The future of infantry combat armour

Now I know every one has there own thoughts on the future of weaponry but these are mine:

Combat armour

In the short term the militaries of the US and western allies are moving towards a fully integrated combat suit, like that found within Halo, Storm troopers in star wars etc. The main factor stopping the development of these suits is the need to find a lighter material then Kevlar but as soon as they do (and research is nearing completion) full body combat suits will begin to become available. The advantages of these are considerable, not only will it offer increased protection to the entire body but it can also be used to integrate a Nuclear Biological Chemical suit and optics, communications etc.

In the long term combat armour as found in warhammer 40k etc extremely heavy mechanically aided armour. This is already being researched by the US in collaboration with some Japanese robotics companies. They are merely waiting for the technology to catch up with the ideas. The advantages of this over light weight body armour are not only increased protection (particularly from explosives) but the ability to carry heavier weapons due to the mechanical aid.

In my opinion if America develops this heavy combat armour they have the potential to retain or recover a large amount of there military power consider:

Each of these suits would inevitably be expensive putting them out of the reach of LEDC countries (third world)

Each of these suits would be near impenetrable to small arms fire (AK47, RPG’s mortars etc) giving them invaluable potential in terms of peacekeeping and frontline combat.

Each of these suits would be exponentially harder to pierce with conventional arms then standard military kit, necessitating the development of expensive counter suit weapons out of the reach of LEDC countries budgets.

Consider the growth of American power post WWII with the development of the nuclear bomb, the Truman doctrine, Korea etc and consider the only thing which weakened this military power was Americas increasing difficulty in pacification (Vietnam) and peacekeeping (Iraq, Afghanistan) consider then the potential resurgence in power for a country which developed a near impenetrable combat armour and turned it on the world.

My opinion but any thoughts?

Images:

www.defenselink.mil...

It definitately looks like its going that way, with lighter stronger materials being developed all the time. Matrix 3 has some cool mechanized armour.

[edit on 1-5-2007 by rayzr]

Check this out.

news.bbc.co.uk...

These exoskeleton suits will improve speed strength and endurance of the soldier.

Until Washington stops trying to run the military through numbers, nothing is going to bring the military back to full strength. New technology is irrelevant if the military can not deploy the systems to there full potential.

This looks so cool, it would be awesome to see this stuff being implemented regularly, I have read up about using pneumatics to lend a huge amount of strength to a soldier. However, I could see this turning into a huge arms race, if these suits really do end up being invulnerable to small arms fire, then what's next? With increased carrying capacities given by the suits, would L.A.S.E.Rs be the next infantry weapon, what about when these suits prove invulnerable to those, bigger ones? Plasma based? single-man operated Rail guns? It's as interesting as it is scary to think that 20-30 years down the line we will be marching into war looking like Master Chief.

Heres an unrealistic idea instead of shielding what about using something that deflects things

Given how much that technology would cost and the fact that it would have to likely be custom tailored to each troop, why not just design the soldiger out all together a field a bunch of robots? Remotely controlled robots maybe, but still.

In 20 - 30 years we are likely not to see UV's doing a lot of the dangerous work. Enemies can kill a 1000 robots and the public won't cary. Other than maybe a "taxpayers money at work" grumble.