Thought Exercise

Power armor is a thing, how does this fit into a military tactically in the squad, and strategically in the division? How does the face of warfare change after you introduce them to your army?

Limitations:
>power armor costs about as much as an IFV to produce, can't get much cheaper
>cannot carry anything larger than a 30mm cannon, and that's when it starts to cost mobility
>protected from small arms fire barring lucky hits to joints and vision slits, vulnerable to AT weapons and 20mm and above
>capable of jogging speed for about 15 seconds at a time, otherwise normal walking speed
>lets presume its electrically powered, and must be charged with portable generators, 80 mile range
>out of combat can carry 400 lbs of non-weapons gear, but has limited combat performance above 200

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Same role as an ifv just slower now.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Ifv's carry infantry, and generally speaking cannot enter structures or engage in solo CQB due to low visibility and need for infantry support.
      It's similar but just different enough to merit use

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I wonder how a set of stairs would handle one of them?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Probably pretty poorly, how would that factor in do you think? Tanks have mud, Powe armor has stairs?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Basements, stairs, mud, narrow doorways, loose ground. Basically every hazard you can run into on a construction site.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It would probably have issues with the operator potentially collapsing the floor if he's trying to enter a lighter structure like a residential house as well

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Youd generally want a lighter design.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      More like "super infantry" than "small vehicle".
      They'd be able to mount armor functionally immune to small arms and highly resistant to HMG fire and shrapnel, increasing survivability against artilery by at least a factor of ten. They could fire from prone and take cover, and deploy a larger scale of weapon or a larger amount of ammunition for infantry scale weapons.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If power armour had the limitations described in the OP, it would be pretty worthless in any combat taking place outside of a city or mountains. In most terrain, an IFV would be superior.

      However, in urban combat or extremely rough terrain, it could have some advantages over IFV's. It would also be particularly useful to law enforcement/SWAT teams. It could be useful for VIP protection missions such as those of the Secret Service.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Same theme as whenever people ask about how mecha could possibly work.
        >not good in open or rolling terrain
        I notice few instances where people conceive of mixing limb types. Occasionally scifi designers realize you can put wheel or outriggers at the tip of a leg, then lock or lift theml wheels to make a foot.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Well mecha are just way more sci-fi, though, and you need to define what mecha you mean. The only mecha I'm familar with are the ones from Battletech and the stuff that makes them effective doesn't exist in reality, like ultra light armour that can take hits from modern anti tank weapons without much trouble. Even then, Battletech doesn't even try to be realistic.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            BEHOLD. A Mech!
            But seriously, most people's concept of mechs stems back to Gundam.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Even then, Battletech doesn't even try to be realistic.
            It depends entirely on who has the creative direction at the time. The setting was created as a mashup of Dougram and Macross with Foundation and A Spaceship For The King, but there have been efforts to lay down hard rules for how things work like the TechManual.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Same theme as whenever people ask about how mecha could possibly work.
          Well we know that they're going to be tank-shaped and not people-shaped because tank-shape is the best shape for a tank, but whether or not we bother putting legs on tanks depends entirely on how mobile they can be. Legged units are harder to mobility kill* and can handle obstacles and steep slopes well, but the drive-by-wire system they require does inflate the cost and we don't have any suitable actuators for them yet: Hydraulics are too slow and electric motors are more applicable to tracked and wheeled vehicles, which is why fiction usually turns to some kind of artificial muscle.
          BattleTech has artificial muscle tech strong enough to make the legged machines faster over all kinds of terrain than tracked and wheeled vehicles, including over flat ground, and that's what it's really going to take to make walking tanks IRL. In BT the muscles were first used in the industrial sector as a replacement for hydraulics and to do the job of

          https://i.imgur.com/m1GkoYw.jpg

          BEHOLD. A Mech!
          But seriously, most people's concept of mechs stems back to Gundam.

          more effectively, the free market solved the problem of making machines walk without falling over because they already had the actuators and there was real money to be made (meanwhile Boston Dynamics and friends are putting in all the work IRL just for shits n gigs), and then one of the militaries commissioned a company that was already making walking machines anyway to make one with armour and guns.
          If somebody tomorrow invented artificial muscles as powerful as BT's myomer then we'd be on the same path towards walking tanks, that's the linchpin technology that separates impossibility from inevitability.
          That is unless cost-effective semi-autonomous aerial drone swarms take off and make war boring like it seems they're going to.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            * Tank tracks are inherently fragile due to the need for flexibility and all of the links holding the sections together. Tracks also have to be exposed from below along the length of the tank in order to make contact with the ground, whereas leg joints can be much better enclosed.
            A machine with more than two legs can afford to lose one more than a tank can afford to lose a track. This is a minor advantage because theoretically a tank could be made with separated track sections, but it hasn't been done yet by any military, and I haven't yet investigated why. It may be a matter of mechanical complexity like a 4 wheel drive versus a front- or rear-wheel driven car.
            Often not considered is that legs in motion are actually hard to hit, think about how many times have you seen cops and soldiers go for them. Trainers universally teach shooters to aim for the centre of mass because it's usually easier to target vitals even if you have to go through the plates, although I have heard discussion in civilian-oriented shooting theory that aiming lower to sever the muscles around the hips and immobilise an assailant may be more effective. However, this modern theory may be driven by the need to maintain appearances in court, and in practical terms may not be as applicable to an armoured machine or a person fully enclosed in powered armour.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              How do you feel about spider tanks?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Like a blocky insect with a turret is generally how I envision walking tanks. Ones that can climb would be especially useful as IFVs because they can drop troops in odd spots and follow them over terrain a wheeled IFV couldn't, providing much more consistent support.
                For the ones in the pic, my concern is that firing or being fired at might dislodge them because the buildings aren't strong enough to take a hit or to handle the weight and recoil of a spider tank in action. Their positioning seems a bit exposed to return fire too (especially those guys skylining on the rooftops), and they're clustered just the way artillery likes it.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://i.imgur.com/8zqihbK.jpg

      Power armor is a thing, how does this fit into a military tactically in the squad, and strategically in the division? How does the face of warfare change after you introduce them to your army?

      Limitations:
      >power armor costs about as much as an IFV to produce, can't get much cheaper
      >cannot carry anything larger than a 30mm cannon, and that's when it starts to cost mobility
      >protected from small arms fire barring lucky hits to joints and vision slits, vulnerable to AT weapons and 20mm and above
      >capable of jogging speed for about 15 seconds at a time, otherwise normal walking speed
      >lets presume its electrically powered, and must be charged with portable generators, 80 mile range
      >out of combat can carry 400 lbs of non-weapons gear, but has limited combat performance above 200

      worse then a ifv cos with an ifv you can carry the troops and etra stuff this thing can't do anything.

      why not have a small tank like goart like vehical that can carry extra ammo supplies and a gun maybe even have space on top for the troops to sit on

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    use them in urban warfare to raid buildings and shit while being mostly impervious to small arms fire

    carry a fiddy and shoulder fire it

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How do you handle multi level buildings? I wouldn't count on most buildings, particularly residential having strong enough load bearing floors to support their weight without collapsing.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        A lightweight exosuit is likely to be less than 600lbs with the man inside. That's only the weight of four teenagers.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >That's only the weight of four teenagers.
          Americans will use anything except the metric system.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Would you prefer that 600lbs the weight of two American women?

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Only if one sits on my face, the other on my dick.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Hand flamers. Anything not strong enough to support the suit's weight gets a lick of the Emperor's cleansing flame.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most stairs are designed for about a metric ton so as long as you don't put an entire squad on one you should be fine. If the stairs are too fragile then just shoot up through the ceiling to clear the other floors.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most modern commercial and industrial buildings (in first world nations) have floors, stairs, elevators etc capable of supporting at a minimum a ton of weight per X amount of feet, with a large safety margin

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Actually, building codes only specify dynamic loads up to 1000 lbs on stairs for commercial housing. Industrial zones may have higher weight limits but it's not universal.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Remove most of the armor and other needlessly expensive shit
    >Slap a big carrying rack on the back
    >Have it carry a mortar
    >Give it some infantry support that'll grab the shells and fire the mortar
    >Alternatively load it down with shit tons of javelins and have the infantry grab and go as they need

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Might as mount that on a robo dog/mule.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >urban clearing (point man), trench raiding
      >alpine (down armored, just to mountain goat around fast)
      >underground (higher visibility gas mask + small arms immunity)
      >couriers in open/artillery saturated country
      Turning light infantry into quasi mechanized infantry, with the possibility of not getting rolled over when encountering actual mechanized infantry, if only due to the extra supplies it can mule.

      >mortars, direct fire with bigass recoiless rifles

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Ukrainians can run rings around them with their drone nades.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The way i see it, heavy ifv's carry PA soldiers as close as possible to enemy strongpoints escorted by regular ifv's carrying your everyday G.I's

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The main thing is that it wouldn't be targeted by AT rockets due to being such a small target. The main issue would be anti armor sniper fire. It would turn their number one priority.

    In reality the most useful purpose for power aemir would be very large weapons, high mobility and being a small target. No point in putting much armor on it, better put a bigger gun.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Assuming it's protected from up to 20mm, you would need at least a dedicated Anti-material rifle at 20mm to defeat it, do you think armies would start issuing these rifles to squads en masse? Or would they find another way to counter it. Think strategically

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        China is big on mag fed grenade launchers at the squad level.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        No, but they have recoilless rifles, portable anti-anti-tank weapons, and grenade launchers (rocket-propelled or otherwise). I wouldn't trust my odds against a bog-standard Carl Gustaf or even a M72 LAW.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Normal unguided anti tank rockets really aren't accurate enough to engage an individual soldier.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Depends on how bulky said 'individual soldier' is. Any suit that could withstand up to 20mm rounds (from what distance?) would be monstrously huge relative to a normal fighter. And as they'd likely have to stand still to fire, so much the worse for them. I'm just not convinced that an overgrown, overcomplicated suit of armour is a superior alternative compared to this:

            https://i.imgur.com/s6Cqvlf.jpg

            The better question is this; why not use mobile wheeled/tracked/quadrupedal drones that are far easier to engineer and control, infinitely more mobile, and can carry equivalent firepower on a more stable platform? Even stairs wouldn't be an issue if they were engineered correctly.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              It would still be much smaller than the vehicles that anti tank weapons were originally designed to engage. I don't have it off hand, but RPG-7 for example is surprisingly inaccurate and someone trained with it can only be expected to land 100% of their shots on the broad side of a stationary tank out to a few hundred yards.

