Comments on: Another Good Look at the Sarcos Exoskeleton

By: barb

barb — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:31:21 +0000

He is not an idiot. you are the one idiot.
thats all

By: New Poster

New Poster — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:39:35 +0000

New poster here. Never replied before, but i had to just for this one reason.
Jonny you’re a complete tool.
That is all.

By: Cartman

Cartman — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:18:44 +0000

–As the best thing someone can do with trolls is to ignore them, that’s what I’ll do with johnny.
–a fu.ck.. your post is not worth to be answered.
Now grow some neurones and mix them together my dear Gamelin, as in the first place, my post was not pointed to you, neither I care you read or comment it. Talks the one that drops grenades to level buildings and artillery barrages to obliterate neighborhoods. C’est la dr

By: jonny the fart

jonny the fart — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:09:16 +0000

It could move around with speed, it could dodge, it could operate in narrow corridors, it could switch targets faster, it could kill faster (moving up your arm is faster than rotating the gun turret of the AFV).
what a speed exsactly? people do not move faster inside of those batle suits. dodge? you think this suit can dodge bulets and RPGS? operate in narrow corridors? seriously? you belive that buildings are only corridors? some idea why tunel rats in Vietnam war were sll small guys? switch target faster? how at the heck? and why do you need that in a building?
a fu.ck.. your post is not worth to be answered.

By: jonny the fart

jonny the fart — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:01:53 +0000

–Away from puerile sci-fi fantasy, I see a lot of potential in this
another playstation game dream. seriously dude. you are so out of real life.

By: Cartman

Cartman — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:34:42 +0000

As the best thing someone can do with trolls is to ignore them, that’s what I’ll do with johnny.
Back on topic, I think exoskeleton armor with infantry support in APCs could make a difference in urban combat. I am going to theorize a little and contribute to this post. Feel free to discuss whatever I say, politely please
An exo armor could be less probably hit by RPGs, could be impervious to small arms fire and most important, it could have much greater visibility and awareness than a crew enclosed in a big tracked vehicle.
APCs could be still fired upon, of course, but you reduce target risks from tanks and APCs to only APCs and you also add better protection to your convoy now, as exo units would be more ‘battlefield aware’ than vehicle crews.
If enemy units are found or soldiers know where to search, we get back to old close combat and door busting. As I said before, if exos are that large there would be few places where they could enter themselves unless smaller versions are developed and the terrorist busting job wouldn’t change much. (See another parallelism here: tanks didn’t immediately end trench warfare, exos wouldn’t immediately solve the indoor fighting)
So the point is that at this stage, unless miniaturized to human size (no larger than a BDU), exo armor could be used only as a support role, like many of you said.
In any case, exos could maneuver and help infantry more efficiently than an armored fighting vehicle in the street does. It could move around with speed, it could dodge, it could operate in narrow corridors, it could switch targets faster, it could kill faster (moving up your arm is faster than rotating the gun turret of the AFV). It would be like if you had a terminator there, or squad of terminators, they shoot, they kill, they get shot, they are unharmed. I don’t like making sci-fi comparisons but this one was necessary. Also, about room clearing, not all doors are 2 m tall, exos could operate inside warehouses, hangars, mosques and buildings big enough where tanks couldn’t. That’s a point.
Definitely, artillery strikes in a neighborhood wouldn’t be good. The Wehrmacht in Stalingrad, with indiscriminate artillery and air strikes created literally fortress of rubble where enemies could hide/fortify/ambush/snipe with ease, you don’t want that to happen. Not even counting the thousands of civilians dead or displaced, unacceptable today.
But what if we encounter a hard target, like a building full of bad guys and a tank round or artillery or some heavy firepower would be needed? well, an exo’s autocannon wouldn’t be a great help if we want to demolish the building without risking our soldiers. But the exo could be modified with a kit, it could be fitted with a missile launcher or some recoilless but powerful thing to blast the entire apartment. The kit could be deployable in another APC-like vehicle dedicated to exo support. This exo tender could be an armored truck, like a large MRAP, the exo goes inside and gets fuel, ammo, field repairs or changes to another kit, the crew never goes out and never exposes to enemy fire. This exo tender could also serve as a control center for exo units or it could even be made fully automatic and autonomous, without any crew.
Let’s see a couple of possible scenarios about potential use of exo suits:
Team 1: infantry in APCs with tank/MGS/whatever support.
Team 2: infantry in APCs, exo tender armored vehicle and a squad of exo armors dancing around.
Scenario 1: Our convoys run into a street where bad guys in windows and opposite sides start shooting at our guys in the open. What is better, a tank that can engage with its full potential one or two points at a time? or our squad of exos firing at everything at the same time and eliminating the threat much faster?
Scenario 2: Bad guys are met inside a warehouse or a large mosque and made it a strong point but this place can’t be destroyed. Team 1 can’t use the tank and needs to commit the infantry, there could be casualties. Team 2 sends the exos, they go inside and leave the place white clean without a scratch.
Away from puerile sci-fi fantasy, I see a lot of potential in this.

By: Cartman

Cartman — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:43:25 +0000

Ha ha johnny you totally discredited yourself with such childish and paranoid behavior, thank you very much for making things so easy my dear friend Gamelin.
Mondieu is that a Stuka? Run run!

By: coolhand77

coolhand77 — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:26:59 +0000

Ooooh, someone sounds like they need to grow up a little. Untwist your panties Jonny, and get a spell checker. No need to get so bloody infantile over a freaking blog.
There is potential in this technology. Whether it is useful the way they think it will be remains to be seen. Thats part of the whole R&D dance. Can’t wait to see whats next.
In all honesty, its going to be a while before we have Heinlen’s “Mobile Infantry” suits with nuclear powered jump jets and sub tactical nuclear bazookas. I agree that the best short term use (once they get all the kinks worked out and armored up) would be in the same range as Tanks and IFVs are being used now, and letting more limber/smaller softies support the hard suits for building and urban ops.
Besides, its cool!

By: jonny the fart

jonny the fart — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:53:45 +0000

—You talk about intensive urban combat and then you propose giving good artillery support to standard soldiers of 2008. My god!! Does it help to reduce buildings to rubble? Or killing tons of civilians? —
hey, son of the biatch!! how do you think is urban warfare works today?!! do you realy think that to drop hand-granates by infantry into every room is better and saver then to rave whole house with artillery? fu_ucking hell, how naive and retar_ted are you? or do you realy think that this “arest-terorist-job” what we see in american tv is a real urban fight? its a fu_cking SWAT-police job and not an urban fight between millitaries. go and suck your mothers tita, kido!!

By: Cartman

Cartman — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:24:15 +0000

Johnny:
You talk about intensive urban combat and then you propose giving good artillery support to standard soldiers of 2008. My god!! Does it help to reduce buildings to rubble? Or killing tons of civilians?
In urban combat the only way to save the day is door to door, house to house, face to face, in two words: close combat. Maybe this thing couldn’t get through many doors at this stage but it could patrol streets that an armored vehicle couldn’t, while foot soldiers go inside houses and clear the mess. Maybe an even more advanced version of the exo could be more human size than this one and then your exo-soldier could do the work all alone.
Remember that many first versions of a brand new military hardware are not perfect. As a clear example, tanks in 1916 were poorly mobile, mechanically unreliable, dangerous for their crews and didn’t even caused such an impact on trench warfare at the moment, but they achieved further improvements across the years and you know the rest. I am not even going to remember what were the French thinking about armored warfare and what were the Germans. Maybe we got a paralelism here? Maybe you are a Frenchy and I am a German for believing in the potential battlefield transformation of this thing?