Armor or armored exoskeleton is a protective mobile covering, designed to protect and enhance a soldier's strength and endurance in front-line combat. Modern armors are personal weapon platforms, mounting large-calibre weapons or medium-yield munitions on the armor's frame. They combine this with heavy infantry shielding which provides protection for the soldier, the suit's weapons, and its power plant, and operational mobility, due to its use of bipedal and jet propulsion, which allows the soldier to move over a variety of terrain and be positioned on the battlefield in advantageous locations. These features enable the armored soldier to perform well in a tactical situation: the combination of powerful weapons and their ability to resist enemy fire means the armor can take hold of and control an area and prevent other enemy infantry from advancing. In both offensive and defensive roles, they are powerful units able to perform key primary tasks required of armored units on the battlefield. The modern armor was the result of a half-century of development from the first primitive exoskeletons, due to improvements in technology such as the graphene super-capacitor, which allowed the rapid movement of armored infantry. As a result of these advances, armor underwent tremendous shifts in capability during the frozen conflicts of the 21st Century.
Armored soldiers during the Little Cold War were developed by the United States purely as a means of improving battlefield repair and maintenance of fighting vehicles. Their first use in combat was by the US Army in September 2019 during the Battle of Barda. The name "armor" was adopted by the US military during the early stages of their development, as a security measure to conceal their greater capabilities. While the US built thousands of armored units during the Little Cold War, Russia was unconvinced of the potential of Armor as a combat asset, and built only a handful of prototypes.
Armor of the interwar period evolved into the more sophisticated and more powerful designs of World War III. Important concepts of armored warfare were developed; the Japanese launched the first mass armor/drone attack at Magadan in August 2039, which later resulted in the Type 41 Armor, a predecessor of the standard infantry armor. Less than two weeks later, Turkey began their large-scale armored campaigns that would become known for dispersed concentrations of armored infantry supported by land and air drones designed to overwhelm the enemy front and take large swaths of territory surrounding key positions.
History[]
Early Exoskeletons[]
Armor is the 21st century realization of a concept from the first Cold War, influenced by science-fiction: that of providing troops with mobile protection and firepower while enhancing strength, speed, and endurance. The super-capacitor, protective plating, and the bionic muscle were key innovations leading to the invention of the modern armor.
Hardiman, the first attempt to build a practical powered exoskeleton, by General Electric in 1965.
The first attempt at a powered exoskeleton in the sense of being a mobile machine integrated with human movements was co-developed by General Electric and the United States military in the 1960s. The suit was named Hardiman, and made lifting 250 pounds (110 kg) feel like lifting 10 pounds (4.5 kg). Powered by hydraulics and electricity, the suit allowed the wearer to amplify their strength by a factor of 25, so that lifting 25 pounds was as easy as lifting one pound without the suit. A feature dubbed force feedback enabled the wearer to feel the forces and objects being manipulated. However, the Hardiman was impractical due to its 1,500-pound (680 kg) weight. Another issue was the fact it is a slave-master system, where the operator is in a master suit which is in turn inside the slave suit which responds to the master and takes care of the work load. Also, its slow walking speed of 2.5 ft/s further limited practical uses. The project was not successful; attempts to use the full exoskeleton resulted in a violent uncontrolled motion, and while further research concentrated on one arm, it could lift its specified load of 750 pounds (340 kg) and weighed three quarters of a ton.
Raytheon-Sarcos XOS-2, an early prototype exoskeleton
Despite Hardiman's failiure, the US military continued to research the technology through a variety of contractors and agencies. Los Alamos Laboratories worked on an exoskeleton project in the 1960s called Project Pitman. In 1986, an exoskeleton prototype called the LIFESUIT was created by Monty Reed, a US Army Ranger who had broken his back in a parachute accident. In 2010 Raytheon-Sarcos debued the XOS suit, which gained notoriety as the first practical exoskeleton, being lightweight and easy to operate. All of these suits were never intended for combat roles, but rather to serve as power-assisted loader suits or a wearable prosthesis for paraplegics.
