Why aren't power armors a thing?

It’s pretty simple
The nanobots, desu
The nanobots

dude none of this technology is a secret
it's all about the ability to manufacture it

he'll keep up just fine by dumping all of his gear and anyway, how can a soldier with a broken leg keep up with his buddies? (protip he can't)

The main issue is a lasting compact power source. If you can figure that one out, you'll get to see all the cool shit from vidya and movies irl

The major problem would be having batteries that would provide enough power for a forward patrol for 6 hours with a trip out to the zone of interest and then the trip back. You would also need to have reliable recharging stations at the forward operating base for the next patrol. You also have to take into account the situations where the squad can't immediately return to recharge after say 10 hours. The optimum time would be a battery that would last under continual use for 24 - 48 hours.

I dont feel like fighting them later so let's not.

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The company engineer. It's his job.

Aside from all sorts of issues, why invest >50k in power armor for a single soldier when you can just transport them across the battefield in battle taxis, light tactical vehicles with mounts and proper offroad suspension.

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Yeah for a powered armor platoon, these guys would be on the necessity level of a medic. They kind of would be medics really, except they take care of the shit that keeps you from needing a real medic. Would probably need way more training than a medic though, with combat training on top of it.

Costs too much and it's not exactly clear where it would best be used.
Powered exoskeletons likely have a future on aircraft carriers if they can replace forklifts, due to being more compact and more dextrous. They might decrease the amount of time it takes to rearm an aircraft.
Powered legs may have a use in letting soldiers put up with the current ludicrously heavy amount of stuff they're supposed to carry, but it's not like they can't just pile all that gear onto a cheap tracked robot that does nothing except follow them around (and issuing powered legs will just mean the amount of stuff they have to carry will get even worse). That'll also really suck if the legs break down.

Just imagine a bunch of those guys, completely bulletproof to anything below .50 bmg.

Spaming rockets on the battlefield.

Because then you have to custom tailor them to fit the soldier that will wear it. It's not easy.

t. Making an exoskellington.

That's an easy fix. Make a one size fits all frame, with removable padded panels (think like a helmet liner) for individual fit

Has anyone heard anything from aluminum-ion batteries? Im lead to understand that they do not last as long as lithium ion batteries and are effectively disposable but are light and have proven to be reliable enough to run a car. There has to be something missing though, there must be a different way of making batteries that result in better outputs

>legs and arms different lengths, torsos different lengths
>'just take out some pads'

user we've had this thread almost constantly for the last week; as much as i miss /mech/ Jow Forums crossposting this is not how you do it.

I've never posted that before and have no idea what you're on about

>AND WHO'S GOING TO FIX THE RIFLE WHEN IT JAMS?
>WHO'S GOING TO TAKE THE TIME TO FUCKING BREAK IT APART, TO CLEAN IT
Think for a fucking second user. We maintain all gear we operate, and if it's too fucking complicated for some retards then another retard will do it for them.

Why not put the length on all of these be adjustable to the operator, like a piston on the limbs and spinal column that extends and contracts for a custom fit?

Nah, you want something like pic related.

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If you're using a hydraulic system then this works for the actuators but not the frame. You can have the frame work like that but it's another hydraulic piston you've got to deal with.

A rifle action and all of its parts in general, is by no means comparable to servomotors, electronic sensors, hydraulics, and batteries.

I am thinking.

Dumb. Overly complex. A failure with a system like that could render the entire exoskeleton inoperable, not to mention weighing substantially more. What you want are hollow pads that can be exchanged with 3 or 4 torx per pad.

Alright you make a design plan and make a functional prototype, then get back to us about your genius idea.

Well that's not a far comparison seeing how the United States military had a 600 billion anual budget. Give me 600 billion a year and I could do it.

So the engineer has to compromise his safety and efficiency by getting out of his power armor, unloading all of his fine tools, move the heavy ass dead power armor into a workable position, and spend the time to repair it's relatively delicate electronics in a hostile and dirty environment?
That's like giving one man the job of an entire aircraft maintenance crew and expecting him to service a jet engine out in some field that's either laden with weeds or covered in sand.

>And what happens when the scuttled power armor falls into the enemy's hands? What happens when they attempt to reverse engineer this tech?
Tech is basically off the shelf. Only really complicated part is the batteries and those require extensive chemical engineering to even analyze. Break them open and they just catch fire.

