Harder, better, faster, stronger - that's what the U.S. Army is planning on making its Special Operations troops. And they're not doing it through more basic training: The U.S. Army wants an Iron Man or Halo-like suit within three years.
The suit would provide wearers with superhuman abilities, along with cutting-edge armor to protect from bullets and a networked awareness of all the potential threats and targets around them.
Called TALOS, or the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, the still-concept level army exoskeleton resembles the fictional Tony Stark's Iron Man suit, or, even more so, Master Chief's MJOLNIR powered assault armor in the Halo video game series (TALOS has the advantage of being easily pronounceable).
The goal is to provide special operations forces with the ability to practically ignore gunfire and focus on their objectives on the ground, while ensuring the U.S.'s top soldiers return from every mission.
"I'm very committed to this, I'd like that last operator that we lost to be the last operator we lose in this fight or the fight of the future, and I think we can get there," said U.S. Special Operations Command chief Admiral William McRaven to industry representatives gathered at Special Operations Center of Command (SOCOM) headquarters in Tampa Florida In July, according to Foreign Policy.
The TALOS would provide "superhuman strength with greater ballistic protection," according to the U.S. Army press release about the initiative. That's not all though, as the TALOS would also be one of the most advanced wearable computers, in addition to being a super suit. "Using wide-area networking and on-board computers, operators will have more situational awareness of the action around them and of their own bodies."
U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) is currently submitting proposals for the TALOS system. "[The] requirement is a comprehensive family of systems in a combat armor suit where we bring together an exoskeleton with innovative armor, displays for power monitoring, health monitoring, and integrating a weapon into that - a whole bunch of stuff that RDECOM is playing heavily in," said. Lt. Col. Karl Borjes, a RDECOM science advisor assigned to SOCOM.
The initiative will require several industries, academia, and government to work together to provide all of the bells and whistles SOCOM wants for its super suit. "There is no one industry that can build it," said SOCOM Senior Enlisted Advisor Command Sgt. Maj. Chris Faris during a panel discussion at a conference at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, according to the Army's release. The request for submissions has been posted on Federal Business Opportunities, which is looking for ideas from private industry, R&D organizations, government labs, universities, and even your Tony Stark-level genius "private individuals."
Some proposals will likely come from research that's already ongoing. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is developing a liquid armor system made from fluids that stiffen in milliseconds when an electromagnetic field is applied - allowing for flexibility that can instantly protect from bullet impacts.
According to the BBC, the goal for TALOS is to have it in the field in three years' time. Even without a government shutdown hampering "nonessential" projects, this seems like a difficult task, given how many different advanced technologies would have to work together to make the concept a reality. "It's advanced armor. It's communications, antennas, "said Lt. Col. Borjes, "It's cognitive performance. It's sensors, miniature-type circuits. That's all going to fit in here, too."