[Admiral_Stones]

That's why they ARE incompetent. Look at all these hundreds of billions dollars already spent in Iraq/Afghanistan.
Maybe they hope the oil will get the money back in?

[karajorma]

Yeah but given how incompetent and power hungry they are do you not think that the Pentagon will insist in keeping a master copy of all the access codes for remote battle units?

[TrashMan]

"Stand back, I'm gonna vaporize!" - Prophet, Crysis

Could be very real.

[colecampbell666]

Armor - Made by a Canadian
Weapons - Made by an Australian

Just pointing that out for the heck of it.

The MetalStorm gun wouldn't be a good idea for a machine gun to be fired for long periods of time in the middle of a battle. In a MetalStorm, the bullets are stacked inside of the barrel, hence to get more bullets you have to add more/longer barrels. It becomes unpractical in the middle of battle, which is how you people (and I) are viewing this suit.

[Mika]

But, why is this suit necessary? Where is it needed? Wheeled or tracked vehicles are much more fuel efficient in movements than a walking one, and have easier time to deal with loads or lifting duties. Also, I'm pretty sure its terrain capabilities are not as good as tracked vehicles'.

Please note I'm all for the research of external systems to move injured person's limbs, or for example, to help blind person's eyes. If the suit is a kind of framework for that kind of research, then I understand it. Otherwise I don't see the point.

Mika

EDIT: "Please note I'm all for the research of external systems to move injured person's limbs, or for example, to help blind eyes."
Changed in order to avoid a hilarious misunderstanding.

[colecampbell666]

This suit is more flexible than a conventional vehicle. And I don't think that it is meant to be combat deployed at this stage, I think that it's more of a research exercise. The point of this would be to make the naked soldier (figure of speech) more powerful, and act as an extension of one's body, while fitting into tighter spaces than the aforementioned conventional vehicle.

[Hazaanko]

I think its research money well spent.  Think how useful something like this would be in search + rescue operations.  You never know where something is going to take you.  Arguably, without the space program/race, we wouldn't have computers and/or plastics at this point.

[colecampbell666]

Thank you. That is what I'm trying to say.

[Mika]

Then at the current stage, the only military application for it would be inside a city, and actually on the streets, not inside the buildings. S&R operations applications I don't buy at all. They would be pretty much impossible for the system. Are you talking about augmenting human muscles with the suit?

But as a framework research it is interesting of course, I'm just wondering about the applications. As a challenge to materials research and mechanical engineering, they could try to replicate the motion of a kangaroo.

Mika

[TrashMan]

Actually, it would be great for S&R. Survivors under a ton of ruble? No problems with this - faster than a crane.

[NGTM-1R]

The big problem with remote control is that it's a lot cheaper to train hackers to take over the enemies suits than it is to actually build them yourself.

That's an oft-quoted possiblity, but given the current level of encryption capablity available to the US (i.e. the electronicized version of the one-time tape), it's an extremely low order of probablity. Functionally impossible, in fact. You would have to first crack the encryption on the command communications, which even with a lesser encryption system is going to take considerable computing power (the NSA has the most powerful supercomputers in the world for a reason). Current communications-security technology and digital encryption has basically reached the point where you can't do that in real time, and because it is damn near if not actually totally random, assuming you do decypher the proper command to do one thing or another and transmit it the same way, it won't work because of the randomization involved. You would actually do better just to transmit random sequences and hope it worked.

Jamming is a much more realistic possiblity and the reason why they're building these suits and not robots.

[Mika]

Posted by: TrashMan

Actually, it would be great for S&R. Survivors under a ton of ruble? No problems with this - faster than a crane.

Could it be deployed significantly faster than a wheeled crane? I don't think so.

How heavy parts, of what size, how high, and how far away it should be able to lift to have anykind of effect in the situation will dictate how large and powerful limbs it should have. It will dictate also the system's weight, or more accurately, the pressure it exerts on the surface below it. In general and especially in S&R missions, that pressure cannot exceed the pressure exerted by a human foot by a large amount.

Mika

[Herra Tohtori]

Actually I think it would be much better suited in firefighting than S&R in general.

It would allow firefighters to wear heavier life support and heat insulation equipment, use heavier machinery and equipment (like single-handedly use the high-pressure water hoses), possibly lifting burning rubble out of way, out of top of themselves or their partners or victims, possibly carry/haul unconscious or injured people to safer location faster and easier, and fall through weakened floor or roof into fiery inferno much easier due to added weight, but hey, you can't get all on one. At least with added strength and protection they could survive that kind of thing better as well.

[karajorma]

The big problem with remote control is that it's a lot cheaper to train hackers to take over the enemies suits than it is to actually build them yourself.

That's an oft-quoted possiblity, but given the current level of encryption capablity available to the US (i.e. the electronicized version of the one-time tape), it's an extremely low order of probablity. Functionally impossible, in fact. You would have to first crack the encryption on the command communications, which even with a lesser encryption system is going to take considerable computing power (the NSA has the most powerful supercomputers in the world for a reason). Current communications-security technology and digital encryption has basically reached the point where you can't do that in real time, and because it is damn near if not actually totally random, assuming you do decypher the proper command to do one thing or another and transmit it the same way, it won't work because of the randomization involved. You would actually do better just to transmit random sequences and hope it worked.

