But wouldnt the soldiers begin to retaliate towards their owners or creaters, sooner or later…they wouldve found out.
Incubus: Kevlar provides protection from bullets, NOT shrapnel. The sharp edges tear through the fibers, making a Kevlar vest about as effective as denim. There ARE flak jackets, which employ a different material designed to snag on the sharp edges of shrapnel and stop it that way, but these vests in turn provide no protection from bullets. There are also ballistic helmets, which are designed to protect from very low angle impacts of bullets or shrapnel. Remember, body armour isn’t supposed to be some magic stuff that lets a guy walk into combat with no worries, it just improves your chances.
As mentioned by others, if you’re going to spend the money and a generation’s worth of technology lead-in, you may find it more efficient to take regular troops and outfit them in “hardsuit” armor or Starship Trooper personal mecha. Now, neural-link cyber-implants for the enhanced senses and interface with the equipment…that would be a good idea (as long as the firewall is really good!).
There is no need to give a human body the capability of going on for 120 hours w/o food or sleep after sustaining a .50 cal hit and being spritzed with Sarin while buck naked in the snow, only to see supersoldier decide he’d rather be a flower arranger, if you can equip Joe Soldier to NOT be in that pickle in the first place. Besides if what you want are troops impervious to fatigue and fear you might as well build battle androids.
As a slight hijack, there is an article in the newest National Geographic on current research in cloth. (What this has to do with geography is left as an exercise for the reader.) They are working on cloth that bends light around the wearer, so that it acts like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. Makes cool military uniforms, eh?
Thrilling! Yet, what if this such cloth say for chance, was enchanted? There are such things I believe…yet as the idiom says,“Fools shall use enchantments to mend their lives…”~A.D 4567
The [U.S.] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has solicited innovative research proposals on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA). The overall goal of this new program is to develop devices and machines that will increase the speed, strength, and endurance of soldiers in combat environments. Projects will lead to self-powered, controlled and wearable exoskeletal devices and/or machines and demonstrations of their utility in military applications
You can bid to be part of it (as an engineer or scientist)
I would agree with those who say it’s much easier to augment a soldier with technology than to use biology to make the soldier better. For example, why engineer better eyes, when soldiers will soon carry micro-UAVs that they can launch and fly right over the enemy undetected and observe them?
Here’s a pretty good general article about the upcoming uniforms and technology for infantrymen: High-Tech Soldiers
The soldier of the future is going to be hooked into a big database, and will have heads-up readouts in front of his helmet which will show him the locations of all his squadmates, the enemy, his ammo status, his squad-mates ammo status, etc. His rifle will have a camera on it, and he’ll be able to aim and fire around a corner. In addition, live video from his gun camera will be fed back to headquarters so they can keep a better awareness of the battle. Returned data to the soldier from overhead drones and satellites will warn him of imminent threats and maybe even the location of land mines and other stationary threats.
An individual soldier’s power will be magnified greatly. Imagine aiming your gun at something and pulling the trigger, but instead of a bullet coming out of the gun, a 500lb smart bomb drops from the sky on what you were aiming at, or a 20mm gatling gun from an overhead drone opens fire on your target. Things like this already exist in the form of laser designators that guide bombs from aircraft onto targets. But in the future, with the widespread application of drones this is going to get far more personal. With 500 drones hovering over a battle, any soldier will be able to call down instant death on any target they can see.
I can even foresee a future battlefield which consists of swarms of tiny drones with 6" wingspans, each controlled by a soldier in a safe location. These drones will direct fire from larger armed drones overhead. The soldiers operating them don’t even have to be in the theater - a stealth fighter could fly overhead and drop a pod containing 1000 micro-UAVs, each of which is essentially a virtual soldier. Those soldiers could be sitting in a building in the United States, controlling their drones through VR setups.
This isn’t very far in the future. The micro-UAVs already exist. The armed drones already exist. Those Predators and Global Hawks flying around the world right now are ‘flown’ by enlisted men sitting in trailers made up to look like an aircraft cockpit. They have camera views out the front and side, and real instruments in front of them. They might as well be in the plane flying it, except that they are safe and the plane doesn’t have to be compromized by having a human aboard. That means it can carry more, be smaller, turn sharper, etc.
“The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you.”
Bryan Ekers: I have developed an amazing superweapon to trounce our shared enemy. It’s a dude with a gun, who will shoot the dudes building and maintaining our opponent’s robots.
I was trying to be a bit more realistic. Once we get armor that can stop 50 cal, what’s the next argument? Show me body armor that can absorb the kinetic force of a nuclear bomb? Aside from the 50 cal thing, he mentioned that body armor was meant only to stop shrapnel.
of course it is easier to make a suit like the one from the metriod games, and it might be better overall, but it might not be cheaper.
10 billion dollars is given to one company to develop a successful genetic super soldier experiment. The experiment is conducted on 2 million unborn kids (parents volunteered). The experiment wishes to have soldiers that: have decreased; fatigue, unnesassary fat, attitude problems, asthma, heart problems etc, the bad stuff, and that have increased; stamina, reflexes, endurance, etc, the good stuff. The experiment is done on different races of people from white, to eskimo, the experiment will have different end results depending on the race because races already have advantages for their own survival. Now lets say not everything went right with the experiment, 45% of the fetuses the experiment was conducted on suffered from different ailments, most ending in death. But the other 1,100,000 lived and all have postive response to the testing. Now these 1,100,000 babies are now nurtured and raised the best way possible to achieve super soldier-ism. On average children of today now begin puberty at ages 7-12 earliest. The experiment now goes to the second step; artificial selection. Although the 65% of the kids were a complete success, the level of success varies. The elite males are sent to enceminate the not as good females, and the elite females are to be enciminated by the not so good males, each female is to have 3 kids. after about two generations everything should be equaled out, and now the articial selection should produce nothing but the best babies. While the soldiers were ready they were born, the experiment wouldn’t be complete until the minimum of 21 years. All with 10 billion dollars divided into genetic research, training, and caring for the soldiers. we now have an endless supply of super soldiers.
While the soldiers were ready they were born
that line is supposed to be,
While the soldiers were ready the year they were born
TeemingONE’s model, would not produce a super soldier for about 4 generations, hence a superior soldier would not be available for 100-150 (?) years or so. By that time advances in tactics, training, and war may obviate the need for super soldiers. Also, there is no way to determine if these super soldiers would actually be significantly more effective in battle than someone who was trained in a more conventional method.
Not to sound like a Public Relations person, but character and determination have alot to do with winning wars.