Little Cold War[]
From late 2016 the US began deploying prototype exoskeletons to the field to assist with long range foot patrols and combat engineering duties. While they were successful, no attempt was made to significantly armor them for combat roles. Reports from Afghanistan of soldiers using exoskeletons to fire heavy machine guns from the hip began to influence the image of these exoskeletons. In 2019, during the Battle of Barda, the US deployed Delta Force squads to aid Azerbaijani army units to defend the choke point into the heart of their country. After losing one of their combat engineers, one soldier fitted himself with his exoskeleton and armored himself with an EOD suit, wielding an M2 Browning to provide suppressing fire from several hillsides. The incident was reported to the Defense Department, where it gained a popular following among several junior ranking officers. These officers managed to persuade the Defense Department to fund a research program into armored exoskeletons through the US Army Research Lab. Several existing exoskeletons were tested with existing and modified body armor. In 2021 the first prototype AX-01 debuted at Fort Bragg; featuring a complex exoskeleton covered by a layer of thick sheet metal. The suit was bulky, and required a small gas-turbine engine to provide power, but performed well enough to gain further funding.
Meanwhile in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, American soldiers continued to experiment with existing exoskeletons and EOD suits for close-support roles. These suits required an external power source, often via a tether or a backpack gas-generator.
Flood era arms race[]
Shortly after the collapse of the Russian Federation, the United States military offered technology transfer programs to help spur the development of exoskeletons for civil engineering and healthcare. Simotaneously, these solutions were incorporated into next-generation military armor systems. This era saw soft-exoskeletons overtake traditional hard frames, with the AX-02, AX-03, and AX-04 series of prototypes being developed with the help of the growing biotech industry, and incorporating advances in bionic muscle used for prosthetics.
Technology sharing programs during the Little Cold War led to Japan's rapid research of force augmenting technologies, particularly next generation armor. Unlike early American attempts, first-generation Japanese Armor was purpose built, rather than adapted from existing systems, and was deployed specifically to enhance the capabilities of infantry rather than serve a support role. The primary enabler of this shift was the development of graphene supercapacitors during the Little Cold War, which enabled armor to have greater range than what was possible during the confrontation with Russia. Japanese armor was used to great effect as a force multiplier in Pacific Russia and Northern China, and led to Japan, Turkey and Poland building up their research of armored suits. This preliminary arms buildup led to the US military reactivating and building up its own, by this point, under-served armored capabilities. The next generation armor employed by the US, the TA-4 (“TA” stands for Tactical Armor) was rolled out as America's answer to their allies new armored systems. It featured the longest battery life of any armor in use, and was the first suit to employ a tactile-neural-interface for the soldier inside. It was, however, bulky, not as fast as other armor, and was developed under the belief that armor was still mainly a support-role weapon system. After the Japanese debut of the Type 41 armor, the US military finally adopted the Forth Offset Strategy calling for a massive buildup in armored infantry, AND finding a practical way to resolve the issue of power generation in the field. The result was the TA-19 armor for the Marine Corps and the TA-4d for the Army.
Meanwhile the US continued to build up its military capabilities in space. US Force Recon Marines on the moon, were fitted with updated versions of the TA-19, which could operate in a vacuum and possessed a degree of RCS.
World War III[]
During World War III, the first conflict in which armored infantry were critical to battlefield success, armor and related tactics developed rapidly. Armored forces proved capable of tactical victory in an unprecedentedly short amount of time, yet new anti-armor weaponry showed that they were not invulnerable.
Prior to World War III, the tactics and strategy of deploying Armored forces underwent a revolution. In August 2049, Prad Joshi, a tactical theoretician who was heavily involved in the formation of the first independent US armored force, said "The front moves with armored soldiers", and this concept became a reality in World War III. During the Invasion of Poland, armored infantry performed in a more traditional role in close cooperation with drone units, but in the Battle of Hungary deep independent armored penetrations were executed by the Turks.
