I hate that power armor will never be a thing because even if batteries and movement were solved, the best you could ever do is make a guy that's still less protected than a guy sitting in a BMP or M113, and being in a BMP or M113 is already suicidally unprotected

>>63992813 (OP)
Actually, armored development has already improved to the point someone in a modern level IV plate has more protection than a base M113 or BMP 1.

>>63992816
A level IV plate can't handle .50 cal even from a good distance away so no, not quite. There are plates that can but any plate without special rating won't.

>>63992813 (OP)
a more insurmountable issue for pwoer armor is ground pressure, even if your suit can carry all the armor and fuel along with itself and its pilot then the tiny patch of ground it stands on will not and cause it to sink with every step even on moderately loose soil.

>>63992813 (OP)
that's not the real problem.
the real problem is that even if you had the tech to make awesome power armor you never would because you could make an even better robot/drone/droid whatever-you-want-to-call-it by removing the squishy meatbag human from the equation. The machine can fight much better if it's not limited by human motion and doesn't have to keep the human alive.

>>63992813 (OP)
Full body level IV plus EOD suit coverage would increase soldier survivability exponentially by reducing the lethal radius of all explosives (linearly reduced radius is exponentially reduced area). It would also be extremely dominant in small arms exchanges.

>>63992838
>Sure there are multiple examples of what you're talking about and there were even level 4 plates in 1990 that could do it but you're wrong because other plates can't
So in other words he's right and you're being a pedantic fuck.

>>63992845
Ground pressure matters very little for power armor, not like it has wheels or tracks.

>>63992920
>feet are immune to ground pressure problems
Anon, I know people like to make fun of the internet generation lacking any sort of common sense, but posts like yours make me worry that it's actually true.

>>63992920
Plus you mainly use it for things like building clearing and urban environments, which are going to have concrete and asphalt everywhere. Loose soil? You mean like outside of cities? Use an armored vehicle then.

The whole point of power armor is making indirect artillery and basic fragmentation less useful.

>>63992938
>Plus you mainly use it for things like building clearing
I hope these buildings have *really* strong floors and roofs.

On a side note, what's up with people's obsession with "clearing buildings"? Is it a gamer thing? Has GWOT distorted people's minds as to what a war is? Do people really not know that in war they just level the whole fucking building with explosives? What's the point of sending in guys with uber expensive suits when you can just jdam the thing?

>>63992951
When you're talking about entire theaters, leveling every civilian center is going to be a bad idea. GWOT has distorted your mind to the concept of the scale warfare can take.

>>63992813 (OP)
It doesn't matter, the important thing is that it's more protection than going without it. You might as well say the same thing about plates or even soft armor.

>>63992951
Suppose you want to capture a vip and interrogate them. How's a jdam gonna do that? Or hostage rescue? Nah, just jdam the building, mission accomplished. What are you, russian?

>>63992951
There's a five digit number of SWAT officers in the US so power armor has an inbuilt market

They really discourage cops from carpet bombing random buildings to kill suspects. Philadelphia did it once in the 80s and they're still mad.

>>63992928
pot, kettle etc. etc.
Ground pressure matters far less for legs because that form of locomotion avoids the issue of digging in at high ground pressure when moving forward. You only need to be able to lift it it up a bit

Lets assume an average guy weighs 180 lbs. at 6'0 height and has a US foot size of ca. 9.
That's roughly 40 sq inch surface area. Well if feet were rectangular but the boots add a tiny bit of area anyway so good enough .
Iirc there are currently claims of some poor grunts lugging around 200 lbs. of equipment which gives us a nice 380 lbs.
Lets just say the power armor with equipment and guy is 5 times that much for a nice 1,900 lbs.
Humans have 2 feet so 1,900 lbs. / ca. 80 sq inch = 23.75 psi ground pressure.
That is worse than an abrams sure but also better than a stryker, horse or elephant.

All of that is of course ignoring that unit weight and boot surface can be noticeably different.