              >drones
              Have the problem of needing someone close by to control them, or suffering from massive latency issues. Not to mention jamming.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >needing someone close by
                Put the operators in an APC. There, now you have a 'mechanized infantry' group of a few manned vehicles in the rear and a lot of unmanned vehicles leading the charge.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                And as for jamming, that is a serious problem, but I think it'll inevitably be dealt with as warfare becomes more and more automated. We'll likely see an electronic arms race of jammers vs jamming defences in future.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Put the operators in an APC. There, now you have a 'mechanized infantry' group of a few manned vehicles in the rear and a lot of unmanned vehicles leading the charge.
                You now have very questionable utility over just using IFVs like are used currently.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                If the humans don't have to dismount and can just sit well in the back while the drones clean up resistance, isn't that superior to conventional tactics? Yes, losing a heavily-armes drone hurts the pocket, but as we're already in the realm of readily available power-armor it's no big cost.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >If the humans don't have to dismount and can just sit well in the back while the drones clean up resistance, isn't that superior to conventional tactics?
                No, because numbers are still important.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                No, but they have recoilless rifles, portable anti-anti-tank weapons, and grenade launchers (rocket-propelled or otherwise). I wouldn't trust my odds against a bog-standard Carl Gustaf or even a M72 LAW.

                You could probably hit a man-sized target at <100m with an rocket or recoilless rifle.

                Is all the focus on antimaterial even worth thinking about?

                How many guys actually get shot with 20mm or even .50BMG compared to guys that get plinked with 7.62x39, x54R, etc.?

                This person is smart. Only the specialty weapons teams will have the necessary weapons to challenge PA, and they're going to be few for a non-NATO military.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Surely tanks would be uncontested in Afghanistan?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Only the specialty weapons teams will have the necessary weapons to challenge PA
                nah, everyone will be loaded up with demo to frick whoever is in the tinman suit, right in their peeholes with a red hot poker..

                >oh shit a tinman
                >launch the suicide bomb drone homie!
                KABOOMB
                >no more tinman

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >do you think armies would start issuing these 20mm PA-rifles to squads en masse?
        No I don't, because armies like Russia are issuing single-shot AKs and nothing else to their troops.

        They're going to be using 12.7mm DsHK and RPG-7 as anti-power armor and they will be ineffective, because that's what the world has come to.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          To be fair, even Donbass militiamen are walking around with Soviet-era .57 calibre rifles.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Barring obvious concerns of weight and size, room clearing with that kind of protection would be a breeze.

        If the vision ports and joints are said to be vulnerable would it not be a better idea to hedge your bet on explosives/shrapnel? In the West 40mm grenade launchers are already ubiquitous.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          A good concern, but a piece of flying shrapnel to my knowledge basically is the equivalent of a handgun round. You can't just have armored plates over joints, but they would be covered as much as possible, and likely the "fabric" of the exposed joint area would be steel-wire impregnated Kevlar or some other flexible protection that would stop the worst of the damage, not to mention the bits of electronics and tubes and such between fabric and operator.
          Grenade going off near operators feet would probably have a 30% mobility kill rate

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Even if they were only issued at the platoon or even company level it seems like that'd still be enough to counter them. Unless you're going to mass deploy them by the dozens if not hundreds it seems like they'd still be too vulnerable outside of heavy urban fighting.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          > Unless you're going to mass deploy them by the dozens if not hundreds it seems like they'd still be too vulnerable outside of heavy urban fighting.
          That's probably exactly the idea, drop a shitton of them in a small area for overwhelming localized advantage.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        i imagine that if a suit of that caliber exists and is operative you could give it countermeasures . reactive armor . a shield that can tank anything a regular squad could throw at from a duschka to grenade auto fire to a atgm . as a mosified suit can carry way more shields of certain materials of high durability become viable . it would cost it offense tho . might be good for drawing fire and storming places . the issue would lie in how heavy the whole kit gets and you couldnt carlessly enter every and any buildings with it would also reduce sight and a little mobility maybe .

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Having a squad of guys who are invincible to anything but 50 cal on an urban battlefield would be pretty useful in case you want to assault a position. Especially if you face an insurgency (which is de facto much poorly equipped).

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Slow and only fit to use against thirdies who can't fight back
        So basically it would be a landlocked A-10

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      that thing would glow from orbit on thermals. a 40 year old missile could lock on something man sized and hot as frick. the tom clancy meme of firing stingers at electric heaters is true.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >wouldn't be targeted by AT rockets due to being such a small target
      IIRC Javelin can lock onto humans up to about (generous estimate) 2 km out. If you really want to you can top attack a fool, but it wouldn't be cost effective. If the fool were a much hotter and expensive target I think anyone would have a problem with it.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    We’d need to genetically engineer 7 foot tall jacked super soldiers with multiple redundant organs to pilot the power armour. We could call them Astartes. Also the power armour needs bigger Pauldrons

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They should also all be girls

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        NOOOO NO FEMALE SOACE MARINES ALLOWED >:(

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          But I want Amazons to be real

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You'll get your monkey's paw wish and they'll be ugly disgusting twerking lesbians.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >We’d need to genetically engineer 7 foot tall jacked super soldiers with multiple redundant organs to pilot the power armour.
      Nah, we just need one

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    For large, heavy power armor like the Fallout series portrays? The same role that tankettes would fill. A small armored platform for a machine gun or heavy weapons that would be deployed alongside normal infantry to provide them with fire support.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I think the mechs in planetside 2 serve this purpose.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        MAX*

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    lots of tankettes in syria used to navigate very tight urban spaces
    probably that

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Closest implementation I can see armor fit in is for low grav space firefights. Space marines if you will.
    Just place however much you like armor and make simple mechanical exoskeleton for it. Eventually in perpetual sword&shield competition such concept would probably unironically evolve into gundams.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Wouldn't something closer to the RB-79 Ball from Gundam make the most sense?

      Manipulator arms, spherical shape minimizes surface area and has good geometry to deflect projectiles from any direction.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      OC pls don't steal 🙂

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You got a deviant art or something?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Username: CantStopTheRobot
          I haven't been too active for ~2 years though.
          Almost done designing some irl furniture...
          But I will return to visual art in force. Might have my own portfolio site back up by January.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Post gun to prove you're not a gay then I'll support your future artistic endeavors without ever revealing that it was me.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous
        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Thank you fren.

          Post gun to prove you're not a gay then I'll support your future artistic endeavors without ever revealing that it was me.

          Am I doing it right?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            We will meet again.

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    At this point I don’t think heavy power armor would be viable with current or near future technology. However lighter power armor/exoskeletons would likely just replace mechanized infantry while light infantry probably won’t have it due to energy. In the armored infantry I imagine every soldier is a grenadier and machine gunner.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What's the weight of the armour?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Basements, stairs, mud, narrow doorways, loose ground. Basically every hazard you can run into on a construction site.

      Surprisingly, it would be lighter than you think, back of the napkin math reveals 1.5 inch armor protection plus all other weight (weapons, pilot, batteries) would be around 1 ton, with wide enough feet it could theoretically enter certain buildings just fine

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most landings are rated for 500# at best, more the more stringers there are but even in the US most code inspectors only ask for the bare minimum, because you're not moving heavy machinery up and down your stair cases.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Exosuits should have roughly the height and weight of refrigerators

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            At most 400lb with a wide weight distribution.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Im taller than my refrigerator

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It's interesting to think about, some structures would be fine for it, others would be death traps, it would come down to generals at the strategic level to deploy power armor in places where they are more likely to come across favorable structures.
          Given how low weight it is relatively speaking, I have no doubt that it's feet would or could be designed to function perfectly in deep snow and mud

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Strap on some foot pads like on equipment sure, go walk around with trashcan lids stuck to your feet.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Wouldn't have to be nearly that large, humans already have more ground pressure per inch than most tanks, and it doesn't take much extra surface area to dramatically increase that number

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You'd need something a bit bigger than snow shoes and those are already a feat to walk around in coupled with an even more top heavy rig. You'd need some sort of gyro stabilizers to stop you from face planting and the flexibility to high knee everywhere.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        And how light could you make one if it only needs to stop .308 AP?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Don't know for sure, surprisingly its hard to find that information. IIRC 1/2" AR plate will stop ball .308, so you might want to go up to 3/4" or even 1" to make sure AP won't get through
          I would think 1" is preferable in that case, the enemy is never going to be able to modify their existing squad equipment to penetrate it, even if they develop super penetrating .308 ammo. no matter what you would need a dedicated anti-material rifle to take it out.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Also, that actually would be perfect now that I think about it. Strategically speaking, since power armor would be in the middle ground where small arms can't penetrate it, but AT weapons are more than enough, it's neither worth it nor practical for a country to field a weapon in their squads SPECIFICALLY to take it out. There's already AT weapons to deal with it (albeit less effective because of its size)
            Ergo, protection from up to (not including) 12.7mm is about the perfect protection for the armor

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            https://i.imgur.com/5VJLUXi.jpg

            Also, that actually would be perfect now that I think about it. Strategically speaking, since power armor would be in the middle ground where small arms can't penetrate it, but AT weapons are more than enough, it's neither worth it nor practical for a country to field a weapon in their squads SPECIFICALLY to take it out. There's already AT weapons to deal with it (albeit less effective because of its size)
            Ergo, protection from up to (not including) 12.7mm is about the perfect protection for the armor

            Pretty much

            Honestly, that much armor on a human frame seemed more like a weakness. Power armor over a ton is liable to trip anti-tank mines and walkways can be setup that can hold infantry but not power armor. A clever defender can dig and conceal trenches filled with all manner of nastiness.

            There's also the matter that HMGs are currently in a weird spot right now. Most APCs are resistant to everything short of 20mm these days so you only see HMGs on vehicles and vantage points that can make the most of that range.

            https://i.imgur.com/z4TUEp5.jpg

            OP is making an arbitrary jump and preventing all side-benefit you could have from using this kind of technology.

            You could go for light exoskeleton built not for armor but for speed, built for recon and carrying heavier armor.

            You'd have to be some kind of superhuman to make use of that.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >You'd have to be some kind of superhuman to make use of that.
              What?
              The typical error the layman do is to underestimate how much effort goes into making technology replace human skills.
              We've been able to make "power suit" and even "walker vehicle" since the 70s if not earlier. The problem is the control system and interface required between the actuators and the users.

              We are capable of considering tools as extension of ourselves, but to replace/increase the number of limbs, or plain increase our inertia without mental fatigues we need computers & interface.

              So regardless of the shape of the power-armor, ergonomic must remain a constant.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                What? No. I was thinking you'd need superhuman skills and reflexes since you're doubling down on evasiveness. That kind of defense in the modern era leads to trying to dodge bullets.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You can increase mobility without magic bullet time. I'm simply talking of being able to run faster & jump higher. Anyone can do that as long as the equipment is smart enough to not burden his mind.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                What about suppressive fire? Increased mobility is great but it doesn't mean anything if the enemy can box you in.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >What about suppressive fire?
                More likely to happen if you can deploy your firepower in more interesting position as you've focused on mobility instead of a human-shaped mass of Kevlar that will justify the cost of IFV.
                You still need protection but I'm betting more on cover and relocating quickly.

                Also I'm betting someone will invent an small robotic turret that can one-shot humanoids 1km away and I want a machine to carry it in the best position.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                There's still a big risk of being caught or spotted when moving to a new position and once you're engaged it'll be difficult to abandon your old position.