Much like the Poles, the United States' mass production capacity enabled it to rapidly construct thousands of relatively cheap TA-25 Armor. A compromise all round, the TA-25 was reliable and formed a large part of the American ground forces, but in a one-on-one battle was no match for the Type 49 or Type 53 "Kozane" Armor. Numerical and logistical superiority and the successful use of combined arms allowed the Allies to overrun the Turkish forces during the Battle of Poland. Upgunned versions with the 20mm M51 Browning or the 30mm M801 Barrett Cannon were introduced to improve the TA-25's firepower, but concerns about protection remained — despite the apparent armor deficiencies, a total of some 58,000 TA-25s were built and delivered to the Allied nations using it during the war years, a total second to none. The greatest challenge for armor designers was power-supply. Control of electrical grids was never a guarantee, and for American infantry, the issue was a particular concern. A number of attempts were made to resolve the issue of supplying reliable power to units in the field, either through mobile power-plants or electric generators built into the armor. The TA-25a and b featured a collapsible solar array in the power pack or micro-jet turbines respectively, however these variants usually just moved the problem of reliable power rather than solving it. Combat engineers with TA-25c or VA-7d armor included a micro-Radioisotope thermoelectric generator, would act as a walking power plant for the special forces units, but the risk of environmental contamination limited their production to just a few dozen units. It wasn't until December of 2053 that reliable power sources were delivered to the battlefield with next-generation Lockheed-Westinghouse mobile Fusion-Electric generators. The small fusion power plants were light enough for heavy pack-drones to carry, and provided reliable power for a whole squad for up to a month before refueling.
Armor plating was modified to produce flamethrower infantry, mobile rocket artillery, and armored combat engineers for Armor including mine-clearing and ocean floor sabotage. Specialized self-propelled guns, most of which could double as armor penetration, were also both developed by the Turks and Japanese. At the outset of the War, the US and Japanese both employed space-rated variants of terrestrial armor for combat on the moon and Earth orbit. When the Japanese took Tranquility City in 2051, the US pushed the first purpose built Vacuum Armor, the VA-7, into production to aide newly created Space Force operators in defending US assets on the Moon. The VA-7 featured the first example of micro-artillery for Armor, and the most powerful OMU of any spacesuit in history, capable of actually slowing an soldier's decent on the moon to the point where the suit could absorb the bulk of the landing force and continue operation. This variant would go on to form the inspiration for post-war advancements in power generation. In 2053 the VA-7d variant became the first armor capable of re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, forming the basis for US Marine orbital drops used to place US forces behind Turkish lines during the Battle of Krakow.
Mexican-American Arms Race[]
The rise of Mexico saw a resurgence of research and development of new Armor types. Miniaturization of fusion power plants eventually made it possible for Armor to replace battery packs all together for a micro-fusion-electric generator that could be built into the suit. Microfusion enabled a whole host of advancements in armor technology, from portable railguns to jet thrusters. Just prior to the Second Mexican War, the US introduced the VA-16 armor to its space forces, which included a micro-fusion reactor, re-entry capability, thrusters that could be used for course correction during descent, and an in-built 30mm Railgun. While Mexican armor was typically seen as undergunned and lightly protected, it surprised US infantry with the speed it could achieve. A VA-16 could sprint at 180 kph on the ground, but Mexican soldiers in AP-32 armor could sprint at 300 kph unassisted by thrusters. The "speed wars" grew out of this advancement as US and Mexican manufacturers pushed to create ever faster armor. The limits of human cognition and tissue also saw both sides mandate their soldiers adopt augmented bodies, not just to handle the impact of moving at extreme speeds, but to enhance the armor's performance overall. Military specification bodies effectively became another critical element of armor design. Often Armor manufacturers and bioengineering companies would cooperate on design to achieve peak performance. By the Third Mexican War Mexican Orbital Commandos had matched the US in armored capability with the AP-111 armor, which could achieve supersonic speed at sea level with the kind of protection and armaments that the US had always considered their advantage. Colonial forces also worked to develop their own armor, and by the outbreak of the war the VA-770b was widely considered the most sophisticated armor suit ever developed.
Design[]
The three traditional factors determining a suit of Armor's capability effectiveness are its firepower, protection, and mobility. Firepower is the ability of an armored soldier to identify, engage, and destroy enemy targets using its primary weapon in concert with secondary weapons and drones. Protection is the degree to which the actual armor plating, profile and camouflage enables the armored soldier to evade detection, protect themselves from enemy fire, and retain functionality during and after combat. Mobility includes how well the armored soldier can be transported by rail, sea, air or space to the operational staging area; from the staging area by road or over terrain towards the enemy; and tactical movement by the soldier over the battlefield during combat, including traversing of obstacles and rough terrain.