>>63992838
BMP's and M113's aren't able to handle .50 caliber that well either, what's your point.

>>63992859
It would reduce the lethal radius of *shrapnel*. It doesn't do much for blast. The concept of power armor dates to a pre-transistor era when computer-guided beyond line of sight weapons weren't viable. The consequence of guided weapons is that maximizing injury radius with shrapnel is much less important, since guided weapons can hit within a meter or two of their targets.

We can observe this in Ukraine. A optimized fragmentation charge on an exquisitely fuzed and guided weaopn like a Switchblade 300 is an effective weapon, but if you're fine with a cheap and good-enough weapon because you're poor, a FPV with a 2kg pure HE charge works too. Power armor will not stop a FPV blowing off your leg or turning your brain or guts into a mushy sack of red slop.

>>63992849
A human has the big advantage of being able to be autonomous and react by himself to changing battlefield conditions, that's the whole point of a good NCO core that is central to western armies.
To have a robot doing the same thing you would either have to make it remote controlled and thus prone to ewar
Or have it be some sort of AI, but if our current AI tech is anything to go by that makes your power problem EVEN WORSE as you now have to hardware running a advanced local model of some sorts which is a massive power hog.
And then you also add to that problem of cooling the damn thing, Johnny Rico from Kansas comes with a very efficient heat regulation method arleady built in, you just need to give him some kind of a vent and some water he can handle it.
A computer powering a local model will take most likely a dedicated water cooling solution with a big fan which is just asking for the thing to get gunked up in dirt and mud..

>>63992813 (OP)
>Implying
They're still going to be used, they're going to be largely APC based and used to strike hardish points where you can't just level the thing with a tank but attrition would be very high for typical infantry. Most of the power issues will be solved this way, only need an hour or two of run time per battery pack. Similarly they're going to be used as airborne infantry, not dropped to a drop zone but literally dropped on and around the target buildings in question(non military government targets, air fields). They won't be terribly popular but they will be used militarily. The largest users by far will be swat teams though.
>I'm posting from the future

>>63993059
Except when you lift a foot, you reduce your surface area by half. So in your example, it'd be more like 1,900 lbs/ ca. 40 sq inch = 47.5 psi mid-step

>>63993062
They are, as long as it's coming from the front.

>>63992845
>Horses
>Fucking giraffes and shit all extinct because they totally just sink in to the ground
Nah
>>63992939
>>63993135
They will be hermetically sealed, massively reducing risk from blast pressure. It's practically the easiest part of the whole set up

>>63993187
Which is also the case for elephants which have have a ground pressure around 35 psi.

>>63992951
That tends to lead to sanctioning and warcrime accusations. Now, I am of the humble belief if you aren't willing to level a person's house and eliminate everyone supporting their livelihood to stop them you shouldn't declare war on them to begin with, but here we are.

>>63993187
Which is also the case for elephants which have have a ground pressure around 35 psi when standing still and thus around 70 when they lift 2 feet for walking.

If power armor designed for combat is never pursued by a first world country I can imagine something akin to picrel becoming a thing.
Powered exo-skeletons or mechs are probably going to be a thing for construction work or other similar jobs within the next century, and I imagine that at least some of these would be obtained by a benevolent freedom fighter group.
They would probably cover it in shitty metal plates for armor and bolt weapons like Kord's or rocket pods onto them with really simple electric firing mechanisms.
They would almost definitely be next to useless in actual combat and would probably stop being produced by whatever groups were making them, but it might get a first world company or military to at least try making their own just to see if they could do it better.

>>63993211
>They will be hermetically sealed
That's the least plausible part of the fantasy! The concept of sealed armor is another now-outdated historical quirk (notably from the PITMAN project) revolving around a pre-modern battlefield where guided weapons are rare so chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are used to cope.

Wearing a NBC suit doesn't protect you against explosives. Knights struggled to cover their joints with armor just 2mm thick! Look at a deep-sea diving suit to see how a pressure-bearing suit works. It's not viable for infantry.

