Yep. That’s right. The United States military is hard at work on their own version of an Iron Man-esque armor. They’re currently calling it TALOS, or Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, and if things go well it will be up and running by 2018. The various features and abilities of the suit that the military is working on are, to put it simply, kind of intense.
RT has all sorts of details about the suit, including that:
The suit is being designed primarily with defense in mind and will likely include liquid armor, a synthetic substance being developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This material has the capability to shift from a liquid state to a solid within milliseconds, making the suit’s wearer essentially impervious to gunfire.
As well as that “There are additional plans to incorporate a “wound stasis” program that could stop bleeding by spraying some kind of medical foam onto an injury.” But don’t worry, it will of course still have guns and Navy Admiral William McRaven thinks it’ll be a “huge comparative advantage over our enemies and give our warriors the protection they need.” Lockheed Martin is at work on their own suit as well, called the HULC or Human Universal Load Carrier, which is just… a really terrible name. And that suit better end up green, people.
Certainly it’s exciting to see technology advance, but when it goes hand-in-hand with weaponry like this, it does get a little scary. And, relevant to the interests of our readers, no word yet on how gender neutral any of these suits will be and if there are plans to put women in them at all. Given the level of detail on Tony Stark’s suits, if they’re at all similar they’ll have to be pretty customized to the wearer but at very least programmable to different users. The latter would definitely suit the needs of military as they wouldn’t want to rely on just a privileged few in case of injuries or death.
Look, Iron Man is awesome. But do you really want to follow the example of an alcoholic egomaniac to outfit your armies?
(via Blastr)
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