TL9 Battle Dress?

AndrewW

Emperor Mongoose
Wanted: special-ops battle suit with cooling, embedded computers, radios, and sensors

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., 6 Sept. 2013. U.S. military researchers are asking industry for ideas on a futuristic uniform for Special Operations warfighters that involves agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems.


http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/09/sof-talos-baa.html
 
AndrewW said:
Wanted: special-ops battle suit with cooling, embedded computers, radios, and sensors

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., 6 Sept. 2013. U.S. military researchers are asking industry for ideas on a futuristic uniform for Special Operations warfighters that involves agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems.


http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/09/sof-talos-baa.html

Yep. In the works for a while. The MAJOR roadblock is the power source. Indeed, won't be possible until TL 9.
 
Doable in the very near future if they don't want actual powered exoskeletons. Portable energy storage and energy harvesting capability is going to explode in the next 5 years while the size, weight and energy requirements of sensors, communications, antennas etc are dropping by orders of magnitude with nanotechnology.
 
F33D said:
Chas said:
Portable energy storage and energy harvesting capability is going to explode in the next 5 years


Really? What will be the new paradigm in that area?
It's similarly nanotechnology driven, pretty much every kind of battery not just one type, in labs are getting huge increases in potential: the university of Berkley was claiming 10 times the power storage of current lithium batteries with full battery recharge in 10 minutes flat!

Then you've got huge jumps noted for solar, piezo and thermoelectric capabilities in energy harvesting...
 
Chas said:
It's similarly nanotechnology driven, pretty much every kind of battery not just one type, in labs are getting huge increases in potential: the university of Berkley was claiming 10 times the power storage of current lithium batteries with full battery recharge in 10 minutes flat!

Then you've got huge jumps noted for solar, piezo and thermoelectric capabilities in energy harvesting...


I know about the lithium batteries (safety concerns at those power levels). Solar adds to he weight. But the biggest barrier is durability under deployment conditions. Piezo is being incorporated into the soles of boots in testing (for the last 7 years, looks promising). Thermoelectric is good, at that scale, in cold climate usage only.

It'll be longer than 5 years.
 
AndrewW said:
Wanted: special-ops battle suit with cooling, embedded computers, radios, and sensors

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., 6 Sept. 2013. U.S. military researchers are asking industry for ideas on a futuristic uniform for Special Operations warfighters that involves agile air-conditioned armor with embedded computers, sensors, communications radios and antennas, signal processors, wearable displays, and health-monitoring systems.


http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/09/sof-talos-baa.html

It is already there, full BD is "the pinnacle of personal armor".

Carapace, Mechanical (TL 9): A suit of sealed carapace plates
attached to a very simple framework of mechanical ratchets and
pneumatics, this armour is durable. Fuelled for up to 10 hours on
five litres of fuel (Cr. 2 per litre), the suit adds +1 to the wearer’s
Strength score and reduces his Dexterity by –1 while worn.

CSC pg 144
 
A couple of years ago I read an article where they were working on making the armor itself the battery. One of our local universities has been working on a cheaper way to essentially weave carbon nanotubes into a fabric of sorts. They had built a lightweight vest that offered ballistic protection and someone else had figured out how you could make the carbon nanotubes hold a charge as well. In theory they should be able to weave an entire suit out of this and give it an electrical charge to run all the electronics an infrantryman carries (evidently battery life sucks for a lot of stuff, and soldiers have complained about how many batteries they have to carry in the field).

It was so much easier in my day... we didn't have anything with batteries except our walkman's. :)
 
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