>>63993135
>It would reduce the lethal radius of *shrapnel*. It doesn't do much for blast
In other words 99% of the wounding capacity of anti personnel explosives.

>>63992813 (OP)
Fully powered power armor for running around and lifting heavy things is silly. realistic semi-powered armor like Mehler or Revision's proposals would give a weight-supporting frame and maybe a battery assist with 8-12 hours of use jogging at normal infantry speeds. No powered arms, NBC resistance or HE immunity. It would give ~75% body coverage with ceramic plates. you could probably add optional soft armor for another 10-15% coverage.

It would be a nice toy for federal cops but not very useful to anyone else.

>>63993322
No, if you actually do the math instead of jerking off to old science fiction. An antipersonnel explosive like a red bull can of C4 thrown into the same room will kill you regardless. So will an AT4 or thermobaric LAW or 155 shell.

>>63992813 (OP)
>the best you can do is a guy with head-to-toe NBC-sealed VPAM 14 armor who can carry a .50 BMG chaingun w/ underslung 40mm HV launcher inside of buildings and onto rooftops that would normally be inaccessible to that tier of weapon systems
oh no that sucks

>>63993332
>No powered arms
I thought the whole point of powered exoskeletons was to let soldiers lift heavy stuff?

>>63993373
For power armor the point is to carry the weight of all that armor.

>>63993332
Realistic *for now*. Batteries will get better over time, and at some point battery life will become a secondary concern vs. lifting heavy things like more armor or heavier weapons.

>>63992954
I'm not sure about that, afaik the standard procedure for city fighting in WW2 was to simply blow up the place where the enemy infantry was squatting in.

>>63993343
But why would you want to BE that guy when you can be a guy with a plate carrier, rifle, radio, and a case of 4 or 5 goldplated FPV drones which will blow him in half from 2km away?

You can sweat when it's hot, put a coat on when its cold, piss whenever you feel like it, pop a zyn, stretch, squeze through a manhole or attic trapdoor and more while he clanks around struggling to touch his toes and has to take pieces of armor the size and weight of a sink off in order to poop?

>>63993452
Why would you want to be a guy whose job is "getting shot at" at all? Nobody ever said—in good faith—that soldiering was supposed to be a good time.

>>63993479
>coping this hard
Many men want to be; and the question isn't how you feel about soldiering, it's what is better at killing the enemy.

power armor ain't it.

>>63993519
>it's what is better at killing the enemy.
So when are you going to articulate how being able to carry a combo M2/Mk19 into places where HMMWVs can't go isn't an improvement in killing the enemy?
Powered exoskeletons for carrying your 100+ lb approach load without spending the entire defense budget on VA claims are inevitable, and once those exist the usual vicious cycle of "they can carry X lbs of gear comfortably, how much gear can they carry before they all get 100% disability?" is also inevitable.

>>63992813 (OP)
2 > 3 > 1 > > 4

>>63993555
I just told you. I'll tell you again: it's worse than infantry in plate carriers with FPVs. It can't go where they go. Small spaces, wet/hot/muddy places, climbing a wall or running across a plank bridge; it's the worst of both worlds. The fragility of a human with the unreliability of a machine. The cost of a vehicle with the speed of a man. No altitude to scout like a drone but it can’t squirm into position and wait like a sniper either.

It's a way to add 200 pounds plus batteries to your approach load when your competitor is either approaching the last klick through the lens of a FPV in your face at 40m/s, or approaching with a Bradley spraying saboted 25mm through your chest and grinding the corpse under its tracks before the men in back throw red bull cans of TNT into your fighting position.

>>63993599
T-51 has always been the best

>>63993555
There is little point arguing with dronefags, they're the kind of people who are fundamentally incapable of imagining the future. Eventually they'll end up in prison for committing some petty crime because they were unable to imagine the potential consequences of their actions, just like they're unable to imagine the future where militaries inevitably adopt various hard-kill anti drone systems.