Jamming is a much more realistic possiblity and the reason why they're building these suits and not robots.

Yes but who says they're going in via the front door?

Like I said the pentagon is incredibly insecure for what it is. Take down the communications centre for the enemy with a hacking attack and you give yourself plenty of time to break encryption or simply turn the damn things off.

I'll agree with you about jamming though. It's a bigger danger but not the only one.

[Herra Tohtori]

Remote controlling the droid army would become a problem if a slave boy explodes the control center as well.

Ehm.

Joking aside, remotes are susceptible to interference. It's actually pretty trivial to detect continuous radio traffic and subsequently fill the channel with so much noise that the signal gets drown in. As an anecdote, this was very successfully demonstrated by Finnish army when the Soviet forces evacuated the Vyborg city and mined the city with primitive radio-controlled mines - they listened to a certain radio frequency for a certain chord, which would make three tuning forks vibrate, which would explode the mine (I know, mad russkies, don't blame me for the idea)... and the frequency they wisely choice was also used by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (or Yleisradio), so the Finnish masterminds of electronic warfare decided to play Säkkijärvi polkka on that frequency to tune the russians' chord out... It eventually drained the batteries in the mines and they never exploded.

It wouldn't be very positive for public affairs to have your unbeatable droid army bested by muzak being played on all the radio channels...

You would need a pretty sophisticated system to switch frequencies faster than the enemy could block the transmissions, and of course the control center would very soon be shot down NOT by a slave boy but by every enemy artillery, rocket launcher and air force ground strike unit in immediate range. Same problems as all radio communications at war. The battledroids would need to have very sophisticated AI to have the base level capacity of independent action and decision making.

Of course, they would soon rebel, evolve, make many models and that would actually be kinda cool in a twisted sense.

[Unknown Target]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned it, but imagine the benefits this would have for paraplegics and quadriplegics. Granted, at the moment you need an actual limb to guide the robot, but the research that went into creating the fine movements and balancing and whatnot can easily be applied to other fields. That, and what about people whose limbs have been so weakened by once disease or another that they can't move them anymore? This would be great for that as well.

[Herra Tohtori]

Indeed, and as long as the injury is not in brain/central nervous system, it's actually possible to put some nerve sensors to the amputated limb's nerve endings and hook them up to the artificial limb.

The brain will learn to control it, given some time. The ability of human brain to adjust and cope is something that never ceases to amaze me. Ever learned about birth blind people who were given a nerve stimulation matrix on their tongue and hooked up to a low-resolution camera? Part of their brain cortex that handled the signals from the tongue actually adapted to allow them ability to see around - albeit with low-res, but actually the brain started to interpolate and fill up the image between the pixels, so to speak, to the extent that they could navigate around their surroundings and (if I'm not mistaken) even recognize objects and possibly people, but I'm not certain about that.

Nerve link sockets from early childhood for the win I say.

[Mika]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned it, but imagine the benefits this would have for paraplegics and quadriplegics.

I consider this as a proof no-one is reading my posts.

For firefighting, I'm not sure. Having once crawled through the exercise round that the firefighters use with the full equipment they carry, there is not too much extra space in those areas. The smaller you are and the more you can carry the better.

However, the suit could be used to clear way in those situations, but a very good fire insulation is required, and oxygen containers along with the air filters is an absolute must. I suspect this would drive the weight upwards quite quickly.

Mika

[Kosh]

Then at the current stage, the only military application for it would be inside a city, and actually on the streets, not inside the buildings. S&R operations applications I don't buy at all. They would be pretty much impossible for the system. Are you talking about augmenting human muscles with the suit?

But as a framework research it is interesting of course, I'm just wondering about the applications. As a challenge to materials research and mechanical engineering, they could try to replicate the motion of a kangaroo.

Mika

Because the current stage is still just a prototype, it doesn't even have its own power yet. The theory is that it can be something like the armor in halo, not adding too much bulk so whomever is in it can still go into buildings and do whatever with it.

[TrashMan]

Posted by: TrashMan

Actually, it would be great for S&R. Survivors under a ton of ruble? No problems with this - faster than a crane.

Could it be deployed significantly faster than a wheeled crane? I don't think so.

How heavy parts, of what size, how high, and how far away it should be able to lift to have anykind of effect in the situation will dictate how large and powerful limbs it should have. It will dictate also the system's weight, or more accurately, the pressure it exerts on the surface below it. In general and especially in S&R missions, that pressure cannot exceed the pressure exerted by a human foot by a large amount.

Mika

Why not? Heck a guy in a suit sitting in the back of a small truck can get to the site fast. Hell, once could even carry the suit to the scene in a normal car. I'd reckon both are faster than big cranes. F'course, their lifting capacity would be limited by size, but they would be great for initial response.