilian use that have carried a handicap man up a mountain and the Sarcos unit is nearing its trial period and is looking pretty impressive.

So, now what do you think? Gonna happen in the next 5-10 years? Or are we still a long time off.

I am not too certain. I am sure we will see military applications for these in the future but right now I believe the technology is not quite there. Perhaps by 2020 or so?

*Pulls up lawn chair - Grabs jumbo popcorn and extra-extra-large can of Red Bull - Cooly slides sunglasses on while lighting a kent*

Can never be made to work, foolish to even try, an example of man's vanity etc. etc. gibber dribble moan.

Got enough for two? Red bull? How about a Fosters? (I know, I know, but here in the hinterlands of SamLand it passes for Aussie beer .)

Alot of DARPA money has been thrown at this in the past few years. There are several public projects and a couple that are not open source.
It will only be a couple of years before you see pedal vehicles, manned and robotic, enter service initially in support and logistical roles. 5 years (or so, depending on the amount of bureaucratic sloth in the Army R&D) before an armed and armored "battle suit" is ready.

The only real impediment today is convincing Congress to fund production and fielding of non-experimental,prototypeic, versions.

*brings the keg and s'mores*

we might need sleeping bags and a tent, this could go on for some time.

It might work for rear area folk and tasks, but I don't see it working for infantry. You're going to increase their visual and IR signatures greatly, limit their mobility, probably not increase their protection, limit or remove their ability to go in buildings, and have to redesign pretty much every tactical vehicle.

How about robomule.> http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog

For all the expensive gee-wiz toys that weapons designers think up the infantry on the ground have still resorted to the tried and tested infantry tactic that has worked for centurys. Try to make yourself the smallest less important target you can, they may be short on ammo. Trying to turn yourself into a Japanese school boys wet dream might work for some but you probably woun't last long on a battlefeild. Strapping on several hundred pounds of armour will make you less visable and a bigger target and although your new armour might stop the standered small arm people will adopt a new bigger small arm which will get through your armour.

Here is the video that impressed me as to how far they have come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWd2C3XVIk

So this established that its pretty agile (maybe more so then a guy with 120 pounds of stuff on) but not a super sprinter or jumper. They said they want that too, but thats going to be a lot more difficult.

Power pack, that still seems to be a sore sport

Logistics work. Sure, why not.

Price, who knows. The Japanese Hal 5 goes for $13,000 US if I recall correctly. Now you can double or tripple that for something the military would buy!

So, when, well I think that depends how badly its wanted. Seems like it could be realy in a matter of months if they really really needed it, more likely <5 years for something in the field though.

Now, impact on the battlefield.

Making the enemy get a bigger gun can really mess up their gameplan. If you armor the system to protect up to .300 mag (most sniper rifles covered) and equivelent frag and against flasfire, you have just take away a lot of bad guy tools. No more AKs, smags, pistols, grenades, etc... Now they have to resort to RPGs and IEDs.

I know, I know, congradulations, you have just made all grunts targets for RPGs and IEDs, well they are allready, but it would take a pretty direct hit to hurt them if they are in their exo armor.

So what I am saying is that level of armor protection would be a significant factor in future conflict, especially with rag tag groups.

In full scale battle against a first rate opponent the advantage would drop as AMRs and such could be readily fielded.

We might see the resurgance of "anti-tank" riffles, heavy caliber guns to punch through exo armor.

There will be a practicle limit to how much armor you put on them, but it also will limit the enemys ammo (can carrly less bigger ammo) and make they carry around heavier weapons.

On the offensive the exo armor infantry should be able to carry more ammo and more leathal weapons of course.

Other then that they would proabaly operate much like current infantry, getting a ride to the battle then jumping out.

Would be see the IFV/APC go away in favor of trucks or riding on tanks since protection from small arms is not organic to the infantry soldier?

Its a facinating subject and it will be interesting to watch it all unfold over the next few decades. 20 years from now I would suspect that conventional warfare will be taken over by "psychotronic" methods (I refuse to go into my matrix pod in 2025 by the way ) but we are now in my opinion entering the possible window of greatest application for exo armor, from anytime now on through the 2020s.

Anti Exoskeleton/Robot weapons test...fear the Japanese Kamikazi stick attack!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLmmEr7Y7ic...feature=related

Just for the bigger gun, maybe just design new ammo? 7.62mm SLAP? Or that Steyr flechettes ?