>>63993603
There's probably some turd world staircase that our tactical dreadnought infantryman can't climb, but in the grand scheme it's "the worst of both worlds" in the same sense that an assault rifle is.

>>63993629
Yeah.

>>63992813 (OP)
The PA soldiers are great for trench warfare and building assaults not en masse charging

>>63993452
>You can sweat when it's hot, put a coat on when its cold
Have you heard of space suits?
>and has to take pieces of armor the size and weight of a sink off in order to poop?
Anon, I...

>>63993883
>posting video game pixels as an argument
This is the mental level of power armor fantasists.

>>63992813 (OP)
Drone warfare may in fact make power armor inevitable. It may prove the only actually effective protection for ground troops from small cheap drones with a simple small explosive. It would raise the cost of combat drones. At a minimum they'll have to be large and capable enough to effect combat losses on soldiers in power armor. It boils down to getting the power armor economically feasible to the cost incurred to making drones effective against soldiers again.. It would also render most current issued rifles nearly useless. NBC also resolved for the warfighter.. The trick would be if they could cost low enough to have it make sense. Servos and exoskeleton tech is moving pretty quick currently.. Putting all together into an environment controlled life support and effective armor isn't that big of a jump currently. Battery and power cell tech is also pushing pretty hard now as well.. Add in targeting, comms, tactical info sharing and networking these things to where anyone on the battlefield in one of these suits isn't blind or every not aware where everything detected is.. Then it's not so crazy at all. Add in some kind of drone defense capabilities from suddenly blinding the area in heavy smoke, laser dazzlers or a small counter drone that automatically pops out and hunts down the attacking drone. Soldiers able to now carry heavy weights while not being as worn down by heat, cold or other harsh conditions.. Able to carry heavier weapons effectively. We might be closer to them than we think.

>>63993335
Yeah just at exponentially less distance than a shrapnel heavy explosive would kill less armored infantry, retard.

>>63992813 (OP)
4-2-1-3

>>63993373
You could have heavy weapons and ammo attached to the torso and carried by the powered legs and spine (not the soldier), that the unpowered soldier could then operate and aim without worrying about glitches in powered elbows and wrist joints throwing their aim off.

>>63994561
I see, like a swivel built into the hips?

>>63992845
>Muh ground pressure
Yeah the use case for power armor would be shock assault and or prolonged engagements in urban environments. You don't use an M1A2 for jungle warfare either.
>>63992849
>Autonomous robot warfare
Are going to be jammed out of the ass, spoofed, fooled and buttraped. Having a human in the stood is better. Drone fetishism is out of control these days, we'er going to be using human operators for the forseeable future.
>>63993148
>Shock infantry
>Swat teams
Major usage will also be in logistics to haul around ammo, resupply and what else. They're going to be abundant in rear line units without the armor. Probably also to field typically crew served weapons.

>>63992951
Its called urban warfare and it has jack and shit to do with gaming. If you had ever been in any military, then even from training you can see how vulnerable a grunt is to random ricochets and shrapnels in close quarter combat

>>63992813 (OP)
Leave this one to me.

>>63994584
>You don't use an M1A2 for jungle warfare either.
With the napkin math anon did putting power armour at less ground pressure than most large animals, power armour might actually be really good at this.
>Drones are going to be jammed out of the ass, spoofed, fooled and buttraped
If Leonidas isn't vaporware you can add microwave weapons to that list as well. C&C Generals called it, lol.

>>63994561
In addition to being practical, this is apparently the way you get badass hottie tomboys like Vasquez in the Marines, too. Suffice to say I'm all-in!

>>63994054

They already use rpg warheads on drones. All power armor would do is make shaped charges the minimum standard.
The reduced focus on shrapnel if power armor was common would make cheap drones less effective against groups of soldiers, but even more effective against individual power armor users.