You also can't just put one on and use it. means you need to make adjustments to match the user and that takes tools and know how. Without that the user could suffer from decrease range of motion, difficulties moving and balancing, or even have their joints pried from their sockets.

Padding wouldn't work no matter what you do. Differences in size means you have differences in distance between joints. No amount of padding will help if your knees and hips don't line up with the suit's knees and hips. At Best you're looking at a decreased range of motion. At Worst, you're looking at potential injury as the suit tries to bend you in ways you don't bend.

Or how about you make a design plan and come back so we can tell you specifically why your plan is stupid? Of course if you're smart you won't need us to tell you what is wrong with your plan as you'd figure it out along the way.

I'm not the guy saying power armor is a good idea. I simply said telling your average user to make a functional prototype isn't very fair when compared with the budget of the US military.

That entirely depends on how you set up the suit. There is no reason to make the suit require full range-of-motion feedback. You could set up a semipassive system where diminished user input translates into full machine motion.

>tl.dr you make tiny motions with your body parts and the machine translates this into larger motions and moves around the user
The benefit here is you dont get physically exhausted moving your body to control a machine that has its own power source.

youtube.com/watch?v=RWnXOh4r6Dw
youtube.com/watch?v=_w_0stlqq5g
youtube.com/watch?v=aQsAHhRxwvw
youtube.com/watch?v=CcO3b30HFoI

The good news is that the frame, actuators, and control systems are all done. Main issue is batteries. Push comes to shove, I think we can bypass that issue with modified APCs.

You're either dodging the issue or talking about a minimecha.

You can't scale the movements because the user is wearing the suit.

>You could set up a semipassive system where diminished user input translates into full machine motion.
So this is no longer going to be a suit of power armor, but a mid-large scale mecha where the operator is in a cockpit in the chest. No matter how you cut it, the basic geometry of a man-scale power armor frame will not allow you to just substitute pads. The struts and frame components will need to be adjustable for length. The limitations on the operator's range of motion in a one-size frame will be different for everyone and you'll either stifle movement of the frame, or break the operators' bones because the joints will not line up. There is no middle ground.

You need to work on your spatial reasoning skills.

I think we're talking apples and oranges. Are you talking about a very small simple exoskeleton for pack and load bearing assistance?
I'm talking more along the lines of an armored exoskeleton around 1000lbs and 8 feet tall

>It has been already done in the past.
It's being done right now to move heavy things in warehouses and that's as far as they'll ever get with it. If the US pulled power armor out of its ass tomorrow they'd still be getting blown up by opium farmers in sandland. Against a competent power it amounts to adopting very expensive equipment to force your enemies to adopt relatively expensive munitions which will still be relatively cheap. It's also likely that any change in carrying capacity and longevity would be directly offset by the military requiring people to carry more shit.

Power armor may have applications in SWAT but then you're still looking at a large investment for a modest increase in effectiveness and adding a lot of moving parts to the equation.

>1 inch thick armor
Weight aside that's still going to be cumbersome as hell.

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Yeah, that's more of a mini-mecha. My rule of thumb is once your limbs aren't in it's limbs it's not powered armor.

I'm talking a suit about 500lb and only about 2" taller than the user. Mostly designed for urban combat where you need to climb stairs, tank Kalishnikovs, and occasionally take on an armored vehicle or close air support.

A thousand pond suit is more of a one man FAV. Not a bad idea but you end up having to fight M2 Bradleys on equal footing.

Lmao that 3rd video is a fucking joke. We're going to see a lot of snapped spines.

In that case then yeah, I agree the hydraulics are a solid option. Your main issue will be sizing the "humerus" and "femur" of the exoskeleton...I may be missing it but I dont see an easy fix for that aside from making just that piece a modular unit that can be swapped to account for different users

This. Vehicles are multi-purpose. Trooper needs medevac in his power armour? Gotta get him out and stick him in a vehicle to pull him out of battle.
Regular soldier gets hit? Just stick him in the vehicle that was already carrying him. Plus you get the added mobility boosts, compared to just walking "faster".

>All they have to do is to increase the battery bank, add more powerful motors, and add a 1 inch thick armor to protect the wearer.
>Also mount a Mk 19 grenade launcher.
>We can bypass this all with modified APCs

I should point out that while I agree exoskeletons are a good idea, turn them into tiny mechas is not very realistic, nor very safe for the user. I once thought like that too, but then I had the reality slapped back into me by several people explaining why that is dumb.