Well, whatever Sampson was busy at, it wasn't studying physics or engineering. There's still the issue of providing enough power when the suit isn't just helping the wearer carry more weight, but actually carrying the user, armor, ordnance, and power supply. As previously mentioned, the impact on maneuverability, the ability to use buildings, the ability to use vehicles, etc. of a suit actually able to carry enough armor, power, and weapons is just not considered by enthusiasts, or dismissed by applying various forms of handwavium.

One big question that has been unanswered is mobility in soft terrain. A soldier with a backpack has a hard enough time with soft ground and an exoskeleton is going to add another few hundred pounds (or more) to the ground pressure. Make the feet big enough to distribute the weight and agility will go down (see running with snowshoes).

Signatures have already been mentioned. As has a power source. How bulky will a suit have to be to withstand your garden variety .50BMG or 12.7mmx108? Even armoring against 7.62x51? All those actuators have to be armored, as does the power plant & fuel. How heavy will that be? What about when two suited soldiers have to squeeze past each other in a hallway? I see a limited role for the RoboMule as a replacement for the biological mule in extremely steep terrain, but anything else would seem to be better handled by MGators, HMMWVs, ATVs, etc. Maybe for unloading trucks in the field, but that's what they make rough-terrain forklifts for. Re-arming aircraft would be another one, but wheeled loaders seem to do a good enough job as it is.

Still an answer in search of a question.

Douglas

A serious discussion on powered armour seems a bit to me like discussing tank design in the 1800s.

Exoskeletons and powered armor will happen, but probably not until the power supplies get a hell of a lot more compact and efficient.

My own take on it is that there's going to be a progression from logistic functionality, such as forward transshipment points and frontline construction, to combat functionality. We probably haven't even thought of half of the potential uses for these things, when they become prevalent. Which they will, at first in heavy construction and industry. The military may have to spend the bucks in order to develop things, but industry will take the ball and run with it, particularly as the populations age in the in industrialized west.

I think the prop designers from "Aliens" had a damn good take on what the first or second generation systems are going to look like--glorified rough-terrain forklifts.

I can see half-a-dozen places these exoskeletons would have been huge assets to me, as a combat engineer. Just like the Bobcat skid-steers we got in, towards the end of my career. They're not perfect for every task, but geez, can you imagine bridge assembly with them? Ever so much easier... And, as an added bonus, you no longer have the "size/gender" disadvantage on a construction site. More women in the force will require their development and use.

Although, come to think of it, those Bobcats were pretty damn close to being version .01 of the exoskeleton.

Dunno, I reckon we'll need the caffeine, unless we can grab a few cartons TEDdy's and then some mariners coffee for afterwards.

Say what are those american delicacies with flaming marshmellows sandwiched between animal crackers?

They'll be great...

S'mores, got it covered already

DARPA is funding several parallel projects, but each of them have suspiciously decided to develop separate elements of the concept. So we have SARCOS with their fully workable suit, the Berkeley BLEEX team with the best control system available, some other guys developing natural balance mechanisms, and at least two groups working on the powerpack problem. One of the powerpack groups is even trying to turn the exo's own gait to power a battery. I would say that it's really just a matter of pushing each project to completion and taking the elements that work best in each for integration into a final working design. Then again, it's DARPA. Integration ain't exactly their forte.

Am I the only one who noticed that thoughout the demonstration, the exoskeleton was suspsended by a cable?

Leaving those unresolved power/weight questions aside, there is something else that the proponents of these exoskeletons for combat purposes seem to overlook.
It is right at the beginning of that Sarcos video:"...Soldiers get tired and need rest...". As if they would not get tired and need rest when using exoskeletons - yes, maybe less so, but you can bet that the now reduced necessary resting time will be taken up fully for maintenance and repair of their exoskeleton.

Why wouldn't soldiers get tired and need rest just because they were using an exoskeleton? Even though their actions are being augmented by the exoskeleton, soldiers still have to provide movement input to the system. The idea is supposed to be about doing more for a given amount of effort, not expending less effort.

And I forgot to mention one of the big concerns I brought up the last time we discussed this -- the bail-out problem. I'm sure every soldier wishes fondly for the day they're stuck in an unpwoered exoskeleton inside a burning building or under fire...

Supposedly you'd be able to move faster and for longer with one than without (so you can arrive at your location with enough time to perform PMCS lol!).


As opposed to being trapped by the same without the armor?

It's a niche item. Incredibly useful within those niches, but unlikely to replace the standard (contemporary) Infantryman.


Falken

Moving faster, no matter how much of the load is carried by the machine, still exercises muscles.



