"From Special Effects to Spec-Ops" Topic

First a CIA officer went to a Hollywood makeup effects artist for help with disguises for covert ops, and now the military is turning to another special effects company in an effort to create a viable combat armor suit:

link

Life trying to imitate art… we shall see if this venture will be as successful as the collaboration between the CIA's Master of Disguise and one of Hollywood's best Masters of Disguise…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

You mean Dana Carvey dressed up like a turtle? ;>)

Why not, so many other items have come from the realm of entertainment to reality.

And then they need alcoholic douchebags to use them! :D

Given the rate of alcohol use among the military, (and the number of douchebag officers), it shouldn't be too hard to find an alcoholic douchbag to wear the suit.

And it looks like DARPA needs to get going on those microturbine-driven generators. 365lbs of batteries is a no-go, especially as LiPo and Li+ batteries tend to get flaming when they stop a round…

Turtle turtle!

Is this a really late April fools story??

@Kidbananas: That the US Special Operations Command wants a freaking Iron Man suit, and the program is called TALOS?

Nope, completely legit.

I wouldn't be surprised if the special effects shops are getting called, after all they had to make the Iron Man suit mobile enough to do all the action scenes. I don't think they gave it any powered exoskeleton pieces, but Lockheed build a simple back-and-legs exoskeleton called 'HULC'. It just needs the upper upper body, arms and neck/head powered.

If you think about it, special effects companies have been designing futuristic looking armor and gadgets that can be worn and used, at least in some way.

As said above, we're slowly nearing the point where we could produce powered armor that's usable. Although, right now the issue is more of battery power.

There are real, working exoskeleton prototypes worn by actual soldiers. The ones who have used them said that carrying a 50 pound weight from one arm felt like nothing.

Wearable solid armor suit technology isn't hard; they made that in the Middle Ages. Powered wearable solid armor suit technology-- now that's hard!

And I do like the HULC as a versatile, low cost approach to heavy lifting in the field. In fact, I'm wondering why it hasn't been implemented already. I assume only that there must be some drawback that's not publicly known, or the advantage doesn't match the cost (though honestly, it doesn't look like it would be that costly to mass produce or field).

And I do like the HULC as a versatile, low cost approach to heavy lifting in the field. In fact, I'm wondering why it hasn't been implemented already. I assume only that there must be some drawback that's not publicly known, or the advantage doesn't match the cost (though honestly, it doesn't look like it would be that costly to mass produce or field).

I suspect that part of the issue there is getting enough of them. I remember hearing $100,000 USD getting thrown around as the price of one of those HULC exos. When you need 10,000 or more for each infantry division, even a $10 USDk unit price ends up being really expensive.

$100,000 USD? Wow, that's way more than I figured the cost of those things would be, even at the relatively limited production associated with military use. Must be a bit more to the components and manufacture than I thought.