                On the flip side, mere full body multi-hit resistance against GPMG rounds makes power armor effectively immune to suppressive fire. HMGs have become less and less common once APCs became immune to them and they're the only real threat.

                Jump on it’s back

                Jam rifle into neck

                Or opening near ball sack

                Fire

                Neutralized

                Or chain their legs up

                Well yes but you'd have to get by the M60 w ammo backpack and MGL32 loaded with HE and behives.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                I don't believe in humanoid-tank, especially not at humanoid size as encumbrance will make it slow&clumsy and it will likely not be firing while walking unless the suit is essentially a full mecha.
                (on a side note, any suit that do not have a plan in case you fall on your back is out)

                It would also be a support unit, helping the cheaper unit make a decisive push.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You could probably get full body AR protection for under 700 lbs. It's only 12.7mm immunity that things get heavy.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            1/4th inch AR500 plates stop .308 ball. 1/2 inch stops .308 AP.
            AR500 is not the most efficient armor per weight however. Standard ceramic level IV plates are lighter than 1/4th inch steel plates but stop .308 AP, and the heaviest ceramic plates stop 50 BMG AP.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          XSAPI was rated for three rounds of M993 but

          Don't know for sure, surprisingly its hard to find that information. IIRC 1/2" AR plate will stop ball .308, so you might want to go up to 3/4" or even 1" to make sure AP won't get through
          I would think 1" is preferable in that case, the enemy is never going to be able to modify their existing squad equipment to penetrate it, even if they develop super penetrating .308 ammo. no matter what you would need a dedicated anti-material rifle to take it out.

          >super penetrating .308 ammo
          Already exists, no body armour on the market stops SLAPs and CBJ Tech have designs for SLAPs that are accurate and reliable.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Looked at SLAP ammo, from what I can gather 1.5"-1.66" would be enough to counter it.
            Whatever the amount may be, the goal is to make sure the platoon/squad GPMG would forever be incapable of penetrating it no matter what they do. If it just requires a belt of SLAP ammo then it's easy enough for OpFor to begin issuing it in places they expect PA soldiers to be.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              for 7.62 NATO or 12.7 NATO? 'cause

              >asking for resistance to 12.7mm is a bit much
              1.5 inches of hardened steel will stop AP .50 BMG, and a plate that thick which is 40' x 72' (ballpark amount of material needed to cover front and back) weighs around 1,300 lbs, which as far as giant bullet-proof power armor goes is honestly not that much
              >t. Steel Industry Sales

              estimates that for .50 BMG AP.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              for 7.62 NATO or 12.7 NATO? 'cause[...]
              estimates that for .50 BMG AP.

              There is a significant difference between RHA and the best possible armor steel today, even if you're dead set on using monolithic steel for some reason.

              Keep in mind that modern ceramic armors are only good for about half a dozen 7.62mm rounds. That's part of the nature of ceramic armor, they spread the damage over the entire layer. More protection and lighter weight in exchange for less endurance.

              However, this doesn't fit the doctrine of power armor as you want them to be an aggressive force in close quarters. You want a hybrid ceramic/metal armor that can take an entire AK mag and keep moving.

              >7.62
              >AK
              You're mixing up the two different types of 7.62mm ammunition, the 7.62 used for testing Level IV plates and the 7.62 used in an AK-47 are not even similar, and you're just wrong in general. Top level modern ceramic armors are good for a half a dozen AP .308 rounds, at minimum. You absolutely would "take the entire AK mag" of shitty 7.62x39 FMJ even with regular high end level 4 protection, let alone something significantly thicker.
              Even if your armor was "only" as good as the best level 4 plates, just with full body coverage. You'd still have to absorb some dozen hits to an area the size of a regular infantry chest plate to risk penetration, which is actually a fairly small, moving area to hit with a spray of full auto fire in a fight.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You're mixing up the two different types of 7.62mm ammunition, the 7.62 used for testing Level IV plates and the 7.62 used in an AK-47 are not even similar
                No, I did refer to AK-47 rounds. Ceramic armor is sacrificial, each layer is designed to shatter in exchange for stopping the round entirely. The problem is that you've got a limited number of layers. Keep taking hits, even intermediate caliber rounds, and eventually you'll run out of layers.

                Ceramic armor is good if you're keeping your distance but if you're assaulting a position there's a much higher chance of taking multiple hits.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >No, I did refer to AK-47 rounds. Ceramic armor is sacrificial, each layer is designed to shatter in exchange for stopping the round entirely. The problem is that you've got a limited number of layers. Keep taking hits, even intermediate caliber rounds, and eventually you'll run out of layers.
                >Layers
                Wrong.
                Besides that, basic b***h ceramic armor can take half a dozen 308 armor piercing rounds in a ten inch circle. The best can take even more. FMJ 7.62x39 is piss weak in comparison. 7.62x39 FMJ won't even penetrate the UHMWPE backing layer on the best level IV plates. That's infantry armor. A powered armor suit could have armor easily twice as thick.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Actually, when testing the Interceptor vests during the whole Dragonskin debacle we found that the plates were only good for about 4 hits. It also didn't matter what kind of round was fired because the plates would shatter all the same. The UHMWPE simply wasn't thick enough to stop the rounds. I think we started seeing steel backed ceramics some time after that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Lol. These plates are dogshit compared to what we have today.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/rm29lU9.jpg

                7.62x39 fricking sucks against armor lol.

                I can see that, but they added durability by using smaller plates and then adding kevlar to make up for the loss of strength. Unfortunately, this also drops the overall strength per pound. It's likely it won't stand up to .30-06 AP without doubling the thickness.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Black person one of those plates is level IV which means it's stopped 308AP. One of those plates kicked the shit out of your "requirement" and it was only rated level III. Kevlar is dogshit as a backing material compared to modern backers by the way.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                7.62x39 fricking sucks against armor lol.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Well yes but that still means you need to double your armor thickness between .30 Lapua Magnum and .50 BMG. That's not even factoring in AP and 14.5mm AP. Frankly, immunity to .30-06 for repeated hits is good enough. HMGs simply aren't common enough to increase the armor budget that much.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                There are infantry scale plates that can stop BMG AP, there'd be no reason for a suit of powered armor to not have even better, go up moron.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                But are they full body protection? No, they're torso only and even then they can only take a single .50 cal hit. It's not worth the weight.

                Black person one of those plates is level IV which means it's stopped 308AP. One of those plates kicked the shit out of your "requirement" and it was only rated level III. Kevlar is dogshit as a backing material compared to modern backers by the way.

                I can see a big III on one of those plates. What makes you think it's level IV?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I can see a big III on one of those plates. What makes you think it's level IV?
                I said one was three and one was four, now I know you're trolling.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Oh? And how do we tell the other is level IV?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Look it the frick up maybe.
                You know it being level III would hurt your point, not help it right?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                You mean this armor?

                ?t=473
                It BARELY stopped a .50 BMG and not even AP at that. How would it contend with soviet surplus 12.7x108mm DShK or 14.5mm PTRS-41?

                Then you have to contend with the fact it broke the cinderblock behind an inch of wood. A human would have broken ribs at a minimum.

                So no. You're being silly.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                moron there were British plates in the 1980s that stopped 50bmg AP with less than 40mm BFD. Do you have any idea how many advancements there have been since then?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Can you show us some of these new plates in action?

                Look it the frick up maybe.
                You know it being level III would hurt your point, not help it right?

                Actually, the whole thing is a distraction. .50 BMG isn't common enough to bother designing for. It's stuck in a weird spot where it doesn't have the RoF of a lighter MG and doesn't have the blast radius of a Mk19. Most armored vehicles are also entirely resistant to it. It's too heavy to shoot on foot so either it's stuck on a tripod or mounted on a vehicle and that vehicle would rather replace it with a Mk19 or an M134.

                The fact remains that you're basically doubling your armor weight for the sake of something that's not really a threat. Why bother? Just pack more weapons.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Can you show us some of these new plates in action
                Why, when shittier plates have completely trashed your dogshit point.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >The fact remains that you're basically doubling your armor weight for the sake of something that's not really a threat. Why bother? Just pack more weapons.
                Because being armored against 50BMG means you're armored against a lot of other things, including things that will punch through level IV armor. It means that the kill radius of an explosive is going to be exponentially smaller, that you can absorb more small arms fire, and that you're not instantly killed by a peer adversary who brought a BMG with his powered armor.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Because being armored against 50BMG means you're armored against a lot of other things, including things that will punch through level IV armor.
                Not really. The most common threats are fragmentation and we found in Korea and Vietnam that simple Flak Jackets were enough. The big step will be switching from torso only protection to full body protection. Drawing on the example of medieval full plate compared to napoleonic cuirasses we can estimate this as multiply the armor weight by 3. Possibly more if we don't thin out the armor for the limbs.

                > It means that the kill radius of an explosive is going to be exponentially smaller,
                Again, not really. Overpressure protection is only tangentally related to penetration resistance.
                Penetration resistance is all about dispersing the impact over a wide area. It's why we use hard ceramic armors.
                Overpressure hits the entire surface anyway so what you need to do is baffle the blow, custioning it and slowing it's propagation into the torso. You want a hard outer layer but also a soft inner layer that will be useless against penetration.

                Having both .50 cal and blast resistance is going to add a lot of bulk and if you want to add limb protection then it's going to impact flexibility.

                >that you're not instantly killed by a peer adversary who brought a BMG with his powered armor.
                Actually, I'd hit him with 20mm rounds since he wasted so much of his weight budget on armor when he could have spent it on batteries, firepower, or sensors.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Not really
                Yes really. You're conflating all fragmentation effects with each other like a moron, the same way you've done with every fact you're not familiar with in this thread.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Except that most anecdotes about flak armor show great appreciation for it and describe it being very effective against shrapnel and fragmentation. This suggests that even the comparatively primitive nylon weave was good enough.

                https://i.imgur.com/wAeDldq.jpg

                Relative protection against certain levels of fragmentation from a flak vest is completely incomparable to what even full body IIIA armor would give you, let alone III, IV or hypothetical post IV armor. The primary casualty producing effect of all anti infantry explosives is fragmentation. These fragmentation effects have a lethal radius many, many times larger than the casualty radius of the concussive effects of the explosive. A flak jacket and helmet reduces the effective casualty radius of fragmentation significantly, but this is not to say that flak jackets cannot be penetrated by fragmentation. It's a matter of reducing the size of the lethal circle. Full body armoring of even normal level four armor would reduce the effect of fragmentation to an outrageous degree, let alone a higher level of armor. Blast wave effects would be significantly reduced as well, obviously, but concussive blast wave effects are beyond secondary when it comes to anti infantry explosives.

                Actually, Level IV armor does jack shit against overpressure. It doesn't have any innate padding so the blast slams the armor right into the torso, causing internal damage.

                EOD suits work on entire different principles as ceramic armor, with a hard shell around the wearer's torso with lots of soft internal padding. Functionally. it's more like IIIA but it's far more effective against overpressure.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Except that most anecdotes about flak armor show great appreciation for it and describe it being very effective against shrapnel and fragmentation. This suggests that even the comparatively primitive nylon weave was good enough.
                This is just you not understanding how anything works, again.