Without armor, I can use my own abilities to try to get out. Stuck in an immobile armor suit that would be at least as hard to bail out of as an astronaut's pressure suit? No thanks.

Tony, I think there is a missunderstanding. I agree with you.

Even if the soldier "just" controls a remote robotic combat system, he will still tire and need rest. I will grant the proponents of exoskeletons that a soldier using it will maybe need less rest, but - and that is the big but - the time "saved" will be spend on maintenance of the exoskeleton.

Not necisarrily, it could be as easy as getting in and out of a tank. Depends on the cleverness of the engineering.

If you time travel from 1900 to the present, the things that you see will blow you mind. Many things that seem completely impossible then are now commonplace, just a short 100 years later.

IMO this exoskeleton thing is definitely do-able. Maybe not in my life time. This is a much smaller technological leap than someone inventing the lightbulb while working by candlelight.

The demo of the guy in exoskeleton lifting heavy loads already seem pretty impressive. So the technology is already here. You just need people to keep figuring out how to make it better, smaller, lighter etc.

It's just my opinion, but you really need to think that assertion through. If you're wearing the suit like, well, a suit, and the power goes, wriggling out of it with arms and legs akimbo in random directions and confirgurations is in no way likely to be anything like getting out of a tank.

The relentless and inevitable advance of technology is a quite common but quite mistaken trope. All technologies mature sooner rather than later, and then there's nothing more to be gained. Exoskeletal armored suits are arguably beyond the means of very mature power, fluidics, and materials technologies.

Only because you are a cermudgeon who doesn't want to think so.

Any "realistic" power suit in the near future with a useful level of armor isn't going to be a "suit" like a suit of clothing, its going to be something like this:


not this:

Uhhh...no. Because the potential for technological development is not the magic wand that many think it is.



1. There is no known requirement for even your "'realistic' power suit", and plenty of disadvantages to fielding such systems.

2. The subject is "Powered Exoskeletons", so your "realistic" suit, while interesting to ridicule in its own right, isn't particularly germain.

Well, since this isn't "Logisticiansnet.org", bringing up a powered exoskeleton (ie; has its stucture on the outside) with enough armor and weapons to be useful in combat seems more germain than your constant poo poo-ing the idea.

Since we've gone round and round about this before and EVERYONE here knows your opinion on the subject, why do you even bother to post in these threads?



Chocolate. Can't forget the hot semi-molten chocolate!

I'm not pooh-poohing the idea, as in dismissing it out of hand. I'm questioning it's technical feasibility from the position of understood engineering and physics.



Why not?

Seriously, on every subject, everybody pretty much knows everyone's position. Without reiteration, there would soon be no TN.

Military ( combat ) applications set aside, i could see a lot of use for this kind of technology in civilian field, construction yards, freight and so forth.
Also the medical applications interest me even more, for obvious reasons, especially if or when we get to endoskeletons/protesis. So, if many of you agree that the military applications are still quite a bit far fetched, would you say that the civilian applications are closer to meet and serve the demands of reality?

Yep, civilian use will come first. Here is Hal 5, on sale now, mostly intended to help disabled at this point. Climbed a mountain with a "pilot" hauling a parapalegic on his back while wearing the exo booster machine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSP46lWvxJ4...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynL8BCXih8U...feature=related

13,000$ US, tried to buy one, they are not ready to export them yet!

There is also an exoskeleton for nurses to use to help move paitients around.

Then there is the one for farmers.

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2008/01/new-robot-suit.html

Just a few of the many Japanese examples of advanced robotics getting ready to make their mark.

some "concept art" for you

So how does one get a platoon of these guys to the front lines? Seems like a lot of work. They look too big to stuff in an IFV.

A couple of drawings have the units too big to go through regular doors.

And I can't see them jumping walls and crawling under wires.

And they seem too small to withstand a RPG hit.



I wonder whether the better use of money is to develop lighter and better body armor. Low-tech over high-tech.

If I were writing a scenario for how the development of this whole "exoskeleton to powered armor" thing is going to go, I'd think it will go about like this:

First generation of equipment likely to be rushed into service, in order to demonstrate that "something was gotten for the money". Thereupon, the stuff is going to perform about like a Gamma Goat, and earn a reputation as an idiotic idea. Combat exoskeletons will then go away, except for niche uses. At least, for a little while.

Civilians will likely see the benefit, and wind up industrializing the equipment, a la Aliens. Expect a lot of logistics work to eventually be done with them, after the military re-adopts the idea in a more feasible form.