>>63994693
Which still invalidates the majority of RPG-7-derrived stocks for anti-personnel use, especially when their OG producers are struggling to supply their main market.

>>63994681
No because you still need your muhreens to be able to carry eachother unaided out of firefights and only the top 0.001% of women have the upper body strength to do that and all of them are usually in higher paying bodybuilding careers.

>>63992951
We will just bomb the Russians out of Stalingrad.

>>63994728
In the future, we will have genetically-engineered tomboys.

>projectile penetrates
>bleed to death because no one can tourniquet you

>>63994752
If a projectile penetrates power armor, there's likely not much left to tourniquet off.

>>63994745
A man could not ask for more.

>>63994728
Most anons cant really comprehend how incredibly weak adult women are compared to adult males. They are weak enough that 14-15 year old males that are getting that puberty strength jump can outperform them.

Every time the army recruits a woman they are effectively recruiting a very weak child soldier that wont get any stronger over time unless you inject them with steroids.

In the context of power armor or something like exoskelton suit with plain old heavy flak jackets with all the plates and shoulder pads worn over it, a man will stand the weight while a a woman would croumble like a sack of potatos if it suffers a power failure to whatever motor it uses to help you move all that weight.

>>63992816
>Actually, armored development has already improved to the point someone in a modern level IV plate has more protection than an armored vehicle from 80 years ago.

>>63994681
I'd dick that dyke

>>63992951
>midwit contrarianism
Read the history of wars before GWOT instead of kneejerking against the last buzzword you heard and you'll learn that they were full of CQB, clearing buildings, and fighting through the rubble of those buildings because blowing them up is not an effective way of clearing out infantry in urban combat.

>>63994726
Do the math. A Switchblade 300 size directional frag warhead weighs about 200 grams. Similar to a 40mm grenade's weight, though it's all focused in a single cone. For the same weight you can have a single target anti-personnel EFP warhead which will blow through better than Level 4 plates.

>>63994776
Modern exoskeletons transmit their weight independently from the wearer so this isn't an issue. You might want an all-women power armor force in order to shrink total volume enough to fit your infantry through doors.

>>63994681
>Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
>No. Have you?

>>63992982
>Suppose you want to capture a vip and interrogate them.
That has nothing to do with "Room clearing" that anon mentioned. I'd imagine special ops are much better at kidnapping VIPs than assault troops in heavy armored suits.

>>63993059
>Ground pressure matters far less for legs because that form of locomotion avoids the issue of digging in at high ground pressure when moving forward.
Running or walking GREATLY increases ground pressure. Even if someone is just standing the moment they lift a foot to take a step they have doubled their ground pressure. If they're moving forward it gets much worse. For example, a galloping horse exerts over 500 psi even though a standing horse is only 25 psi.

>>63995796
RPGs are total overkill for fighting power war. It doesn't take a 2kg warhead on a 10" frame. A 200gram warhead on a tinywhoop will do it.

>>63995829
>Modern exoskeletons transmit their weight independently from the wearer so this isn't an issue
How exactly? If you are a rifleman carrying 63 pounds (28.5kilos) of gear and your exoskeleton has a power failure then you are gona have to move all that gear and the exoskeleton with your muscle power.

>You might want an all-women power armor force in order to shrink total volume enough to fit your infantry through doors.
You are gona need some very slim and tiny women for that. Maybe 148 cm tall and 44.5 kilo heavy?

>>63995932
Which still leaves you with better ground pressure than a galloping horse.
Google spits out stuff like: https://www.chirohealthsolutions.net/storage/app/media/cropped_images/Running_injury_Report.pdf
>Studies have shown that each heel strike produces a force that is equal to 3 - 4 times your bodyweight

Lets go with 4 times and round up the 23.75 psi up to 24 for ease.
24*4= 96 psi, that is less than 1/5th of the horse.
Compared to all other things ground pressure is way less of an issue for power armor than people tend to think.