                A ten percent reduction in lethal radius is revolutionary. It will be lauded for years.
                A fifty or seventy percent reduction is astronomical.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                But that's the thing. You've never shown how common these threats are. You've simply declared "THIS IS A THING WE NEED TO DEAL WITH" and never show that it's common enough that we actually need to worry about it.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >You've simply declared "THIS IS A THING WE NEED TO DEAL WITH"
                I did no such thing, I pointed out that the system would offer a specific advantage against a specific kind of threat and you filled in the rest with your imagination.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Actually, the argument you've blundered into is about if .50 cal protection is worth the effort.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Wrong, it's about wether 50BMG protection was possible first and foremost, but you shift the goalposts every time you get confused. You went on for a hundred posts about how
                -BMG protection from infantry scale plates was impossible
                -okay it's possible but not against AP
                -Okay it's possible against AP but you'd die from the impact
                -Okay you wouldn't die from the impact if you were rated against BMG you'd somehow be unable to stop repeated hits from a 7.62x39
                -ceramic plates fail after one or two impacts
                -being armored against BMG is pointless because you'd never be shot at by BMG
                -a powered armor suit couldn't possibly have full body LV4 protection
                -a powered armor suit couldn't possibly have more than full body LV4 protection
                -Flak jackets already reduced fragmentation "enough" so reducing fragmentation more would have little effect
                -blast waves are a significant casualty producer
                -a full body robot suit couldn't possibly reduce the effects of blast waves because I guess it's not a solid object with mass that compresses, fractures, or moves under impact, it just transfers 100% of the force directly to the user

                And finally
                -I say that a robot suit with lv4 or post lv4 armor wouldn't be able to carry a radio just because.

                On every single point you've been embarrassed and proven wrong, and you just immediately pivot and pretend the argument is something different.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Ah, that's where you went wrong.
                >-BMG protection from infantry scale plates was impossible
                Power armor isn't restricted by infantry scale plates. Rather, the problem is that if you load too much armor you run into

                yeah, but weak floors are pretty much the ultimate counter to these "dug-in-warrior counters"

                oops, there goes your 2 ton infantry.

                and defenders will deliberately make weak floors to trap power armor. You want to keep power armor nice and light so that any weight based trap is more likely to catch the defenders if they stand too close together.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Dude, back in

                >asking for resistance to 12.7mm is a bit much
                1.5 inches of hardened steel will stop AP .50 BMG, and a plate that thick which is 40' x 72' (ballpark amount of material needed to cover front and back) weighs around 1,300 lbs, which as far as giant bullet-proof power armor goes is honestly not that much
                >t. Steel Industry Sales

                someone suggested 1.5 inches of steel armor. We didn't say it wasn't impossible, we said it came with way too many drawbacks. For full body HMG protection that's going to get the total weight up to nearly a solid ton and most residential housing isn't going to support that.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Relative protection against certain levels of fragmentation from a flak vest is completely incomparable to what even full body IIIA armor would give you, let alone III, IV or hypothetical post IV armor. The primary casualty producing effect of all anti infantry explosives is fragmentation. These fragmentation effects have a lethal radius many, many times larger than the casualty radius of the concussive effects of the explosive. A flak jacket and helmet reduces the effective casualty radius of fragmentation significantly, but this is not to say that flak jackets cannot be penetrated by fragmentation. It's a matter of reducing the size of the lethal circle. Full body armoring of even normal level four armor would reduce the effect of fragmentation to an outrageous degree, let alone a higher level of armor. Blast wave effects would be significantly reduced as well, obviously, but concussive blast wave effects are beyond secondary when it comes to anti infantry explosives.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The better question is this; why not use mobile wheeled/tracked/quadrupedal drones that are far easier to engineer and control, infinitely more mobile, and can carry equivalent firepower on a more stable platform? Even stairs wouldn't be an issue if they were engineered correctly.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Correct. Why add the human? Lose billions of hardware, no problem. One lost pilot and news cycle goes fem weak.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        there's some things you can't trust a robot to do, anon. and remote control has a delay.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    In the open they’d just be an artillery/missile magnet so they’d only be survivable in urban combat
    In that context incredibly useful - use them to breach holdouts that don’t have AT gear and to get heavy weapons into places your tanks can’t go - ESPECIALLY if they can go to the upper floors of buildings without caving the floor in.

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Is all the focus on antimaterial even worth thinking about?

    How many guys actually get shot with 20mm or even .50BMG compared to guys that get plinked with 7.62x39, x54R, etc.?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Tanks usually get hit with that kind of stuff, not too outside the realm of possibility to use it on a walking tank.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Quite a few, and not even just recently either. Take a look at Carlos Hathwiener's career using a Browning machine gun with a telescopic sight. .50 BMG or higher is practically a prerequisite for any decent sniper nowadays.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Tanks usually get hit with that kind of stuff, not too outside the realm of possibility to use it on a walking tank.

        I guess what's on my mind is that rifle plates have already been the greatest infantry development since smokeless powder - I know improvements in IFAK and medevac are also partially to credit but rifle plates seem like the military equivalent of what "wash your hands" was to public safety - deaths just dropped by 50% the instant it's introduced

        The accompanying tragedy is there's been thousands of cases where hard body armor is so effective that men have survived explosions that left them limbless and brain damaged because their torso was just that well protected. So the obvious next question for me isn't "How do I make every inch of this guy as durable as an Abrams" it's just a more reasonable "How do I make every inch of this guy as durable as the SAPI plate on his chest is" because that alone would immediately reap tremendous rewards in casualty prevention

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Some sort of very light powered armor would help since one of the big limitations on limb protection is that any added weight on them is far more tiring than weight hanging off your shoulders or belt.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Considering how much stuff are grunt supposed to carry anyway if weight is reasonably distributed and their auxiliary equipment is carried by another means it might not be a signifgicant issue.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      There was this Iraqi sniper that scored over 400 confirmed kills with .50 anti-material rifle tho his targets may have been largely stationary.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        What if he had a 20mm rifle?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        This huge homosexual "confirms" kills by deciding that he hit what he was shooting at, from behind the gun still. I believe he's taken 400 shots at ISIS targets, I do not believe he hit or killed 100% of them without fail.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Most relatively affluent nations with well funded snipers don't use .50s anymore since .338 LM is similarly effective at long ranges and doesn't need a comically large and heavy rifle to do it. .50 BMG ironically sees a lot more use with insurgents like the ones in the middle east or the IRA that use second-hand stuff, but that would probably change very fast if power armor could be penetrated by them. Ideally you'd want it to stop 20mm rounds because that's usually the limit for what joe shmoe can lug around with him, excepting shoulder fired launchers, of course.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Even .50 cals are rare. Insurgent snipers will generally only use hunting rifles or surplus Dragunovs. Accuracy is also an issue. Those kinds of chamber pressures ruin rifling and AMRs are meant to hit vehicles and supply dumps, not man sized targets.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The only real use for them would be to defend locations, largely bases or buildings, or some sort of SWAT/OPS where they can be dropped in and opposition doesn't have heavy weaponry. You really don't want a big lumbering hunk of shit like that on an open battlefield where guided munitions are a thing. You'll get bonked with an ATGM because you'll be radiating too much heat to hide. Say nothing of the fact it's just another piece of gear that will require expensive maintenance and logistics to support without much gain.

    Basically it's good for high-end security detail, and not much else.

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If small enough it would be absolutely monstrous in urban warfare and cqb.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It is a weapons team as one guy
    I don't know why this is difficult for you nerds to understand.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      But the issue is that it's in many respects more vulnerable and resource-intensive than a 'normal' team. If you lose a few members in a squad, they can be replaced relatively easily; if you lose a suit, your losses are an incredibly expensive and sophisticated piece of gear and a highly-trained operator, both hardly disposable.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >if you're losing squad dudes
        sounds like you need to be a better Squad Leader and stop getting your dudes killed 4norasin Ivan.

        PA has two drawbacks:
        >Limited fuel means need a truck or drone to bring a can of fuel more often than dudes need to restock their MREs, water and batteries. (Ammo should be restocked promptly after every firefight)
        >You need to visit the FOB more often so a bunch of 19yo lazy morons and their 37yo SFC moron NCO can spend 300 man-hours repairing the suit before spending $130k to fly in a FSR civilian who hangs around for 6 hours at which point decides that the suit needs to go to depot because the failure of -10 level maintenance turned a simple lubrication job into a disaster that bricked the whole suit

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >just don't loose anybody in war lol

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            yeah

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Why not go full tesla death ray, and beam power to the suit from orbit?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Just don't have your guys die
          Holy frick you just solved war

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    At that point, just used a humanoid/dog type drone

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >the instant power armor is introduced it will be a huge hit with SWAT teams where its price, limited mobility and limited runtime aren't concerns
    >we'll start getting footage of a dozen guys in Class V Master Chief suits milling around and pissing their catheters for an hour and 45 minutes while some homosexual wanders around inside shooting kindergarteners unimpeded

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >The 60 year old grandma's reaction when power armored swat juggernaut charge through her door for her single pot plant

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you make exoskeletons it is only a matter of time before armor gets added to them. If you use UHMWPE the weight would be low enough that a set of basement stairs wouldn't be a deathtrap. Such a suit would be very well protected against small arms and fragmentation, in addition to being CBRN resistant, but I tend to think that it would be most useful for assaulter type roles and not for the open battlefield. We're seeing what IR guided warheads and drone spamming can do in Ukraine, and unless you could make a bolognium power cell that lasts for months I doubt the first generation stuff would be worth the trouble in the field. But anyway, add something like IVAS 2.0 to the visor and the inherent ability to carry more firepower and this could be viable. I know that SEALS routinely pack a combat load of 100+ lbs so an ability to take the weight off of your lumbar, even for just an exoskeleton without added armor, is something that militaries are going to play around with.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It is literally just a chest harness with elastic bands that go down your back to your thigh straps.
      The Army is going to buy this for every 13B Field Artillery Crewman.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, I've seen this. Pretty neat tbh. It'll be interesting to see how it matures. When you look at all of the incremental improvements made to rifles, optics, armor, NVGs, thermals, comms, batteries, AI, and computers I see this as an opportunity to integrate a bunch of tech into a single package.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >takes the weight off your back
        >doesn't take it off your knees

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    In urban environments the could be pretty decent

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >pic for very small ants

    armor costs about as much as an IFV to produce, can't get much cheaper
    That's ridiculous and not worth debating.
    We are better ignoring all your starting point and consider every niche that may support power-armor.