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All right. Slightly off topic, but, I am going to do this. A few years back, my brigade had four XM25 OICW. The rounds cost 100$ apiece, and just to fire the damn thing you had to have the brigade commanders say so. Never mind that in every instance, every single time, it was one to two shots and the fight was over, with 46 total instances of use of an OICW during the deployment.

Powered exoskeletons or spamming rockets will never happen due to the buttfuckery of getting permission to shoot even small explosives.

They are making it a thing

>All they have to do is to increase the battery bank, add more powerful motors, and add a 1 inch thick armor to protect the wearer.
>Also mount a Mk 19 grenade launcher.

But they aren't going to go full retard about it. They want exoskeletons mostly for injury reduction from carry 100 lb backpacks everywhere.

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>my brigade was gay about some prototypes

It depends on the unit, time, and place. My guys all had frags, and a bunch of AT4s in the trucks. Unless you count air and MLRS shots, nobody asked for permission above the team level.

>Don't give them a super advanced AI and have them completely remote operated like drones
>Now you no longer have a shitty sci-fi novel
Was that so hard?

>All they have to do is to increase the battery bank, add more powerful motors, and add a 1 inch thick armor to protect the wearer.
>Also mount a Mk 19 grenade launcher.

I sure as hell didn't agree with those two.

But a modified APC can keep the batteries charged while reducing time spent walking.

Considering that it was an experimental system, there probably wasn't any replacement ammo if you ran through it.

It's the military they're going to do exactly what they shouldn't do.

Are they? The military is good at not doing the smart thing, but to be fair, they miss more dumb shit than you'd think, from a historical perspective.

>If ur doing all that, why bother even putting a person in it?
/thread.

Also. Mounted mk19 with ammo? You are talking an additional 150 lbs for that system alone including a 48 round belt. The difficulty will always be the batteries. They are vastly underpowered, ineffecient, insanely heavy, do not provide enough battery time, and take ridiculous amounts of time to charge. No matter what. Until small, portable, power sources that generate more power than you can drain at full load and speed, power armor is not viable.

>Also. Mounted mk19 with ammo? You are talking an additional 150 lbs

Just create a ligther version of the MK19.

I have this whole copypasta prepared to dispute the use of fully autonomous drones

But the long and short of it is that if you use drones you want local controllers to make observations and modify their programming on the fly. In that case you might as well put them in powered armor.

You could say the same for all military equipment invented after 500B.C.

Everything you said but for tanks, planes, APCs and artillery.

a slim power armor would be beastly in cqc/clearing and urban warfare (shrugs of sub machine gun fire), in EOD, in tank/helicopter hunting (can carry heavy and long ranged anti vehicle weaponry while having the mobility and siluette of infantry) and in disaster/loading scenarios.

it is shit for open warfare and for scouting if the battery lasts less than a day.

>so its basically a walker gear

Your reply is quite close to the "Just add more batteries to solve the power issue." It is not a feasible to do. You are the kind of person I encourage to try out delinked mk19 rounds in their 320 since they are both 40mm. War Machine looks cool and all on screen, but I am the one looking at him thinking, Nope. Can't do that. Doesn't work that way.

a exoskeleton frame with directional joint breaks to make carrying stuff easier, some ruber bands to redirect forces/ utilize momentum and gravity/ make lifting things easier and some small actuators to get the felt weight of the system to zero or below. thgis shouldn't draw to much power and be relatively cheap. armor would just be infantry armor with extras

>Has anyone heard anything from aluminum-ion batteries?
Good and bad things proportional to how much voltage you need. If you can make due with low voltage outputs, you're probably looking at a 60% reduction in weight for an equivalent Watt-Hour rating, over 10x cycle lifetime, and a recharge time that is orders of magnitude better.
The primary hurdle to overcome now should be working out a reliable manufacturing process for a consistently high yield and a reliable process for testing for defects.
I believe it's also likely that cooling will become a potential issue if over a relatively hotter ambient temperature threshold (desert/topical/etc.); Not for the battery itself, but for everything nearby it.

literally the same way every other piece of equipment is repaired, retard

The loser mentality. You give up before you even try.

That shit won't survive a 10 man suicide rush of sandniggers and mongoloids, there is a reason retard krauts lost with superior technology.

a mg42 and an ammo backpack should solve this problem

Oh yeah!

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>10 man suicide rush of sandniggers

Ten dead kebabs for every robot? Sounds like a bargain to me.

