Seriously, unless they make Iron man, it is doomed to failure.

The Russians will just develop some isometric warfare, for dealing with these bulky and overly expensive pieces of kit. They will probly just use existing Kornet anti tank missiles to take them down, given a kornet costs a few thousand pounds and a suit will cost tens of millions. Isometric will easily best the suits any day.

The cost will force the suits to be assigned to specialised battalions, just like the M1 Abrams or the Apachi etc, therefore not every soldier will wear one like is fantacised. They will be a brige between soldiers and light armour.

The slow speeds, need for operators to exit the unit frequently for; the toilet, to eat, to scratch, to sleep etc, will also leave such collums open to snipers and ambush! (if they overcome these issues, the suit will be more like a mini tank, therefore unnecessary).
Imagine an ambush at night where the soldier who takes his leak, is knifed, his suit used by one of the ambushers, he/she heads straight for the supply convoy, decemates it before any response, then is finally taken down by other soldiers. What happens to the soldiers when they run out of fuel/ammo? They is fuked to high heaven and back is what lol (I can imgine the enemy, prying apart immobile suits to kill the user at their own leisure rofl).

It is a nice idea, but not a realistic one. Maybe the suits will be more adapt at logistics tasks, would beat a forklift truck in rough environments, not to mention the power issue would not be an issue, since trucks could carry specialised generators for the suits to plug into, have a working radius of say 100 meters, then be transported to the next job by the same truck (maybe to cut down on support crew, have the truck driver double as the suit operator?).

Originally posted by StellarXSo basically smaller nations will be fielding men with deadlier weapons while advanced/first world nations will move towards either remote control or robotic units with regular soldiers kept for all the roles that machines can not at that stage accomplish.

Stellar

Yeah would be cool to see the look on top brasses face, when they discover a kid, with a rail gun, took out a sinlge column of mechwarriors (at the cost of billions), from 2km away rofl (of course, in maybe ten or so years time from now).

Eventually all technology shrinks down to size So looking at the bulky suit you see today will be laughable 10 years from now,future strength enhancements will deal with artificial muscle fiber to enhance strength. And reactive armor.

Included in the Pentagon's Future Warrior Concept are a powerful exoskeleton, a self-camouflaging outer layer that adapts to changing environments and a helmet which translates a soldier's voice into any foreign language.




[edit on 10/12/08 by dragonridr]

Lol future soldiers are gonna look like swat teams!

Not only that, but they will have star trek translators, maybe something that makes the user sound like a immigrant with basic speaking ability rofl.

Anyway, the suits will be much more bulky than a swat suit, how else will they be able to cram the artificial muscles, armour and cooling/padding in something no thicker than current body armour? Not to mention weapon mounts, explosive reactive armour plates and so on that could be added to such suits.

Seriously, in the next 20 years, you will maybe see the size come down from a 2 meter plus mech type suit, to maybe a bulky armour. It will still be difficult to manouver and take cover in it (unless chemical engineers discover a new material, which can stop upto .50cal bullets and rpg's, yet still weigh less than current body armour).

Remote controlled war bots on the other hand, they could be light weight given their task, could be a rover with a .50 cal machine gun mounted on it, drive it into hostile streets to patrol ahead etc, lightly armoured against gunfire. That sort of invent could save lives but at the same time, the operator could use it to kill indiscrimnately just because it is remote controlled (maybe some sick people might see it as a video game to kill civilians etc).