    Power armor already exist and mass-production lead to huge cost saving. If you have the battery technology to charge day-long battery on the battle field then you can field a tons of other design.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      OP is specifically talking about large, heavy power armor. Not exoskeletons that allow soldiers to carry more weight with some of that put toward additional armor coverage.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        we didnt jump from WW1 MK1's to the abrams overnight my dude. we simply dont know how htey will evolve yet. we have roughest of rough ideas, but no real roadmap.

        power armor is going to take somekind of remote power or some kind of space magic horseshit.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >space magic horseshit.
          global research is currently working on electrification. trucks already run on batteries. even race cars.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            and those batteries are fricking garbage and will blow up in a spectacular flash of fire and pain in a gunfight.
            anyone wearing a great big INSERT RPG-7 PAYLOAD HERE tinman suit is asking for everyone to shoot hem with everything they have and more demo than god himself.

            and those trucks run like shit. current battery tech isnt good for anything but toys. it takes hours to charge a small car up. you have to carry a generator with you.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        OP is making an arbitrary jump and preventing all side-benefit you could have from using this kind of technology.

        You could go for light exoskeleton built not for armor but for speed, built for recon and carrying heavier armor.

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Assuming the survivability onion still applies having power armor instead of an exoskeleton implies it's meant to take hits.
    It can also carry a large load, usually this means mortars or a heavy machine gun but if it's meant to take hits and it's not something everyone gets then it should probably get a much more close weapon.
    I'd give him a heavy shield with a MK19 (or whatever grenade launcher they've got in the future) sticking out the front, ammo fed through a feed chute connected to a backpack with a few hundred rounds of 40mm HEDP with tracer. Now he's got good anti infantry plus limited anti armor capabilities.
    Alternatively a shield with an M240 and a few thousand rounds fed from a backpack.
    Probably should keep him in urban environments. Also how is the CBRN protection?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >survivability onion
      First time I've ever heard that phrase and I'm enjoying it, thanks

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's a concept not a lot of people really get. It's why stealth is such a hot topic nowadays, even on big things like tanks and warships. It doesn't need to turn completely invisible a la sci-fi movie but any kind of reduction will give the enemy a harder time.
        Heavily armored machines stomping around is cool but their utility is reduced into a niche when just about anyone can carry a weapon that can kill you. There's a time and place for everything, like how tanks are still heavily armored when we could stealth up a light tank.

        >Probably should keep him in urban environments
        Bingo. Unless you achieve the kind of high mobility that Heinlein envisioned, this offers no advantage except as a sort of assault/breaching suit in house-to-house urban combat. And even then it would still be vulnerable to explosively-formed penetrator delivered by RPG or mine/booby trap/IED.

        I wonder if OP's suit would excel at underground urban warfare if that ever becomes a thing. It would just be the ultimate urban warfare scenario.
        Assuming it's sealed against chem/bio/rad hazards and is equipped with a rebreather while also being able to carry a heavy load of ammo and other supplies for endurance missions with limited resupply. 80 miles is excellent when you're stuck underground, not to mention that the chances of finding power outlets rises if you're in an artificial tunnel. The weight limit is still an issue but industrial tunnels and bridges are most likely built to handle more weight than a suburban home's floors.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >underground urban warfare
          You raise a good point. A suit would have to be inherently designed to handle toxic gasses (very often trapped it voids underground or on ships) and also be capable of regulating the wearer's body temperature, which is a huge problem in tunnels built for steam heat transfer. I assume that if we go to the trouble to build pocket Gundams they will have an integrated NVG + thermal visor, and while the NVGs would not work very well underground the thermals would be indispensable.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Tunnels would be the one place heavy armor would be a necessity too. Tunnels mean large, straight corridors with obvious and easily noticed entry points because they can't dig a million smaller tunnels. No flanking opportunities to exploit means you'd have to be able to take many hits.
            No sky means no artillery and air support to worry about. Relatively tight spaces means no vehicles and any autocannons/tank cannons.
            I gotta say the more I think about it the more power armor seems to be a good fit for underground fights.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              Well, additionally there would be no ability to rapidly CASEVAC people so armor would be more important than ever.
              Being a Burger the underground stuff interests me because it negates every advantage that we have spent a fortune developing: robust comms, GPS, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, NVGs, PGMs, etc. all don't work or are seriously degraded underground.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                True, it's like the VC tunnels but turned all the way up. Despite all the planes and tanks and satellites your side has in the underground it's just you, your gun, and a million unseen enemies in their territory. Power armor, if we ever developed it, would be the american answer after we throw enough money at the problem.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >underground urban warfare
          exploding drone on a command wire is what you want for that.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >turn completely invisible a la sci-fi movie
          B5 stealth was literally just "I can't get a lock"

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Probably should keep him in urban environments
      Bingo. Unless you achieve the kind of high mobility that Heinlein envisioned, this offers no advantage except as a sort of assault/breaching suit in house-to-house urban combat. And even then it would still be vulnerable to explosively-formed penetrator delivered by RPG or mine/booby trap/IED.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >how does this fit into a military tactically in the squad, and strategically in the division?
    Armor for clearing dangerous corridors. Toss in a shit ton of tear gas and flash bangs then send them in while also tossing in flashbangs and tear gas with every other step (assuming closed respiration system). Get the VIP/hostage/whatever and then get out.
    I can really only see this being used in niche applications. Basically ballistic shield on another level.
    Logistics would be drooling over the potential to use an exoskeleton of this to throw shit on trucks super easy. Would help with a lot of things. Maybe even use it to create barriers/build a wall should troops get caught in an iffy situation. Just slowly build a dirt wall across the road so the snipers and stationary cannons can't frick with you while you try to flank them or just build a small base in a sketchy area so you can move more troops into position and establish a FOB really quickly.
    Imagine pinning down the enemy then the next morning they have a fricking castle of those dirt boxes around themselves.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      you might as well go wired remote then and have another 150-200 pounds of shit available to carry into the room. no one is going to go into the room as a comically big target.

      How do you handle multi level buildings? I wouldn't count on most buildings, particularly residential having strong enough load bearing floors to support their weight without collapsing.

      BURN THEM ALL DOWN LITTLE JIMMY.

      MIGHT have some use in urban combat, but arty is going to shell that to shit.
      Even in urban combat they're going to get RPG'd and mortared a lot.
      >costs about as much as an IFV to produce
      Not worth it.
      >out of combat can carry 400 lbs of non-weapons gear
      This is probably the gold, their use in logistics. Strip the sensors and weapons and just use them as better forklifts. Combined with electric MUTTs you could probably sustain a lot more heavy weapons at the front with these.
      Is that worth the price tag? Probably not.

      never underestimate the govts love of pure pork in bills.

      I like how a lot of you think there'll be an organic operator in that armor suit.

      It'll be cheaper to make robots to do all that (armored and armed) and have them operate semi-autonomously with a human operator in a similar suit or vehicle.

      The AI doesn't need to be as charming as the thing in Titanfall 2 or Portal; all it needs to do is follow your instructions and do exactly what you intend it to do.

      The second part is the holy grail of ASI/AGI programming.

      run a tether cable with all the juice going in and info coming out. remotely operated.

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Shit idea. One Molotov and the guy inside is cooking alive. It would need to be a full NBC seal.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Run them like mechanized infantry. Charge into fortified positions like trenches, bunkers, and garrisoned buildings to breach and clear. The armored transports would charge the suits off it's alternator and bypass the range limitations.

      >vulnerable to AT weapons and 20mm and above
      Frankly, asking for resistance to 12.7mm is a bit much.
      >80 mile range
      Also asking a lot.

      The same can be said about an infantry fireteam. The difference is that the extra bulk will give a man in power armor a bit more protection than just ceramic armor.

      I like how a lot of you think there'll be an organic operator in that armor suit.

      It'll be cheaper to make robots to do all that (armored and armed) and have them operate semi-autonomously with a human operator in a similar suit or vehicle.

      The AI doesn't need to be as charming as the thing in Titanfall 2 or Portal; all it needs to do is follow your instructions and do exactly what you intend it to do.

      The second part is the holy grail of ASI/AGI programming.

      AIs get kinda finicky when dealing with complex situations and uncertain results. Close quarters fights often become tactically complex as the defender lays ambushes and the attacker seeks to turn those ambushes around.

      I don't think an AI is going to be up for that kind of problem for a good long time.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Frankly, asking for resistance to 12.7mm is a bit much
        There are infantry scale chest plates that will stop 50BMG

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That's only by double layering it and even then you're looking at severe blunt force trauma.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >even then you're looking at severe blunt force trauma.
            A meme. To my knowledge there has only been ONE recorded case of death by BFD since the NIJ, and that was a soft vest that stopped a 45-70 projectile. BMG proof plates passed with under 40mm BFD, people have survived 120mm BFD.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That's only by double layering it and even then you're looking at severe blunt force trauma.

          Also, 50 bmg SLAP takes like 1.5 inches of RHA at 500 meters. I'm pretty sure regular 20mm doesn't penetrate as much.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            RHA is not as good as modern higher hardness steels or ceramics.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >asking for resistance to 12.7mm is a bit much
        1.5 inches of hardened steel will stop AP .50 BMG, and a plate that thick which is 40' x 72' (ballpark amount of material needed to cover front and back) weighs around 1,300 lbs, which as far as giant bullet-proof power armor goes is honestly not that much
        >t. Steel Industry Sales

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          That would also mean the armor wouldn't be able to climb stairs. You'd loose all the advantage of powered armor.

          Theyd be pretty great for doorkicking. You could get some serious power by having a big frickoff generator in an MRAP and just having the armor stay hooked up to it with firehose size extension cord. Team stacks behind Mr. Crysis and he tanks the fatal funnel, or even the dreaded interior stand-off bunker, being able to clear hardened or booby trapped houses on short notice before high value stuff escapes.

          >Theyd be pretty great for doorkicking.
          Absolutely, and not just because the frame would improve leg strength. The only real threats would be HMGs and AMRs and neither are very useful in close quarters.
          >Team stacks behind Mr. Crysis and he tanks the fatal funnel
          Eh...it makes more logistics sense to make platoons or companies centered around powered armor rather than attach one to every infantry squad. Shipping a thousand sets of spare parts to a thousand different units would be a nightmare.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >That would also mean the armor wouldn't be able to climb stairs. You'd loose all the advantage of powered armor.
            The advantage of powered armor is being able to take cover and fire from prone while having armor that infantry weapons and artillery shrapnel cant easily deal with.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              To some extent, tanks can do that as well. Tanks can hide behind buildings and use hull down positions. The primary use of combat power armor is clearly fortified positions and in that maneuverability and the ability to climb stairs matter.

              >even then you're looking at severe blunt force trauma.
              A meme. To my knowledge there has only been ONE recorded case of death by BFD since the NIJ, and that was a soft vest that stopped a 45-70 projectile. BMG proof plates passed with under 40mm BFD, people have survived 120mm BFD.

              That's because we've never hit people with .50 cal and expected them to survive. Blunt force trauma happens a lot in car crashes and a .50 cal is a lot closer to a car crash than it is to 5.56

              [...]
              Also, 50 bmg SLAP takes like 1.5 inches of RHA at 500 meters. I'm pretty sure regular 20mm doesn't penetrate as much.

              I'm pretty sure that 1.5 inches of steel would make the suit far too heavy to maneuver indoors.

