Future soldier technology (modified thread)

skyblue said:
I wonder if the Army should take a look at an adaption of Apple's Reality Pro; that's the cutting edge nowadays in AR/VR
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They probably are, but the timeline for military contracting means any technology buys are roughly 10 years out of date by the time they're delivered. It's seriously why the USN contracted out for their computer networks. When my base got NMCI, the computers that were getting replaced were at least 8 years old but updated to run Windows NT.
 
breakingdefense.com

Army Futures Command honing in on 'human-machine integration,' beyond a 'bolt-on' capability - Breaking Defense

Other R&D focus areas next year include software applications and energetic materials, or chemicals found in weapon systems, a key area of value for the Army.
breakingdefense.com breakingdefense.com
“Other R&D focus areas in FY24 include software applications and energetic materials, or chemicals found in weapon systems, a key area of value for the Army.”

For me reading about having to “refocus” on miltech like energetics is somewhat alarming. Energetics in my defense budget would be very well funded indeed.

If you can’t get to the battlefield, shoot stuff very quickly and blow it up when it arrives what else is there?

Yes there’s a lot more to it than that was being a bit flippant.
 
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scrubhead said:
This is old news but it's pretty cool. One of the Contenders for the Precision Grenadier System by Plumb Precision. A 12 gauge M110 firing 17.5mm rounds, named the P3-M110 PGS.

soldiersystems.net

Plumb Precision Announces the Submission of the P3-M110 PGS into PEO Soldier’s xTechSoldier Lethality Program | Soldier Systems Daily

Plumb Precision Products is excited to announce its submission into the xTechSolider Lethality Precision Grenadier System. The Plumb Precision M110 Pre ...
soldiersystems.net

View attachment 705464
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So it's a Genesis Gen12 shotgun, shooting standard shotgun and Frag-12 HEDP rounds. The FCS in the scope is the expensive part, I can build all the rest of that for $2000 or so.

Major problem there is the magazines, 12ga is big enough that you can only fit a single stack in there. 10 rounds of 12ga makes for a very long magazine.
 
bobbymike said:
www.navytimes.com

The Navy is working on a transformational ‘Iron Man’ dive suit

The form-fitting, atmospheric dive suit is composed of rotating and flexible joints, and aims to improve diver safety, flexibility and range.
www.navytimes.com www.navytimes.com
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Not exactly for infantry soldiers, but very cool.

As an aside, I met then Master Chief McMurtry many years ago, when I was writing a report on the TWA 800 salvage effort. I can see a lot of the lessons learned from that effort in this new dive suit. Decompression hard-hat diving runs into serious problems, especially when you have to do sustained operations over weeks at a time. A no-decompression suit like this would have avoided some serious injuries and lots of fatigue and lost time.
 
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TomS said:
Not exactly for infantry soldiers, but very cool.

As an aside, I met then Master Chief McMurtry many years ago, when I was writing a report on the TWA 800 salvage effort. I can see a lot of the lessons learned from that effort in this new dive suit. Decompression hard-hat diving runs into serious problems, especially when you have to do sustained operations over w|ks at a time. A no-decompression suit like this would have avoided some serious injuries and lots of fatigue and lost time.
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Or you don't ever bother to decompress until work is done, how the Navy is said to have worked on the underwater wiretapping jobs with USS Parche.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Or you don't ever bother to decompress until work is done, how the Navy is said to have worked on the underwater wiretapping jobs with USS Parche.
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Yes, you can do that, if you have a deep-water habitat to live in.

The TWA 800 salvage op didn't have that, of course. They were doing surface-supplied hardhat dives with, IIRC, 10-20 minutes of bottom time followed by a quick ascent, followed by hours in the chamber to get repressurized and then slowly depressurized. But they learned that the standard decompression tables don't work if you are diving for days and weeks on end. Even being very conservative, they still had divers get the bends after prolonged diving ops. Hard suits like these would have been vastly better for that kind of work.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
Which is cool and all, but is still detectable because you're using a SWIR searchlight. Remember those news reports of insurgents finding American troops at night with a basic phone camera?
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That's not necessarily the case. There are surveillance applications that use ambient SWIR for illumination.

www.sensorsinc.com

SWIR For Intelligence & Surveillance (ISR) | Sensors Unlimited

Capabilities of SWIR that support ISR: Low Light/Night Vision Imaging, Target Recognition, Eye-Safe Laser Illumination, Covert Illumination. Contact us today.
www.sensorsinc.com www.sensorsinc.com
 
TomS said:
Yes, you can do that, if you have a deep-water habitat to live in.

