The U.S. military has enlisted some unconventional help for a new plan that intends to encase the soldiers of the future in high-tech, powered body armor capable of lifting hundreds of pounds, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This revolutionary military project dubbed the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit – or Talos – is calling on special effects designers to help imagine a viable futuristic suit for soldiers. Special effects designers who have worked on movies such as "Iron Man," "Robocop," "The Terminator" and other films are wracking their brains trying to figure out how soldiers in the real world can be outfitted with hundreds of pounds of body armor without utilizing technologies present in works of fiction.
"Hollywood has definitely made the Iron Man suit impossibly thin, impossibly light, impossibly agile and impossibly energy efficient," Russ Angold, co-founder of Ekso Bionics a company that primarily designs exoskeletons for medical use, told The Wall Street Journal. "So we're really trying to solve the problem and ask the question: What would Iron Man look like if it was real?"
The real world Iron Man
There are a few daunting barriers to creating a suit anything like the exoskeleton in Marvel's blockbuster film. One of the biggest problems is finding a power source that could make it functional. According to an article in The Week, the exoskeleton is intended to protect soldiers from bullets, explosions and bayonet attacks. Extra body armor capable of deflecting such forces would be hundreds of pounds in weight, which means some sort of external power source – 365 additional pounds of batteries, according to Pentagon researchers – would be necessary.
Far from having the fictional "Arc Reactor" that powers Iron Man's suit, the U.S. military does not intend on finding any substitutable breakthroughs any time soon, but the project is continuing to fund research and conduct tests.
A more realistic exoskeleton
The U.S. Special Forces Operations Command intends to design a new body armor within four years. Hollywood 3-D printers have already been commissioned to produce some of the early prototypes that mostly deal with mobility issues. A team of bioengineers, combat veterans, tech experts, prop makers and other researchers have joined forces to break ground in the military exoskeleton project, but U.S. politicians are skeptical about any huge advancements.
According to The Wall Street Journal, lawmakers and the House Armed Services Committee have already asked for a briefing on the project. The U.S. military has already spent close to $10 million funding Talos, and the briefing will inform lawmakers if the project is wasting money.
A video posted by The Wall Street Journal records a soldier drafted for exoskeleton exercises working through a shooting range equipped with mechanical braces, an early prototype for powered movement. Reportedly, the braces made it difficult to run and were troubled by engine failure and other complications.
Ultimately, the U.S. Special Forces Operations Command may have a revolutionary body armor ready within four years, but it is doubtful that a powered exoskeleton will be a military issued piece of hardware within the near future.