              Imo I wouldnt take it on stairs. If it's light enough to go on them then its light enough to get knocked breasts over ass down them. I think It'd be fine to have normal troops frag the rest of the rooms/floors and use the initial tank shock of having a bic boi show up in an interior space as a hybrid tac shield/psychological breaching charge. Also there's probably diminishing returns to having a grip of powered mans clogging up areas not really meant for them. It would start to frick up the tempo having too many versus one or two.

              If you're prepared for recon by high explosives and have the assets to blow up the building then why bother with power armor at all? Just use vehicles.

              No, you want to keep power armor light and maneuverable. Yes, HMGs can kill them but these HMGs are comparatively and aren't very portable. Just lay down suppressive fire until you can hit the position with grenades. If they reposition the power armor can catch them before they set up again. Similarly, vehicle mounted HMGs can be dealt with by just blowing up the vehicle. The extra carry capacity suggests power armor would carry more anti-armor weapons.

              >Slow and only fit to use against thirdies who can't fight back
              So basically it would be a landlocked A-10

              Actually, power armor would be slightly faster than infantry.

              if it's immune to infantry rounds shrapnel probably won't be a huge issue for it. And at that point i can't imagine anything short of a direct hit killing it arty wise, at least not until you get to missile arty

              There's still overpressure to worry about but mounting armor on an external skeleton rather than right on the body would let it act as baffles.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >I'm pretty sure that 1.5 inches of steel would make the suit far too heavy to maneuver indoors.
                The best modern ceramics are much more weight efficient than RHA.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They also don't last against repeated hits. The model I saw was basically dust after the first .50 cal hit.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >That's because we've never hit people with .50 cal and expected them to survive. Blunt force trauma happens a lot in car crashes and a .50 cal is a lot closer to a car crash than it is to 5.56
                Wrong on every level. You have no idea what you're talking about. The plate I'm referring to was designed to stop tjah round safely and it did just that. There were extra thick plates in the 80s that stopped BMG with under 40mm BFD. That is how you measure the fricking possibility of injury. If it didn't have 40+mm, then injury is extremely unlikely.
                A 5.56 and a 50BMG are many orders of magnitude closer to each other than either is to a car crash, you only illustrate how little you understand.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                They've never actually hit a man with a 50 cal while wearing it and the kinetic energy the body absorbs is very close to what it would absorb in a car crash. Backface deformation stops mattering because even distributed over the entire torso the trauma is significant.

                And by the way, we're talking about the kinetic energy of a 200 lbs body coming to a dead stop, not a 2000 lbs car.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >To some extent, tanks can do that as well. Tanks can hide behind buildings and use hull down positions.
                To some extent the operation of a 9mm pistol and a 16 inch naval gun are similar, what a useless comparison.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Still, if all you can do is take cover and fire from the prone position then power armor is just a waste of money. Might as well make a better armored vehicle.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Imo I wouldnt take it on stairs. If it's light enough to go on them then its light enough to get knocked breasts over ass down them. I think It'd be fine to have normal troops frag the rest of the rooms/floors and use the initial tank shock of having a bic boi show up in an interior space as a hybrid tac shield/psychological breaching charge. Also there's probably diminishing returns to having a grip of powered mans clogging up areas not really meant for them. It would start to frick up the tempo having too many versus one or two.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I have a ceradyne plate from the 90's rated for m33 ball, comes out to a hair over 10lb/ft^2

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Theyd be pretty great for doorkicking. You could get some serious power by having a big frickoff generator in an MRAP and just having the armor stay hooked up to it with firehose size extension cord. Team stacks behind Mr. Crysis and he tanks the fatal funnel, or even the dreaded interior stand-off bunker, being able to clear hardened or booby trapped houses on short notice before high value stuff escapes.

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    depending on the capabilities, it's tank division that doesn't exist on just paper. it's a complete game changer.

    too bad it isn't actually real.

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >power armor gays

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's currently useless.

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    MIGHT have some use in urban combat, but arty is going to shell that to shit.
    Even in urban combat they're going to get RPG'd and mortared a lot.
    >costs about as much as an IFV to produce
    Not worth it.
    >out of combat can carry 400 lbs of non-weapons gear
    This is probably the gold, their use in logistics. Strip the sensors and weapons and just use them as better forklifts. Combined with electric MUTTs you could probably sustain a lot more heavy weapons at the front with these.
    Is that worth the price tag? Probably not.

  31. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Im thinking a few soldiers in power armor with heavy weaponry cover the rest of the infantry and offcourse charge into battle.
    Actual power armor as in a walking tank would change military tactivs forever

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If you play with the realistic weapons mod (which I highly recommend) it lets you survive two or three hits from small arms.
      Fallout 4 power armour's effectiveness is inflated massively by the fact that complete unarmoured you can suvive like 20 rounds from a submachine gun and a grenade.
      A headshot with a .308 works just as well on a synth in power armour as it does on standard mooks.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Even if we disregard that Power armor is made from stronger stuff then normal steel in Fallout, several centimeter thick steel plating should stop more then 2 or 3 small arms hits.
        You could magdump someone in that armour with 5,56 and most likely no bullet would actually penetrate that metal hull

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >several centimeter thick steel plating
          weighs many tonnes.
          Medium frontal tank armour in WW2 was several centimeters thick steel plating.
          Mag dump 556 steel core ammo at what you're describing and between spall and weakspots that guy's fighting days are over.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >weighs many tonnes.
            it does ingame, the original Power armour from the first Fallout required 60.000 Watts to operate, implying it is extremely heavy with these energy requirements for movement.
            The fact that you can carry it in your inventory and is only for gameplay purposes, would suck to have armour you can't even store somewhere
            >Mag dump 556 steel core ammo at what you're describing and between spall and weakspots that guy's fighting days are over.
            It doesn't make you invincible, but if an enemy ever got so close that they could hit the weakspots with concentrated fire they would likely allready be dead themselfs

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              60KW is less than my car, which weighs less than one tonne.
              > but if an enemy ever got so close that they could hit the weakspots with concentrated fire
              Staying out of the range of 556 is a good defence against 556 anyway.
              Like I said earlier, these things would be absolutely child molested by artillery, so if they're not good up close they're not good anywhere.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                A target not much bigger than infantry immune to small arms would decrease the lethal radius of explosives exponentially.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                if it's immune to infantry rounds shrapnel probably won't be a huge issue for it. And at that point i can't imagine anything short of a direct hit killing it arty wise, at least not until you get to missile arty

  32. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Fallout-Tier Power Armor
    Limited applications. It'd probably be useful for street fighting or to give to panzer grenadiers, but being a slow, big target isn't great when there's RPG's everywhere waiting to turn you into swiss cheese.
    >Mandalorian-Tier armor
    Not necessarily power armor, but I think the same rationale applies. Having armor troops that can use combat-functional jetpacks would have a lot more applications.
    >Spartan-Tier Armor
    Probably goes without saying, but it'd be literal godmode.

  33. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I like how a lot of you think there'll be an organic operator in that armor suit.

    It'll be cheaper to make robots to do all that (armored and armed) and have them operate semi-autonomously with a human operator in a similar suit or vehicle.

    The AI doesn't need to be as charming as the thing in Titanfall 2 or Portal; all it needs to do is follow your instructions and do exactly what you intend it to do.

    The second part is the holy grail of ASI/AGI programming.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Only a complete tool wants wars to be fought by robots that will systematically kill every single human being indiscriminately. You aren't protecting anybody you've simply removed the ability to stop the killing.

  34. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    shit would unironically have to be ironman in order to have a place in combat arms TOE. like most everyone has said, it's got a bunch of issues: mobility, weight, power supply, CASEVAC, and redundancy (specialized vehicles/units can do the same thing with less cost and logistical footprint or headache). it's an answer looking for a problem, just look at what you're asking:
    >what is the best use for this theoretical new expensive unproven equipment

    power armor needs a couple of decades minimum in development. otherwise it must stay close to support/combat support where it needs to be but also can help cut down the tooth to tail ratio as a tradeoff for the huge logistical footprint. it should be combat capable but only as an auxiliary function to defend lines of supply.

  35. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Would it actually be possible to make a suit of armor that could take on a hundred soldiers with 5,56 rifles and 7,62 fire from tanks?
    Im talking about tanking hundreds of rounds, maybe even a grenade or two without the person inside dying, a real Panzersoldat.
    Pure fiction or possible?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      carbon nano tubes son . well too bad the other tread just talked about how its essentially super asbestos . id say you could build a heavy category of exosuit aka like the little titans from anthem . add a shield . assuming its equal to the best tank armor it should only take scratches except for the joints . they could get a lot of damage . there is also the battery issue and at this point the suit might weight over a ton .

  36. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    well they are a modular platform but they might be able to carry out multiple tasks or one task very well depending on the needs . bonus points for doing the cool aid ad.

    but yea
    >heavy weapons platform
    >transport of gear and logistical boost to small squads
    >aiding tasks that might need a 100 different specialised tools but said arent available (digging trench , carry a person fast , etc pp )
    >being moble fire support motar or rocket platform
    >being able to make shields a thing again. draws fire fights and midigate loosing softer alies
    >makes cqb in some situations a cake walk
    >clearing ieds and other regular explosives
    >being an intimidation factor
    >maybe has a jetpack and therefore horizontal control without the risk of dying by regular weapons when spotted
    >can subdue or overwelm targets easier making the optional choice of prisoners or making vail attempts of sacrifice vests less
    >could make friendly forces lighter and more mobile
    >could potentially be used to carry devices that would disrupt loitering ammo and drones in near peer fights

    cons:
    >good logistics and preplanning are necessery to make it effective
    >it cant use as much ammo or weaponary as a regular light vehicle which makes open field operations less desireable
    >certain vehicles would need to be designed for the machinised squad member in mind
    >mud snow (enviromental hazards) and even certain buildings could compromise the pilots movement or even safety so suits would benefit from certain design specifics which in turn costs more money
    >cost per unit translated into usefulness depends of usage
    >time of use of parts or the whole , wear and tear , general maintenance would need optimization and just demands more workers and Specialists

  37. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >how does this fit into a military
    Used for loading heavy objects onto a truck without hurting yourself

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      tbh the military doesnt care much about the individuals health may it be breathing in bad stuff all the time or carrying too much all the time . that said one can still just squat when lifting heavy shit and not just break your back in every single time .

  38. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How does the face of warfare change after you introduce them to your army?

    Assume ceramic composite armor, guessing 40 psf to stop 20mm, approx 800lbs armor to cover a man, plus motors& actuators that are also covered, going to guess this thing is 2000 - 2500 lbs.

    It would be very risky to have it climb stairs. Do some testing, see if placing feet near walls is enough to let it go inside places. If so, then it's my army's room-clearing thing. If not, then it's like a really slow IFV that can use cover and concealment; use in mountainous and densely forested areas, fights infantry, APCs, IFVs, and small to medium ground drones.

  39. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Logistics, their knees, and especially their lower backs would love to have Powered suits. Frick you crayon munching grunts. All you guys would do is irreparably frick them up in the first week after your squad is issued one.

