Skeleton Warriors Source: Beyond 2000 The United States wants its own starship troopers. As
part of a project that's been quietly ticking away for months now, the
Department of Defense has decided it needs to grant superhuman powers
to its soldiers; providing them with the ability run faster, carry
more gear and leap tall buildings. It plans to do this with powered
combat armour exoskeletons, and the first contract in the project was
awarded this week.
Buried way down in a mundane Pentagon announcement of
successful service tenders was an eight line statement revealing that
a Californian company was being paid several million dollars to
develop and test a strap-on propeller system, enabling individual
warriors to fly.
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In Robert Heinlen's classic book Starship Troopers, his
protagonist is a serving member of Earth's Mobile Infantry. Standard
equipment for these troops is the 'power suit', a combat-specific
ensemble that enhances its wearer's physical abilities with hydraulics
and servo motors, granting Herculean strength and the ability to jump
hundreds of meters in a single bound.
To military planners, Heinlen's invention now seems like
a pretty good idea. Scientists at the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) have been looking at the concept as part of a
project called "Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation".
DARPA's stated objectives are "to develop devices and
machines that will increase the speed, strength, and endurance of
soldiers in combat environments....(leading) to self-powered,
controllable, wearable exoskeletal devices and/or machines."
What the agency is looking for is equipment that will:
* Extend the mission payload and/or range of the
soldier. The undeclared point of all this enhancement is to turn
even a single soldier into a super-potent angel of death. He will be
able to employ heavy weapons systems that are currently impossible for
a human to even carry, let alone fire from the hip. He will pack more
ballistic protection and carry more ammunition and supplies. The
Pentagon figures these improvements will be effective in all combat
environments, but especially in urban terrain.
As with any powered system, the most critical issue
facing combat exoskeletons is energy storage and actuation. Maximising
energy output versus bulk is the key equation, and power sources will
have to be man-portable. Currently, researchers are exploring the use
of highly-efficient chemical fuels for the mechanical actuation of the
suits (as opposed to other energy storage media, like batteries or
compressed air). At the current state of the art, this seems the best
way to provide an exoskeleton with a "militarily significant" range
and duration.
Super fly
The first private contractor to be awarded a noteworthy
slice of the exoskeleton budget is Millenium Jet Incorporated, which
is the commercial front of a syndicate trying to develop a one-man
flying machine called the SoloTrek Exoskeletor Flying Vehicle (XFV).
The gasoline-powered SoloTrek has featured in the futurist media for
some time now, and it's developers claim that when finished, it should
be capable of hovering for 3 hours and travel laterally at speeds of
up to 130 km/h. The strap-on helicopter has been displayed at various
engineering, aviation and military exhibitions but is yet to make a
flight, prompting cynics to put it in the same basket as flying rocket
cars and teleportation.
Millenium Jet aren't listening to the doubters though.
Under the contract, the Department of Defense has given the company $5
million and three years to complete development and testing of the
SoloTrek. Wind tunnel trials are currently underway at NASA's Ames
Research Center, one of the development partners.
Since sustained flight is the most difficult objective
to achieve, SoloTrek will be a benchmark for exoskeleton proponents
.If it can indeed get off the ground, the idea of non-flying power
suits will appear well within grasp. Certainly it would seem that
existing levels of bio-mechanics, force feedback and control
processing are sufficient to begin the march of the robo-warrior.
And the birth of the Mobile Infantry...
http://www.beyond2000.com/news/Dec_00/story_926.html
* Increase the "lethality" and "survivability" of ground troops for
short range and special operations.
* Enhance mobility and load carrying capacity to allow soldiers to
carry more ballistic protection and heavy weaponry.
* Augment human strength.
* Increase human speed and endurance.
* Allow troops to "leap extraordinary heights and/or distances."