They are a thing. You posted a picture of one. They're just not a combat thing

As the technology currently stands and even with the eventual advancement of smaller, denser batteries it's best to use exos for logistics and static defenses rather than something that goes out into the field at least until the egineering can be simplified to the point that you can attach/detach parts like legos

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What would sand niggers have to possibly pose any danger against an 1 inch plated armored vehicle?

AK-47 won't even dent.

rpg
ied
grenades

Imagine all the cool shit you could do if we could get a soldier to be able to carry a 300lb pack

not going to say how i heard about this, but they are real and in the works currently. and i mean like some fallout/ iron man level shit. bullet proof panels hud, mask night vision the whole shabang. special forces are the first testers and from there you will see them be phased in the gen ground based personnel in 10-15 years.

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RPG means you're using a muzzle loading weapon against a fully automatic one. They're also not accurate enough to reliably hit a human sized target.

IEDs typically need to be placed in advance. If you're attacking then you need to get within throwing distance.

Grenades require you be within maybe 50 paces. Worse, if your troops aren't well trained the grenades won't land within overpressure range and won't pierce the armor.

>best to use exos for logistics and static defenses
This makes sense. In fact, exos on equipment instead of people might enable heavier static defenses to be quickly and easily deployed in mobile locations. It could greatly strengthen the ability to set up forward bases, or even allow equipment that would normally be destroyed to instead move with a retreat.
It could also lessen the number of defensive equipment needed to cover a base while potentially increasing the bases defense power. Instead of having x of something spread across fixed locations you could have x/2 spread across fixed locations with x/4 ready to reinforce concentrated locations.

My mental picture is a ceiling rail mounted HMG except now you don't need a rail, or even a ceiling.

you're basically building a vehicle at that point

We have this argument so many times.

Our technology doesn't make it feasible, mainly in the power department. We don't have a way of making an efficient (for its purpose) power source that is small enough, light enough, powerful enough, durable enough, cheap enough, or safe enough.

Without that everything else falls apart.

"ceiling rail mouted"...wait, you mean Roof Mounted? Like what they have for the humvee?

I still argue you can modify an APC to reduce the strain on the batteries.

Nah for a base. Imagine a turret bunker with a 150° angle opening overlooking an area. A HMG with its barrel sticking out of the embrasure. Mounted to a semicircular rail installed on the ceiling so it can be moved in an arc. Or a -) shaped rail so it can be withdrawn inside the embrasure.
Now imagine a HMG that's mounted on top of a boston dynamic dog looking thing. Controls on the trigger handle-wheel-thing that allow a soldier to move it around like an omnidirectional forklift, allowing the soldier to move it up/down stairs and slopes while keeping the turret level like a tank. It could even dynamically counteract recoil.

And now imagine a mechanized infantry group rolling up on an urban area. The infantry get out of their vehicles to push into the area full of cumbersome terrain. But instead of squad members equipped with LMGs, the back hatch of a vehicle or two opens up into a ramp and squad members manning/walking HMGs mounted on those things follow in like they're carrying less weight than everyone else.

Because a "battle taxi" wont fit through doors so I can massacre families in their homes... unlike with power armor. Do you even carnage bruv

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amerifatts forget that some quarter of the miltiary budget is dedicated to rnd

man portable anti armour will always be to advanced for this shit they will just send drones or robots like the dog in boston

Imagine how much it would suck once a servo goes bust or the battery gets rekt.

What is an APC?

Since Ahmed and Abdul are capable of reverse engineering tech beyond a car bomb

See and >You normally don't have one of each vehicle for every infantryman out in the field
>A rifle action and all of its parts in general, is by no means comparable to servomotors, electronic sensors, hydraulics, and batteries.

That's where the clone army begins

if the production cost of low level powerarmor is low enough,it becomes feasable.
imagining having to use AM weapons for every infantryman of the enemy.

In a perfect world, it'd be used to maximum effect until it isn't as useful anymore. Then philosophers would tell you god is dead and wouldn't have allowed it because their concept of good is better than god so god wouldn't have allowed them to do any better or worse than they actually did were god not dead.
A move to a smaller force of special operatives would make powered armor a necessity either way if all life is precious or you just want something heavy to stomp on it.

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I would love to see a Russian made power armor.
Build so soldiers could run while also firing with a Kord-12.7 mm.

Imagine a power armor with forearm mounted 20mm autocannon, shoulder-mounted auto-targeting .30 cal, with a mortar and a variety of sidearms and melee weapons. One soldier in armor could replace an entire squad, reducing not only manpower but also the need for officers drastically.

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