Military brass seeks ‘Iron Man Suit’ for soldiers
Special operations aiming for armored model within 1 year
WASHINGTON — In April 2006, Army Capt. Brian Dowling was leading his special operations forces teamthrougha steep mountain pass in eastern Afghanistan when insurgents ambushed his patrol, leaving two of his soldiers pinned down with life-threatening wounds.
After a furious firefight, the two men were rescued, but the episode would change Dowling’s life.
Nowemployed by a small defense company, he is part of an effort by U.S. Special Operations Command to produce a radically new protective suit for elite soldiers of the future to wear into battle — one with bionic limbs, head-to-toe armor, a built-in power supply and data feeds projected inside the helmet.
They call it — what else? — the Iron Man Suit.
“We’re taking the Iron Man concept and bringing it closer to reality,” said Dowling, referring to the Marvel comic book character Tony Stark, an industrialist and master engineer
GOVERNMENTREQUIREMENTS FORTHE SUIT
Displays: Give wearer feedback and information relevant to the environment from an array of sensors. Health status: Embedded systems monitor the body’s vital statistics such as oxygen levels and body heat. Lightweight design: Minimizes load and maximizes protection. who builds an exoskeleton, turning himself into a superhero and since 2008, a hit film franchise. “It looks damn close to Iron Man.”
Special Operations Command began soliciting ideas Armor: Protects the head and body, especially from
explosions, by using advanced
materials. for the suit this year from industry, academia and government labs, and has held two conferences where potential bidders, including Dowling’s company, Revision Military, demonstrated their products. Military officials say they are trying to produce a working prototype within the next 12 months.
No contracts have been signed, however, and officials said they don’t have cost estimates for the suit.
If you believe the hype, the metal suit will be all but impervious to bullets and shrapnel, and be able to download and display live video feeds from overhead drones.
Relying on tiny motors, the exoskeleton supposedly would allow a soldier to run and jump without strain while carrying 100 pounds or more.
Unlike Iron Man, the suit won’t have rocket thrusters in the boots or a powerful “repulsor ray” in each palm.
But it will, at least in theory, be able to stanch minor wounds with inflatable tourniquets (in the event the armor is breached) and carry an oxygen supply in case of poison gas, a cooling system and sensors that will transmit the wearer’s vital signs back to headquarters.
“Theywant an Iron Manlike suit; they’ve been quite open about that,” said Dr. Adarsh Ayyar, a engineer with BAE Systems, one of the defense contractors seeking to build a working exoskeleton prototype. “Youwon’t get all of it. ... But I think it’s doable.”
Even the project’s formal name is an homage to Iron Man. It’s the “Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit,” or TALOS, the giant bronze warrior of Greek mythology who defended — not always successfully — the island of Crete from invaders.
The deeper question raised by the project is whether it represents a misunderstanding of the lessons of the last dozen years of war, when U.S. soldiers, despite being equipped with technology and weaponry far beyond anything their enemies possessed, were dueled to a virtual draw in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“When the U.S. military entered the global war on terror, it was infatuated with technology and believed that it wins wars,” said Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor at Boston University. “The experience in Iraq and Afghanistan ought to have destroyed any such expectation, but this (project) suggests it is still true.”
Describing the TALOS suit to engineers and defense executives in August in Tampa, Fla., Adm. William McRaven, a Navy SEAL and the head of Special Operations Command, urged them to think about a special operations soldier preparing to assault a house.
“He has to open that door not knowing what’s on the other side,” McRaven said. “He’s got to be able to shoot, move and communicate. He’s got to be able to survive in that environment.”
Howmuch of this is truly possible is uncertain, designers admit. There is no prototype, only a smorgasbord of ideas.
The key, designers and officials involved say, is to make a suit that provides better protection than the heavy armored vests and Kevlar helmets soldiers already wear, without being too bulky for combat.
To make it work, designers need a battery to power the exoskeleton, the communications gear and the data stream. In the movies and books, Stark’s suit relies on something called an “arc reactor” that keeps him alive and runs the suit.
“The Iron Man movies got it right: Power is the Achilles’ heel with all these devices,” said Russ Angold, co-founder of Ekso Bionics, a company in Richmond, Calif., that is developing a power-saving exoskeleton that it hopes Special Operations Command will choose.