[redsniper]

Just FYI, everyone, the reason you never hear about Dragonskin anymore is because it was a failure. Bullets were found to go right through when hitting the armor at a certain angle. Also, that grenade test is stupid. Even if the vest blocked the shrapnel, the force of the explosion would likely still compress your torso enough to **** you up, not to mention all your limbs would be blown off.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

So that's what happened to that.  Anyway I always assumed lying on a grenade would do internal damage even if the armor protected you.  Now being blown backward something like dragonskin if perfected could save your ass.  Body armor on the legs and arms could also be achievable due to weight restrictions.  Heck you might even have climate controllable body armor with the suit. 

One other thing.  Who says the operator will even need to be within miles of it in the future?

[SpardaSon21]

Jamming issues?  How well can an operator operate through a haze of white noise?

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Same way UAVs, remote controlled robotic guns, and everything else does.  Even the newer medical units are all remote controlled. 

[castor]

It's perfectly possible that a power armoured soldier carrying tons of gear will be faster than today's soldiers, who also carry tons of gear. Soldiers today carry unnaturally heavy loads, and they don't have exoskeletons to help out.

Sure, but once you're under attack you may need to drop the load in attempt to survive the immediate threat, right?
My doubts are about these extreme situations. How well can you side step in full speed, how quickly can you make 180 degrees in full speed, how accurately and quickly can you coordinate your moves with this thing attached? How about balancing on one foot and turning around while bending down? Let them perform The Nutcracker with those on and I'll believe it's all good.

That said, I'm sure it'll be great outside battlefields, where most of the negative effects don't have any meaning.

[headdie]

its one of those things where infantry tactics will have to evolve to meet the new scenario, it happens whenever a new technology changes how dynamically the battlefield changes and the speed a soldier can respond to it as it has happened since the humanity started going to war

[Flipside]

Not really, not at infantry level, the only real alteration to infantry tactics over the centuries has been the change from formation-led combat to skirmish-based combat (and that was bought about mostly by the change from Bows to Muskets to Guns) and the Army still clings to the former for things like parades etc (partially because of the discipline required). Roman and Medieval soldiers used to wear armour that was made out of Bronze or Iron, which was just as heavy as the loads that modern soldiers had to carry, though, being in rank and file probably helped compared to skirmishing,
I don't think infantry will change all that much, even augmentation suits would not, I suspect, make it through the ranks, you would probably get a specialised logistics division, and soldiers wouldn't be allowed to take them into a direct combat situation, partially because of cost, partially because of military dogma. Certainly soliders on patrol would be at risk for being killed for their suit.

[Flaser]

Why the hell do you people assume, these things are going to cost millions?

This aren't space-proof, nuclear powered (...and armed) death machines from Starship Troopers.

Quite the opposite: they use as simple tech as possible. Batteries, (fuel cells?), high-performance but ordinary electric motors, lightweight but nowadays routinely used composite materials. What has retarded development was the fact that all these "ordinary" technologies didn't exist 40 years ago. The other thing is that this thing could be the poster boy for mechatronic engineering: THE feedback system, THE integration challenge. It's not the components, but how you control and integrate them that's the real problem... and mechtronics has been advanced by leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, especially thanks to the prelevance of computers.

Is is still complicated? You bet. Does it take expensive equipment to service? No really. Will it need highly qualified personal to program and tune in the field? Definitely.

In the end, these armors are likely to be even simpler to service than a jeep. However they'll need more frequent service and the supply personal will have to be highly trained as most issues with it will be interlinked. (So you can't portion out training to various specialties and rotate personal over your equipment like you can with vehicles, airplanes etc). The majority of issues will be control and programming related IMHO.

[Mika]

I didn't bother to check the link but let me guess, something that enhances carrying capacity? Great news, there are lots of civilian and emergency uses for it but not so much in military.

There are a couple of thing I need to remind you of: Human body has its own speed limits. Even if the suit could go faster and pilot would be able to persuade it to, he would do it at the cost of breaking his own body. There are some limits for carrying capacity also. In order to give distinctively human kind feel, the surface pressure at the bottom of feet has to be roughly the same as human has. Otherwise, moving in rough terrain (take swamps or mountaineous area) will be different from human. Now, increasing armor and weight will increase the feet area, which will again make walking distinctively different from human.

I think I calculated the required mass for solely protecting someone from 7,62 mm bullets in an earlier thread, the result is that about 315 kgs is required - and that's only the weight of the armor! Add on that the motors, energy source and the pilot. Talk about 12,7 mm stuff then...

Let them perform The Nutcracker with those on and I'll believe it's all good.

Are you talking about this Nutcracker or this Nutcracker?

[SpardaSon21]

I prefer this Nutcracker.

[NGTM-1R]

In order to give distinctively human kind feel, the surface pressure at the bottom of feet has to be roughly the same as human has. Otherwise, moving in rough terrain (take swamps or mountaineous area) will be different from human. Now, increasing armor and weight will increase the feet area, which will again make walking distinctively different from human.