The TWA 800 salvage op didn't have that, of course. They were doing surface-supplied hardhat dives with, IIRC, 10-20 minutes of bottom time followed by a quick ascent, followed by hours in the chamber to get repressurized and then slowly depressurized. But they learned that the standard decompression tables don't work if you are diving for days and weeks on end. Even being very conservative, they still had divers get the bends after prolonged diving ops. Hard suits like these would have been vastly better for that kind of work.
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Oh, damn! Yes, if you don't have a pressurized habitat to work in, a 1-atm suit is vastly better.
 
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OK, this might require a new thread about brain-machine interfaces or applications of AI or whatever.

Anyway remember Firefox and 'think in Russian'? Here is mind-reading brain-machine interfacing that uses AI to reconstruct perceptions from brainwaves.

www.nytimes.com

Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners

The audio sounds like it’s being played underwater. Still, it’s a first step toward creating more expressive devices to assist people who can’t speak.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com


A thing that Peter Watts has pointed out (remember him from another thread?) is that consciousness is Dilbert's 'pointy-haired boss' of the brain - it takes the credit for initiatives that have already been set in progress. A true human-machine fusion would require not just someone reading information off an instrument panel and pushing buttons in response - think of Ripley using the power loader to fight the Xenomorph queen at the climax of Aliens. In practise it would use an intuitive 'preconscious' reading of intentions by the computer controlling the mechanical augmentation would be greatly more efficient. There's plenty of data showing that we perform basic tasks like the brain instructing an arm to reach for a glass of water before consciously 'deciding' to do so.

Now we have machines that can to a limited degree read minds in an experimental setting. Practical applications would be exoskeletons that could synchonise with cues from their wearer's nervous systems and weapons systems that can read mental cues.
 
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Rhinocrates said:
OK, this might require a new thread about brain-machine interfaces or applications of AI or whatever.

Anyway remember Firefox and 'think in Russian'? Here is mind-reading brain-machine interfacing that uses AI to reconstruct perceptions from brainwaves.

www.nytimes.com

Scientists Recreate Pink Floyd Song by Reading Brain Signals of Listeners

The audio sounds like it’s being played underwater. Still, it’s a first step toward creating more expressive devices to assist people who can’t speak.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com


A thing that Peter Watts has pointed out (remember him from another thread?) is that consciousness is Dilbert's 'pointy-haired boss' of the brain - it takes the credit for initiatives that have already been set in progress. A true human-machine fusion would require not just someone reading information off an instrument panel and pushing buttons in response - think of Ripley using the power loader to fight the Xenomorph queen at the climax of Aliens. In practise it would use an intuitive 'preconscious' reading of intentions by the computer controlling the mechanical augmentation would be greatly more efficient. There's plenty of data showing that we perform basic tasks like the brain instructing an arm to reach for a glass of water before consciously 'deciding' to do so.

Now we have machines that can to a limited degree read minds in an experimental setting. Practical applications would be exoskeletons that could synchonise with cues from their wearer's nervous systems and weapons systems that can read mental cues.
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Why an exoskeleton how about a remote operator and a combat robot.
 
GVSETS QinetiQ Spur

The QinetiQ SPUR land robot on display at GVSETS symposium. The backpackable system was designed to provide robotic capabilities to dismounted soldiers. (Flavia Camargos Pereira/Breaking Defense)


GVSETS HELP Pratt Miller

Pratt Miller’s Hydrogen Enabling Logistics Platform (HELP) is an energy distribution solution to support battery electric-powered vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, and assets. HELP is designed to sustain operations in contested environments, the company says. (Flavia Camargos Pereira/Breaking Defense)


GVSETS Deep Orange 2

The US-Army/Clemson protype Deep Orange 14 vehicle was on display at the GVSETS 2023 conference. (Flavia Camargos Pereira/Breaking Defense)


GVSETS Rheinmetall-PATH autonomous kit

Rheinmetall’s PATH autonomous kit is a platform-agnostic solution that can be integrated onto traditional vehicles – such as this pickup – to turn them unto uncrewed systems. (Flavia Camargos Pereira/Breaking Defense)
 
bobbymike said:
Why an exoskeleton how about a remote operator and a combat robot.
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Because the remote operator isn't all that good in the first place, remember, a bunch of insurgents with off-the-shelf electronics and (maybe) some tips from the Iranians forced a US Sat-Linked drone to crash land via screwing with some of its electronics.

So, you'll have to either have AGIs anyway to prevent that (and worse) or have the drone and operator so close that you've given up a good portion of the benefits of remote drones.
 
bobbymike said:
Why an exoskeleton how about a remote operator and a combat robot.
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As @GruntFox says, because it's useful to have a "mind" in the suit to handle all the autonomic systems in addition to having the human pilot as a decision maker.

Having a remotely operated combat robot (like in the Bruce Willis film "Surrogate", or the tabletop miniatures game Infinity) will almost certainly happen eventually, but we're nowhere near there yet.
 

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