10 Top Secret Weapons You've Never Heard Of
3. The Super Soldier Exoskeleton
Superhero comic books have got a lot to answer for: specifically Marvel, with their increased profile following their billion-dollar success stories in recent years. Why else would we have huge companies continuing to attempt to create powered exoskeletons to assist human beings in lifting, walking, and of course, fighting?
There are several designs of exoskeleton in development and they'll remain in development until the design flaws are ironed out. The comic book inspirations are nowhere more obvious than in their names, with forced acronyms the order of the day. Lockheed Martins H.U.L.C. system (the Human Universal Load Carrier) is a classic example, in development since 2000 but announced to the public the year after Iron Man captivated the public's imagination for the first time in 2008, given a clunky Marvel-inspired name.
Able to assist the wearer in carrying 200lb loads for extended periods at 10mph, the H.U.L.C. wasn't exactly the most photogenic of creations, and didn't support a cool looking body armour. Image isn't something the US Special Operations Command T.A.L.O.S. programme has to worry about, far from it. Named after the huge man of bronze that guarded the island of Crete from invaders in classical myth, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit had an animated Youtube clip online showing it deflecting bullets and bursting through doors practically before SOCOM had considered whether the damned thing was physically possible.
As ever, power is the key consideration. The many powered exoskeletons in development will need to move independently for longer than a few hours at a time in combat situations. Tony Stark created the arc reactor first and the Iron Man armour second; there's a reason it went that way around, even in the movies. The other issue is weight: one of the briefs for the increasingly ridiculous T.A.L.O.S. pipe dream is for the suit to weigh less than 400lbs, the mass of two grown men. Any powered exoskeleton will need to lift its own weight before anything else is considered, severely compromising its efficiency.