  40. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    with so many Ukraine war videos of people fighting in trenches hand grenade range. put one of these in each assaulting squad as the shock troop to flush out entrenched positions.
    specifically that video beside a bridge where the two sides are literal feet away throwing grenades past each other but can't do anything but shoot at the hill between them without putting themselves in extreme danger. a piece of armor that tank the first few hits in a fire fight doesn't seem like that unrealistic of a solution.

  41. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >vulnerable to AT weapons and 20mm and above
    That's weak enough that every unit could just be issued with light anti-armor weapons. For regularly infantry that would mean either small anti-tank rockets or, like, a 20mm AMR. You might see the suits arise as a counter to each other solely for the ability to carry >20mm automatic weapons to defeat other armor.

    Realistically it would probably only be viable in urban environments or other tight spaces. In any open area an armored vehicle would almost always be more useful.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      that would be only done if the opponent is competent and not corrupt . but assuming that happens aswell . there are dedicated grenadiers and such already too but issuing am rifles and such just is more weight and usually nobody wants that. taking all of that into account . in a scenario where you have a powerarmor . dont you think in the same vein that decent detection is far enough advanced to avoid classical ambushes and on top of that what about reactive plating or light drones that follow the suit or squad and take incoming hits and are build to reduce any shrapnel directed at the person that is defended ? its just wide conjecture but a potential solution to make your squad even harder to kill .

  42. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    if you can make power armor, you can make a robot. so why not just make a robot?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The brain part of things

  43. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Maybe as elite paratroopers or some sort of pod drop system?

    Have them strike at important targets with sabotage and chaos since they can carry lots of firepower and explosives plus they can be dropped pretty open and without needing stealth since they can take a beating.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Paratroopers are supposed to operate behind enemy lines away from their logistics chain.
      When your power armor has a limited battery time, this is not a good thing.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        You don't want your paratroopers to be unsupplied for very long. The point is to insert a light infantry brigade behind thr enemy's security and where they aren't protecting. Or to lead the massive airport seizure that is followed up immediately with more landed troops and equipment and a huge stream of supplies.

        Dropping VDV onto the Kiev airport worked really well for about 24 hours and then they ran out of ammo.

  44. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    its a pointless exercise. demo is hte great equalizer and it will solve mecha too.

  45. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I'd use it to set an example: have the armor run into buildings unarmed, walk towards enemy combatants, pick them up and tear them in half. Make sure to broadcast the footage in whatever sandhole you're invading, potential insurgents should feel insignificant and hopeless before even considering the fight.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      if youre going to do that, go full on walpurgisnacht and make it look like an actual demon, or a skinwalker.

  46. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What about concussive force? If you get dinged in the head by a 9mm or something larger, it might not kill you, but it's gonna rock your eardrums, and you'll still feel the impacts.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Fuddlore. If people don't get brained wearing IIIa helmets, a hard helmet better than level IV displaced from the head significantly would have absolutely nothing to worry about.

  47. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    of jogging speed for about 15 seconds at a time, otherwise normal walking speed
    It's an exosuit, it should be able to move at its maximum speed until it's battery runs out.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Theoretically it could be a thing if your armor has a weak generator that charges capacitors that enable a burst of strength but then take time to recharge.

  48. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    here's your power armor, bro

  49. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    My thinking is it's more armored than an infantry soldier but less than an IFV, sort of an in between thing. Mounts a heavy MGs and/or a small Cannon, maybe a missile or two. you'd need a specialized carrier to get them to the fighting and they wouldn't have much loiter time due to battery life. Basically, something you drop in when you need to either assault or defend a position. weight and bulk would be your main issues in an urban environment. think trying to enter a building in something the size of a Smartcar but the weight of a full-size pickup truck.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >I need more 50 cal ammo!
      >AT4 is best I can do

      Anyone have a catbox/streamable to the original vid?

  50. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Power armor like that does sort of make sense for breaching. An APC can roll up to a building, spit out couple of dudes in armor who then clear it out while being impervious to anything that won't bring the building down.
    So we might see it one day for SWAT, if they keep running into heavily armed domestic terrorists with armor piercing ammo.

  51. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why do morons from PrepHole come here and make these moronic threads?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      /k/ kept going to PrepHole because of COD.

  52. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    give it to light divisions and mountaineers for recon.
    strip the armor and give it to artillery divisions for reloading 150mm and above and pioneer/engineer divisions for various manual labor
    seem too clunky for cqb /breach
    its useless beyond that

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Keep in mind the one reason we don't use ammo backpacks is because that much ammo is too heavy.

  53. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The best thing about powered armour is that it lets you dig trenches faster, you'll be seeing these guys hauling massive crew-served guns.

  54. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You would never, ever produce this. You'd just make autonomous medium tanks with your IFV per unit cost.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Sure you would, just in limited numbers for your special forces. The autonomous units and artillery are going to be doing the heavy work just like they are now, but for those situations where you need special forces it'll be handy to dress them up so they come home afterward. Good operators are really hard to replace.

  55. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Why would it cost as much as an IFV? It doesn't use nearly as much material and isn't as complex. It's just an exoskeleton with armor, the most "futuristic" thing about it is the battery since we don't currently have any that would be able to power it for a reasonable amount of time. It also doesn't need to survive direct .50 hits, just making you average infantryman immune to small arms and frag would be amazing. Now your enemy needs to use large and heavy weaponry to even have a chance of wounding your men, which would kill their mobility and sustained firepower since they cant carry as much ammo.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What the hell is an "indirect" .50 hit?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Indirect meaning a glancing blow, hitting the edges of a plate at an angle would probably ricochet the bullet.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      There's actually been 50 call rated plates since the 80s.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        They're only good for a single hit.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Yeah the great thing about powered armor is that you can wear slightly more armor than a malnourished British glowie.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            But more firepower than a rich /k/ prepper.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Keep in mind that modern ceramic armors are only good for about half a dozen 7.62mm rounds. That's part of the nature of ceramic armor, they spread the damage over the entire layer. More protection and lighter weight in exchange for less endurance.

            However, this doesn't fit the doctrine of power armor as you want them to be an aggressive force in close quarters. You want a hybrid ceramic/metal armor that can take an entire AK mag and keep moving.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      If we account for the r&d costs to produce reliable, durable servos capable of fluid muscle-like movement, and long-life portable batteries, it would round out to quite a bit.

  56. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You know if you actually want to think about this stuff aesthetically and ergonomically, there is one problem it solves that can't be solved any other way.

    Space is really big, there are probably space commies somewhere in need of freedom. Can't fight in space without a suit. What's that going to look like?

    Plan a platoon level operation on the moon, what are the challenges, what are the opportunities, how do you survive, how do you win?

  57. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I could see these guys being used as counterinsurgency troops. This is a situation where all of the power armor's benefits add up and its downsides are relatively diminished.

    Insurgents only have small arms and some primitive anti tank weapons, so they'll have a hard time killing anyone wearing one of these.

    In a COIN scenario, you're relatively static (so you won't need to worry about transporting these heavy shits) and you have full control over patrol range and distances.

    This will also reduce injury rates, which will help to win the homefront since there will be fewer soldiers coming home in a casket.

    Most importantly, these things are terrifying. Breaking the morale of insurgents with invincible mecha-men would be a tremendous boon.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Breaking the morale of insurgents with invincible mecha-men
      Time to end the thread.

  58. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    army logistics gay here

    if you ever had to haul around a lot of army equipment, youd know how unwieldy it can be and how awkward a lot of the holes are that you have to cram it in, so it could be used as a sort of forklift, of course without all the armor parts

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Well yes. That's basically assumed. Even with containerization and forklifts a good deal of logistics basically comes down to manhandling heavy objects.

  59. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I read somewhere that robots controlled by humans, like drones but on the ground, were much more realistic an option than power armor

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Whoever wrote what you read is a moron, drones are vulnerable to EW and therefore unreliable in a near-peer conflict, and we are much further away from making an AI smart enough to do all the things an infantryman is expected to do than we from the armor and battery tech necessary to make power armor feasible.

  60. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Alright so I've posted this before, but I'll post what I remember of my far better researched ramblings last time this thread appeared. The long and short of it is that Fallout 4 style power armor is probably too heavy for many buildings not made out of concrete (Offices, Parking Garage, Shopping malls, etc). A lot of people here say that PA would be good in mountainous, hilly terrain because people are better in that environment than vehicles, I'd counter that by saying their weight actually makes for a very dangerous situation in rocky terrain, for any of you that have hiked in the American Southwest, or been to Afghanistan, I'm sure you know how treacherous loose rock, gravel and sand can be. That applies double to inclined terrain, you might end up with a steel, man shaped boulder rolling back down and crushing the infantry squad behind them. So I'd say the Mountain PA argument is flimsy at best, having done my fair share of mountain hikes w/ climbing.

    Heavy Power armor as a breakthrough "stormtrooper" would probably work well in urban environments and as an attached force to other infantry to put crew served weapons in to unexpected positions. The ideal methodology for employment imho is to have exo-suited "light" infantry, which protection and firepower wise is very similar to current infantry. They can have armor rated against GPMG fire protecting the full torso, and limb roots (Thigh, Throat, Upper Arms) and carry more supplies (Ammo, spare barrels, food, water, etc.) while maintaining or even improving mobility. These would form the core of our Light Infantry companies. Lets say you have four rifle companies per battalion, with a "Weapons Company" equipped in your true power armor.

    Just for the sake of keeping it simple, we'll say that each rifle company is four platoons with about 30 guys each, so 120+HQ. The "Weapons Company" will have the usual Mortars and such in one platoon, but your emplaced weapons and such, ADA, Anti-tank teams, 1/?(cont.)

  61. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Just for the sake of keeping it simple, we'll say that each rifle company is four platoons with about 30 guys each, so 120+HQ. The "Weapons Company" will have the usual Mortars and such in one platoon, but your emplaced weapons and such, ADA, Anti-tank teams, all that shit has been rolled up into your "Assault Companies" or whatever you want to call them. These heavier troopers have armor that can resist up to 14.5mm AP, necessitating direct hits from either a 40mm HEDP grenade like the M433, or a light anti-tank rocket to knock them out. Armoring them past that is pretty much redundant, as you'd probably get more use out of a faster suit than a slow, heavy one that can still be knocked out by a 40 year old PG-7VL rocket. The principle thing you want out of these guys is making fragmentation a joke, the number one weapon that will stop an assault in its tracks is heavy, sustained artillery fire with machineguns raking the survivors.