So you have to learn to walk again. Most of us managed it the first time.

[Flaser]

There's no need for all around defense. Put thicker armor on the front, maybe even the side the soldier puts forward (the left flank), the rest of the can be thinner as it only needs to protect against shrapnel.
Heck, in situations where you're bound to get shot, give the soldier a ballistic shield that's mounted on a powered frame dangling from his back.

[Mika]

In order to give distinctively human kind feel, the surface pressure at the bottom of feet has to be roughly the same as human has. Otherwise, moving in rough terrain (take swamps or mountaineous area) will be different from human. Now, increasing armor and weight will increase the feet area, which will again make walking distinctively different from human.

So you have to learn to walk again. Most of us managed it the first time.

I think you didn't catch all the implications of what I said.

For starters, I wouldn't call it "walking". "Staggering", "tumbling" and perhaps even "waddling" come to mind. And by mountainous and swamp areas I meant that it might be impossible to operate in such theaters with the suit. Ditto in the urban areas where one has to enter a building.

Decreasing the mass of armor by a considerable amount by thinning it from the back seems unlikely to me. I would expect maybe 40 to 50 kilograms maximum. The problem is then, power/fuel/ammunition are exposed and likely to be damaged by the shrapnel. If you make it larger to include all that stuff inside, the surface area will be increased, and yet again system gains weight.

In order to keep mechanical forces simple, it needs to be symmetric. Putting more stuff in front will result in center of gravity shifting forwards which has to be compensated by something. Making the thing to have one side stronger than the other will result in center of gravity shifting either towards right or left, which is also bad. Yes, it can be compensated mechanically by some degree, but will complicate things a lot. If uncorrected, it will again change the natural movement quite drastically, and it will not be about wearing a suit of armor, but driving one.

[castor]

Are you talking about this Nutcracker or this Nutcracker?

Was really thinking about the first one The second one would probably be too easy of a test.

[headdie]

surely the first phase of powered armour is to mount similar levels of protection that soldiers already have.  The benefits of this stand as

Reducing the load on the soldiers back and joints while keeping them just as if not more mobile than they are now while wearing that armour.
Reducing the chances of movement related injury because of the weight of armour and equipment.
Creating the smallest hindrance to rapid/split second movement.
More manageable material/financial cost.
Minimal effect on solders overall weight and profile (im guessing 10cm all sides except where the battery pack and control systems are

at this stage a ruptured battery or motor will be the least of a soldiers problems because they will likely have sustained injury from the attack anyway.

Once that standard has been reached then you can start looking at specialist systems/addons for stuff like heavy assault and omg here comes the ubersoldiers with their .75 gatt guns, missile pacs and 100 decrees C rated aircon which will sink to their necks in anything softer than firm grassland and cant fit through a cargo bay door.

[BloodEagle]

Most powered exoskeletons are self-supporting when not powered.  And bioeletric sensors work faster than human flesh reacts to neuro-commands.

So possible injuries due to powerloss or sudden movement aren't worth much consideration.  I suppose if you were hanging from a ledge, or something....  Meh.

[NGTM-1R]

I think you didn't catch all the implications of what I said.

On the contrary, I did. I also caught your rather ridiculous weight assertions and didn't comment on them because they've already been debunked. We already have fairly lightweight bodyarmor that will stop military 7.62mm and fragments. Battuta commented on it earlier in the thread in case you missed it.

So basically I'm calling bull**** on your 315kg. You can do it with a lot less with modern composites.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, well it wouldn't feel so lightweight after you've been walking around on patrol with it for the entire day. But the suit would be powered, so no worries there at least.

But yeah, 315kgs is obscene.

[Scotty]

I have to wonder if that 315 kg  is gathered from making a hypothetical box around the subject in question?

If so, that figure is seriously flawed.

[Mika]

No, the figure is calculated with the following numbers: average surface area of human male ~ 2 m^2.
Required steel thickness to stop bullets and shrapnel (I took this from BMP-1: 6-33 mm) and used a rough number of 20 millimetres.

Thus required volume is, 2 m^2 * 0.02 m ~ 0.04 m^3
Density of steel: 7800 kg/m^3 -> Total mass = 0.04 m^3 * 7800kg/m^3 ~ 312 kg

Does anyone disagree now?

The reason I'm using steel is twofold. First, price and manufacturing easiness. The other thing is that bullet proof vest and similar suits of armor don't prevent mission kills. Yes you stay alive but you still need to see the doctor, pronto! The only way to be sure is to use a material that doesn't transmit any shock to the person who wears it. Bullet proof vest only absorbs the lethal amount of energy from a bullet, but body still absorbs the rest of the energy.

So if such light weight armor is used then one still needs to crawl and take cover with that suit on like the rest of the troops. And my personal experience says that the less you have stuff with you when you start to crawl, the easier it gets.