>>63996083
An exoskeleton covered in level IV is going to be 120 pounds by itself, before adding the next 60lb personal gear and 20lb squad gear. You're not going to move that with muscle power very far. It it breaks, it's over.

>>63993261
>>63993261
Power armor can protect against overpressure without being hermetically sealed. As long as the gaps in the armor is small enough, pressure won't get past it in enough strength to be harmful.

>>63996811
How small do the gaps in the armor need to be to keep out an impact-fuzed thermobaric demo charge flying into your crotch?

>>63992813 (OP)
(Sealed) Power Armor won't be a thing until space colonization and space warfare demand it - a la like in the Expanse.
They'll evolve from the space suit, not the exoskeleton

>>63992813 (OP)
You would pair power armor with armored transports or air cavalry. They aren't meant for walking long distances if they themselves are armored (Other types of exoskeletons might be, though).

Bullets aren't the largest casualty maker in modern wars, not even high caliber rounds. It's shrapnel first and foremost.

If a power suit could have a meaningful operational range and provide significant protection against intermediate calibers + shrapnel, it would be very useful in certain scenarios. They wouldn't be something for every soldier or every mission, though exoskeletons in general may be eventually.

>>63992845
Terrain that would create issues for a reasonably sized power suit due to ground pressure would create issues for infantry too, and those places really exist. See the mud-seas that happen in Ukraine during the mud season. But that's what you have transports for.

If you're fighting in a building where the floor is likely to break from 1000-2000lbs, you probably shouldn't be in there with a squad of guys either.

>>63996850
air cav schmair cav
Starship is supposed to be able to put 100 tons into orbit
that's like two platoons of space marines plus a heavy weapons squad or a couple howitzers

>>63992813 (OP)
Advancements in armor techniques inevitably leads to advancements in weapon technology.

>>63992951
>Do people really not know that in war they just level the whole fucking building with explosives?
Are JIDF posters allowed to post outside of their own scripted lines?

>>63993135
>reduce the lethal radius of *shrapnel*. It doesn't do much for blast.
Yes it does retard. Earpro has tiny holes to let you jear quiet things but protects you from blast. Trenches and intervening structures prevent you from blast. Power armor shell will protect from blast, simply because it is in the way.

>>63993335
>a red bull can of C4
The closest thing is the RDG-2 offensive grenade which is considered as unreliable at best. Blast grenades are used as flashbangs, not wounding weapons.

They don't make your 8.4fl oz C4 grenade, because it is garbage.

>>63992998
People sleep in it, but law enforcement is a use that both plays into power armor's strengths and minimizes it's weaknesses

The idea we're going to need hulking power armor in the future is silly. War in the future will be miniature drones that look like bugs with payloads of saxitoxin out to sting members of the opposing cabal, War of Assassins style like Dune.

>>64000767
haha imagine suppressing a riot or serving a high-risk warrant but you're impervious to small arms fire and have a pepper spray fire hose as the midpoint on your use of force continuum

>once viable, invalidates PA...and anything short of a force field.

>>63993211
>>Horses
>>Fucking giraffes and shit all extinct because they totally just sink in to the ground
>Nah
nigga you don't understand how those animals work. i have ridden horses and cared for them all my life. they have four points of contact the weight is evenly distributed across to prevent them from sinking. their leg muscles are incredibly taut and incredibly strong (a working horse's kick can and probably will kill the average man) and their leg bones are under an immense amount of pressure at all times.

heavier horses DO infact sink into soil anyway. horses are like living suspension bridges and this is also why them breaking a leg is usually when they're put down, because their body is under such great tension to distribute their weight evenly and keep itself stable that when the system breaks down it's unlikely it will ever recover. this is also why horses laying down usually makes owners concerned (they usually sleep standing and only lay down when in extreme distress or duress. being flight animals they like to be ready to flee at any opportunity and laying down is incredibly taxing for them because getting back up is a process that can take a minute or more for heavier fuckers)

oh poor skittles, thought of ants and died.