Eventually, power, materials, and control will catch up to what is needed, and the military likely won't notice, or will discount the idea as "Something we already tried, and it didn't work...".

At some point, a logistics transfer point in the battle area is going to get overrun, and someone is going to use a powered exoskeleton to put a stop to it--about like some crazy bastards in my heavy equipment section drove off an infantry platoon utilizing a ten-ton forklift and two machine guns in a bucket. At that point, someone in the hierarchy is going to have a light bulb turn on, and we'll start to see limited uses of the equipment in combat. More than likely, I see the whole thing starting out in the Engineers, because the first series of equipment is likely to mimic capabilities we now find in a skid-steer. Picture pavement-breakers, drills, and augurs, for fighting in urban operations. Hell, I'm surprised we haven't up-armored a damn Bobcat, equipped it with a suitable set of hydraulic tools, and sent it along on missions in Iraq. Yeah, it would be vulnerable to an RPG, but think of how nice it would be to have a no-fail way into a building, under small-arms fire. Send the up-armor Bobcat forward, with pavement breaker, and you're going to be able to make a mousehole just about anywhere you want, at street-level. Granted, you can do about the same thing with explosives, but that sort of specialist capability could come in handy for a lot of situations... Although, personally, I think I'd rather have the damn thing remotely operated.

A powered exoskeleton is likely to be the next major innovation in light construction/demolition equipment, if I'm reading the cards right. Once that happens, and they're common, things will flow, from there.

I wouldn't discount the Japanese affection for robots, giant and otherwise, either. Somewhere, some kid is daydreaming as we speak, and that little bugger is aiming to live out his Anime fantasies. He just may manage to do it, and take us with him.

Yawn.

A couple of things:

1. People obviously don't understand the concept of vaporware.

2. The MI powered armor and all subsequent immitations were plot devices. They're no different than artificial gravity, the so-called Cherenkov Drive, or tactical nukes under the control of corporals -- they move the story along, but they're not serious predictions of future technology.

They aren't plot devices unless they become part of the story of why the characters are doing something. So unless there is something wrong with _whatever it is_ from a fictional stand point, your power armor or starship might as well be a flintlock pistol or a stage coach.

What does that have to do with the topic at hand?

An FTL starship is a plot device that allows one to have an interesting story that approaches the same kind of progression as one might get with flintlocks and stage coaches. It makes things a little more interesting than, well, they didn't have a war because there's no point to fight over something decades of travel time away. Power armor covers basically the same point in terms of making it possible for a platoon of humans to survive on a nuclear battlefield and maneuver over large distances without the intervention of other vehicles.



It contextualizes the discussion by making it clear that the conceptual prototypes weren't and aren't serious technological models, but simple handwavium designed to suit mundane narrative purposes. IOW, talking about powered armor serves the same realistic purpose as discussing the latest scientific developments in magic swords and anti-dragon technology.

Soo.. by that logic Verne's 20K Leagues Under the Sea or the early 20th century's pulp fiction about "land battleships" invalidated the concepts of the practical submarine or the tank?

Both of those came after practical submarines and tanks. Hunley was the most famous submarine prior to the novel, but there were already combustion powered submarines a few years prior. Land battleships mainly came after the first world war if memory serves, and tanks can be thought of as an uparmored and uparmed armored car anyhow. But even with them, you could make scientific calculations to show the feasibility or lack thereof, or at least what is necessary for it to work. So where are those calculations for powered armor?

There you go ruining a perfectly good reparte with facts.

Could someone in the 1800s have accurately calculated the feasibility of a nuclear submarine that could dive to the bottom of the deepest ocean?

Considering that they didn't even know what nuclear power was? That's kind of the point -- a practical powered exoskeleton would take that kind of advance in protable power. Except that we're a lot closer to a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental structure of nature than they were in 1800. It doesn't look like that kind of advance is possible.

Were all forgetting an important aspect of technology. Biologically based engineering systems.

If your objective is to make a soldier stronger and better protected it is well within the realm of recent biomechanical advances to say - create a lightweight titanium and carbon fiber endoskeleton that fits around a trooper. Graft and/or grow tendon and muscle tissue on porous sites of the endoskeleton and load it up with plenty of muscle tissue, wrap the whole thing in its own skin and graft some sort of armored exoskeleton on the outside.

Cram enough muscle mass in there and you can meet your strength and protection levels (at least from small arms).

The entire suit can be then fed with concentrated nutrients. Were not breaking any power requirements and there are plenty of massive organisms out there.

Yeah the suit gets tired, but so does any vehicle operator.