Offensive capabilities[]
The majority of armored infantry combat is carried out by a host of guided munitions, typically missiles and other forms of microartillery. Missiles with 30-50mm munitions, are used for the bulk of fighting that occurs in non-line of sight operations, and are typically accompanied with fire support from drones with similar munitions. Heavier combat relies more on 10-20mm missiles, clustered in bods mounted across the armor of the wearer, and used for medium and close range combat. For medium range combat, the main weapon of modern armored infantry is a single, large-caliber railgun, typically mounted on the back of the suit and positioned to either be shoulder fired or held by the dominant arm of the wearer if its a larger calibre cannon.
Typical modern infantry weapons are capable of firing a variety of smart-ammunition, primarily divided into variable-velocity rounds and chemical-rounds. While variable velocity rounds are used primarily for kinetic energy attacks, chemical-rounds can provide air-burst and fragmentation capabilities. Some rounds have been tested to include a micro-fusion core for engaging fixed fortifications. Mexico briefly experimented with thermonuclear armed armored suits during the Third Mexican War, but their production was limited to a few specialty suits used mostly at the Battle of Mexico City.
Usually, armor is equipped with smaller caliber armament for short-range defense where fire from the main weapon would be ineffective, for example when engaging in close quarters, light drones or close support satellites. A typical complement of secondary weapons is a general-purpose machine gun usually wrist mounted, shoulder mounted laser batteries and additional back mounted micro-artillery pods. Soldiers tend to customize their load-outs depending on their role in their unit. Additional micro-artillery launchers, laser arrays, EM warfare modules, duel and quad-mounted machine guns or cannister shotguns, larger caliber railguns for heavy or long range combat, etc.
Protection and countermeasures[]
Typical armor relies on laser batteries and EM modules to counter any large ballistic threats, but armor also includes multiple layers of physical protection. The first layer includes reactive metamaterials for countering laser fire. The second is a layer of hard plating typically a nano-alloy with weak-points in the joints where elastic alloys are dominant. The next layer down is the cyber-muscle layer that provides the suits's locomotion and physical enhancements. This layer also serves to absorb concussive forces due to impacts and vibrations suffered during combat. The final layer the thin tactile-neural interface, typically including between 10^19 and 10^23 neural connection points.
Data management and analytics[]
Since their earliest forms, armor has been equipped with a host of onboard data-management and machine learning systems, most importantly being the targeting systems that can make even an unguided round from a chemically propelled rifle accurate up to 1km.
Mobility[]
The mobility of a soldier is described by their battlefield or tactical mobility, their operational mobility, and their strategic mobility. Tactical mobility can be broken down firstly into agility, describing the armored soldier's acceleration, braking, speed and agility on various terrain, and secondly obstacle clearance: the armored soldier's ability to travel over vertical obstacles like buildings or canyons or through water. Operational mobility is a function of maneuver range; but also of size and weight, and the resulting limitations on options for manoeuvre. Early model armor employed a variety of electric servos, but after WWIII the speed wars forced designers to adopt a secondary layer of nano-muscle to provide lifting power and mobility. Nano-muscle changed the whole architecture of Armor design, where traditional servos and plating forced designers to treat a suit of armor like a vehicle, the nano-muscle layer necessitated a shift in thinking to designing a suit almost like an artificial body.
Squad structure[]
Modern armored infantry squads typically consist of between 8 and 15 personnel supported by fleets of drones.
- Squad leader— Responsible for squad command and control; networking with his own squad members and commanding fleets of drones, all while communicating directly with commanders at any echelon. Typical load-outs prioritize personal defense and fire support rather than direct combat weapons.
- Battlefield Systems Engineer— A full stack systems engineer responsible for the networking of his squad-mates and satellite grids, reprogram or redirecting projectiles for new targets and tasks, and managing dataflow.
- *Heavy weapons team— 1-3 soldiers who provide artillery fire support from their own heavy assault suits and heavy drones. Capable of deploying dozens of heavy projectiles into combat with a variety of warheads. Load-outs make use of missiles with 30mm to as large as 100mm warheads, usually with accompanying rail-guns and laser modules rather than close range weapons.
- Standard infantry— 5-10 personnel armed responsible for forward recon and perimeter security for the specialist teams. Outfitted with intermediate-range and close quarters weapons, munitions rarely exceed 30mm missiles.