    Lets say these suits are capable of 20mph sprinting, and you have a few different weapons for them. You can have heavy weapons troopers with the usual fare of Flamethrowers, AGL's, HMG, to suppress enemy strongpoints. Another thing you can do with them, assuming they have the strength, is give them something like a BGM-71 or Javelin mounted on the back. Those anti-tank weapons are fricking heavy, and infantry struggles to employ them effectively in a Shoot'n'Scoot manner just by the mass of lugging around the ammo (Javelin) and the mount(BGM-71). By having your weapons company be ultra-mobile compared to today, they can be used as an active assaulter, rather than a supporting fires and primarily defensive emplaced weapons teams. The other side of the coin, is that you can take the design of the Barret M107, and form it into a proper battle rifle for your Assault Troopers, or give them a shortened M240 with the "Ironman" backpack style ammo feed to keep up with the Light Infantry as a mobile GPMG. 2/? cont.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Correction, "Assault Companies" should have been "Assault Platoons" given the scale. Each of your Weapons Companies, Assault Companies, whatever the frick you want to call them, should have as many Assault platoons as there are Rifle companies, so that each group can get a medium fire support element moving up with them if needed. This still does not make tanks and IFV's redundant, your heavy armor isn't big enough to lug around a 30mm cannon, It simply gives you a way to get heavier, normally crew served weapons into areas inaccessible to a vehicle. Now onto my last bit

      By giving your PA guys two different basic roles, one being heavy weapons, and the other a more mobile direct assault, you provide something that can soak up a lot of punishment in the brutal urban fights, and also weapons that out-range standard infantry small arms. Given that the PA is a standard human form-factor, arming them should be very, very easy, just a matter of picking up a weapon and syncing it to the suit's sensors and targeting system. It could be made as simple as "Plug and Play" like an xbox controller, or going more sci-fi with modular integrated weapons on the shoulders/in the arms that snap on and work with an hour of install and calibration.

      The two philosophies of arming them could work at the same time as well. The integrated weapons on a gimbal "Look'n'Shoot" like a helicopter, or point and shoot in the arms/hand held weapons would be absolutely devastating, as target acquisition times could be reduced substantially using a HUD, rather than shouldering a weapon to use the sights.

      Final note on organization, the reason I wouldn't want an ALL BIG GUN BIG MAN TANK SUIT FRICK YEAH infantry force is that the size and weight is going to severely restrict them in many terrains. People already lose boots in mud just walking after a heavy rain, no extra weight. I nearly broke my ankle slipping in sand on a hike at Joshua Tree NP, incline was only 20 degrees with a 40lb ruck

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        So with the reality of fighting environments, a lighter exo-suit wearing soldier that comes in around 300lb for an average 5'10" Man is still very easily able to get around in human scale buildings, most environments (Mud is still a problem, maybe enlarging the feet?) and provides an excellent leap in capability for the standard infantry, while your heavier walking weapons platforms are parceled out where they are needed, or concentrated for assaults that are just too dangerous even for the exo-suit guys. The only nation in the world right now with even a slim chance of fielding something like this in the next century is the USA so the force amplification the suits provide will actually be a GameChanger™

  62. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Jump on it’s back

    Jam rifle into neck

    Or opening near ball sack

    Fire

    Neutralized

    Or chain their legs up

  63. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    fire support carrying a 50 cal at the squad level

  64. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    use them as shock troopers. Keep em in reserve and wait for the right time to deploy (flanking, ambushes, overwatch). Fly them out from a FOB to very quickly take over tactically significant points. Overrun and hold, have them return and rearm at FOB, rinse and repeat.

    Point is to use them only as breakthrough troops, and not have them living out of trenches like ground pounders. Gives you the ability to bring overwhelming force to critical points very quickly

  65. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Whatever happened to Project Grizzly Anti-Bear Armor? Or was it just a hoax and couldn't stop shit?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Ballistics_Suit_of_Armor

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      the inventor passed away

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Was the design sound, or was the inventor so bat shit crazy no one took the model seriously?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Why would anyone take a giant suit of bear protection armor seriously regardless of what the creator was like?

  66. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They would primarily be useful as building clearing and security systems. Thats basically it.

    Drive up in an IFV. Deploy 5 of these guys (Large units count as 2 slots for transports) and have them clear the building. Then deploy medium and light infantry as a garrison with various weapon systems. Rinse and repeat.

    There is no open terrain usage of something like this when small UGVs are on the table instead. Perhaps such a system could be deployed alongside UGVs as the commander of a small swarm.

  67. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    On one hand, rapes infantry and destroys cover.
    Still vulnerable as frick to any artillery and handheld explosives, even 40mm ubgl. I think only shock troops that drop behind enemy lines to take VIP such as an anti air battery. Must be reinforced in a matter of an hour before enemy realizes what a valuable prize was committed to them

  68. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    no more need for a medic on the squad, there is no way of easing suffering.

    the thing could be taken out with a bunch of scrap insulated wire wrapped around a battery. there is no way of shielding against electromagnetic pulses.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Faraday cages.

  69. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I imagine you'd need more than one, like a squad of them maybe? If you have one working with infantry like an ifv, soon as it's spotted it's fricked, the enemy could just rely on accuracy by volume of fire to hit those chinks, but I think that would only be a last resort. You wouldn't even need anything to penetrate the armour, a shock wave, probably from something small as a grenade or two could knockout the wearer/driver/pilot/operator(?), basically just not feasable the way I see it

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Current thinking is that you have 1 platoon lay down covering fire while a platoon of power armor rides up in APCs to kick the door in.

      Alright so I've posted this before, but I'll post what I remember of my far better researched ramblings last time this thread appeared. The long and short of it is that Fallout 4 style power armor is probably too heavy for many buildings not made out of concrete (Offices, Parking Garage, Shopping malls, etc). A lot of people here say that PA would be good in mountainous, hilly terrain because people are better in that environment than vehicles, I'd counter that by saying their weight actually makes for a very dangerous situation in rocky terrain, for any of you that have hiked in the American Southwest, or been to Afghanistan, I'm sure you know how treacherous loose rock, gravel and sand can be. That applies double to inclined terrain, you might end up with a steel, man shaped boulder rolling back down and crushing the infantry squad behind them. So I'd say the Mountain PA argument is flimsy at best, having done my fair share of mountain hikes w/ climbing.

      Heavy Power armor as a breakthrough "stormtrooper" would probably work well in urban environments and as an attached force to other infantry to put crew served weapons in to unexpected positions. The ideal methodology for employment imho is to have exo-suited "light" infantry, which protection and firepower wise is very similar to current infantry. They can have armor rated against GPMG fire protecting the full torso, and limb roots (Thigh, Throat, Upper Arms) and carry more supplies (Ammo, spare barrels, food, water, etc.) while maintaining or even improving mobility. These would form the core of our Light Infantry companies. Lets say you have four rifle companies per battalion, with a "Weapons Company" equipped in your true power armor.

      Just for the sake of keeping it simple, we'll say that each rifle company is four platoons with about 30 guys each, so 120+HQ. The "Weapons Company" will have the usual Mortars and such in one platoon, but your emplaced weapons and such, ADA, Anti-tank teams, 1/?(cont.)

      explains it in more depth.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Infantry would be so outgunned it wouldn't even be funny.

  70. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Urban Warfare Personnel.

    One of the biggest issues with using armored vehicles to secure an urban environment are the sheer number of places enemy infantry can just set up an anti-tank weapon.

    Being smaller, you're both more difficult to hit and can sneak into buildings to clear them along with a squad, offering support and drawing small-arms fire like a human shield.

    Essentially, the squishier squad-mates neutralize the AT guy and possible the weapon, then back off and take pot-shots at whoever they can while the Juggernaut puts out most of the damage.

    Alternatively, you can use it to haul small artillery into odd locations.

  71. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Issue them this:

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      What does this offer tactically compared to contemporary weapon systems? Does it bridge the gap between 40mm grenade launchers and heavier field mortars? What does it offer a soldier that the Carl-Gustaf M4 and the PSRL-1 do not?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Rate of fire, easier to design around indirect fire, no backblast, and more compact ammunition, but obviously it's niche.

  72. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Same problems as an armoured mech. Ultimately why walk when you can ride? Barring some kind of biotech or nanotechnology it's easier to direct energy from a central source like an engine or motor and that lends itself to having a lower centre of gravity

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Because indoor fighting. You really can't clear bunkers, trenches, and buildings in a vehicle. At best you can chase infantry out temporarily but that just means they come back as soon as you look the other way.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >You really can't clear bunkers, trenches, and buildings in a vehicle.
        Flamethrowers m8, I'm guessing we don't use 'em because of conventions or some gay shit but flamethrowers are the solution to removing their guys without spending your own guys.

  73. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    If you can make power armor, why even have someone inside the suit? Fill the inside with a remote controlled robot skeleton, and you have terminators.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      I would expect both to be fielded simultaneously, for accountability purposes and for handling exceptional circumstances that throw off the algorithm-driven units. Organic officers give the orders, drones execute them.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Runs into control issues. AIs are kinda stupid and have trouble handling bipedal movement. Radio controls can be jammed or traced.

      You'll see combat UGVs but they'd be more quad ATVs with sentry guns on top. Send them forwards to draw fire and lay down suppresion but they're mostly just cannon fodder.

      >You really can't clear bunkers, trenches, and buildings in a vehicle.
      Flamethrowers m8, I'm guessing we don't use 'em because of conventions or some gay shit but flamethrowers are the solution to removing their guys without spending your own guys.

      That would mean getting within flamethrower range and thus ATGM range. Flamethrower fuel is also very bulky so one good hit could set the entire vehicle ablaze.

      You could use incendiary warheads like the FLASH rocket launcher but then the enemy would just duck deeper into cover until the flames died down and then reoccupy their position.

      The problem isn't that it's a hardened position. It's that it's a position that the enemy can reinforce without you having any means of stopping. You need infantry to follow those trench lines, tunnels, and back alleys to cut off enemy reinforcements. You can't do that with a vehicle simply because a vehicle wouldn't fit.

  74. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >using power armour
    nah

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Yeah you're right if he didn't have armor he would have survived no problem

  75. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    good against non ant material forces
    a insurgent grounp or a 3th world weak military
    also great for city, hostage rescue and taking a structure that must be capture at all costs
    would be better for feds or anti feds unites unironicaly

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Can you repeat that when you're sober?

  76. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    wouldnt it be easier and cheaper to just use an exo like we have now, but instead of having it carry shit on the back you telescope that weight up front for frontal armor and add some artificial arm that reduces weapon weight?

    also, imagine being encapsulated by some power armor shit... and needing to take a shit

  77. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    seems like obvious applications include logistics, and carrying heavy armour.

    loadin trucks, unloadin trucks, and being the big guy on the machine gun, or the big guy with the riot shield up front

    maybe eod?

  78. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Power armor is a thing, how does this fit into a military tactically in the squad

    it doesn't.

    it makes a NEW thing, that doesn't have a modern day infantry equivalent.

    most likely consisting of less than half a dozen "Suits", and the logistics brigade servicing their supply, maintenance, intelligence, and reconnaissance needs.

  79. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's an infantry knight. Perfect for rooting out less armored infantry in urban dug-in positions. Next feature would be a small support drone to scout targets & detect explosive traps.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      yeah, but weak floors are pretty much the ultimate counter to these "dug-in-warrior counters"

      oops, there goes your 2 ton infantry.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *