The feats that an ordinary soldier will be able to perform in a few years were not even dreamed of by the creators of the Terminator.
Dzhi Joe easily got up from a position arranged among the high grass, swiftly ran across a wide clearing, silently dived into the undergrowth bushes and lay down facing the edge of the forest. An outside eye would not have noticed any movement: while he was lying in the grass, all his clothes, including a helmet stuffed with electronics and shoes, remained the color of grass penetrated by the sun, and darkened under the dense crown of trees, merging with the background.
Detectors built into the fabric of the suit determined an hour ago that he had entered the contaminated zone. Molecular "umbrellas", invisible to the naked eye, opened, tightly blocking the micropores of the fabric and sealing the suit. However, even after running through an open space with an 80-kilogram load behind his back, his breathing remained even, the body was dry, and the inner side of the helmet “took away” - unclouded: the outer “skeleton” of the suit (artificial “bones” and “muscles”) was done by Ji Ai Joe is stronger than any strong man, the gas mask tube attached to the back of the helmet regularly supplied purified air, and the microclimate system maintained the desired temperature.
To look around, JI Joe touched a finger to the flexible monitor attached to the wrist of his left hand. The rectangle dimly lit up, revealing a row of touch-sensitive keys. One of them made the “visor” of the helmet less transparent and transmitted to it, as on a screen, a panorama of the forest, including what was “seen” at that moment by the side and rear view microcameras attached to the helmet. Another key brought up a top view of the terrain obtained from the support satellite. The signals transmitted by the global positioning system were reflected by luminous dots, indicating the location in the forest of JI Joe himself, the rest of the group and the cybermools. From the same "keyboard" he could give commands to a mule or control, for example, the flight of an unmanned vehicle.
The "friend or foe" system showed that so far there were only friends around. You could relax. Yesterday's scratch from a stray bullet ached. If he was wearing a soldier's uniform of his previous years, the wound could be serious, but, instantly hardening at the moment of impact, the thin fabric of his suit extinguished the power of the shot. Having broken through the clothes, the bullet only damaged the skin and muscle of the thigh, and the fabric of the suit immediately tightened, tightly “bandaging” and disinfecting the wound, stopping the blood. The wound was harmless. But he remembered how many of his friends costumes saved lives: hardening at the sites of fractures, they turned into a medical splint, and when large vessels were damaged, they did not allow them to bleed until the doctors arrived …
In the meantime, it was dark, but he still perfectly distinguished the smallest details of the terrain. A clearly distinguishable thermal "shadow" was moving in dashes on the right, but he did not worry: the colored halo around the helmet, visible only to his computer "senses", suggested that his own was approaching. This is his partner, JI Jane, pulled up closer to be close at night. Ji I Joe again touched the display of the wrist computer and noticed that there were much more luminous points. From the side they had recently come from, a chain was moving, each point of which the friend or foe recognition device designated as a dangerous stranger.
The soldiers removed the XM29 super-light rifles from the fuses. Each of them was ready to inflict damage on the enemy, comparable to the raid of a group of Apache helicopters.
By the path of the "Predator"
You might think that the described continues the theme of the famous Hollywood action movie of 1987 "Predator". Only the main role belongs not to Schwarzenegger - the commander of special forces fighting in the wilds of the Amazon with an invisible alien - but … to the alien himself.
However, it is not. GI Joe and GI Jane are not names. This is the name for male and female American soldiers. And some of the described sci-fi "miracles" have already been embodied in a model of a super suit, which is being developed at the Center for Soldiers' Systems in Natick (Massachusetts, USA). By a strange coincidence, Natick specialist Jean-Louis De Gay, working on the concept of the Soldier of the Future, bears the same nickname as the hero of Arnold Schwarzenegger - "Dutch", that is, "Dutchman".
In an interview with Popular Mechanics by e-mail, Mr. De Gay said that research is underway to create a camouflage "chameleon suit", the work is planned to be completed in 5-10 years, and the appearance of the "external skeleton" and "smart" clothes will have to wait until 2020–2025.
“We are now developing new materials and coatings that help hide the soldier's presence,” he says. - Research is being carried out in the field of active and passive masking, including temperature. As for other "sci-fi" ideas that we are working on, one of the main ones is the "everyone-to-all connection", in which each soldier has the ability to "see" all others and each piece of equipment (ground or air, crew-controlled or remotely). All of them become, as it were, "communication nodes" to which information can be transmitted and from which it can be received. You may have seen something similar in Star Treck. It depicts one of the unearthly races, all of whose members were assimilated into a single "collective machine". We, of course, do not strive to achieve the same result, but we are trying to introduce “everyone-to-everyone connection”.
As you can see, in the Center, located 17 km from Boston and, accordingly, not far from the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the concept of the Soldier of the Future is described in terms of science fiction.
In Natick they say that this concept has no end point - all the time new ideas will appear on how to improve the fighter: "In this business it is impossible to rest on your laurels, because there is always someone who wants to defeat you."
Perhaps that is why Combat General Paul Gorman, who began his military career during the Second World War, and in recent years has become a guru of army technological innovations, describes the tasks of the project almost in verse:
“The soldier of our day is being thrown forward. // He is the tip of an army spear. // There is mortal danger and loneliness. // The soldier of the future will never be alone // And he will attack the enemy, // Covered with a shield of comprehensive information. // His commanders will be able to tell him: // “Soldier! You are the master of the battlefield. // You will make the battle you want. // The net will give you the gift of seeing everything there is to see. // You will think better than the enemy, // Maneuver faster than the enemy, // Shoot more accurately than the enemy. // The strength is with you. // The power is in you."
Towards the Strength
Until now, the developers of military uniforms and equipment were engaged in gradually improving the existing samples. The ideologues of the "Soldier of the Future" program, designed for about three decades, decided to throw today's concepts into the dustbin of history and create a system of personal protection for servicemen from scratch.
The idea was born in 1999. Then the chief of staff of the US Army, General Eric Shinseki, announced a reorganization plan that included the creation of ground combat equipment of the future and equipment of the Soldier of the future. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, was commissioned to develop the concept based on the most promising technologies. On May 23, 2002, project leaders from the Natick Center showed at a press conference a prototype of the uniform of a soldier who was until recently called the Objective Force Warrior in the Pentagon. This name can be translated poetically: "Warrior of the Incarnate Power." Now the name of the project has changed to "Warrior of the Future Force" (more prosaically this term means "warrior of the armed forces of the future").
In the first phase, the US military chose two rival research companies - Eagle Enterprise and Exponent - to create the core concept. Each of them received $ 7.5 million. After 8 months, General Dynamics (Eagle Enterprise is its component part) was selected to continue the work, which received an order worth $ 100 million to complete the concept. The creation of the entire system within 10 years is estimated from $ 1 to $ 3 billion.
As a result, the soldier will not have to wear clumsy night vision goggles, goggle-eyed infrared goggles or heavy laser equipment on his helmet: temperature and chemical-biological sensors, as well as video cameras, will be mounted directly into the helmet. The inside of his "visor" will turn into a kind of 17-inch computer monitor. The physiological sensors built into the overalls will allow not only the fighter himself, but also doctors to monitor his blood pressure, pulse, body temperature via the wireless Internet, and in case of injury or illness, come to the rescue, knowing the diagnosis in advance.
The internal microclimate system is built into a fabric not much thicker than a regular T-shirt. The material is riddled with "capillaries" that deliver warm or cool air and is powered by steroid-powered mini batteries.
All of the above eliminates the need to carry additional weight with you and almost halves the weight of uniforms and equipment. If today an American soldier performing a combat mission in Iraq or Afghanistan has to carry up to 40 kg on himself, not counting weapons and food supplies, then the weight of all clothing and chemical and biological protection of the Warrior of the Incarnate Force will not exceed 20 kg.
To transport additional cargo, this versatile soldier will be given a robotic arm that will not only carry weights, including weapons, but will be able to purify water for drinking, give additional energy to an entire unit, conduct chemical and bacteriological reconnaissance, maintain communications and serve as a base station.
Thus, in 10 years, the American army hopes to receive a high-tech soldier twenty times superior in strength, survivability and lethality to its today's counterpart.
Many technologies already exist and are being finalized, others are still at the project stage. The latter include, for example, a detailed study of the external skeleton and samples of non-lethal weapons.
Invisibility hat and boots-runners
The developers of the concept and technology of the Wonder Soldier consider their goal not only to create a super warrior, but also to promote entire branches of science and technology on the basis of the project. Therefore, research funding comes not only from the Pentagon, but also from industrial giants. The latter strive to give the final products a double life - both in the military and civilian spheres. The same approach is followed in the Institute of Military Nanotechnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), created exactly one year ago. Its programs are funded not only by the military ($ 50 million for 5 years), but also by MIT itself, as well as industrial giants such as Raytheon, Dow Corning and DuPont.
Scientists at DuPont Corporation, who conduct research on the refraction of light, are involved in the creation of invisible uniforms. At the same time, EIC Laboratories is developing a competing technology of electrochromic camouflage - a fabric that, like a chameleon, instantly changes color depending on the color of the surrounding area.
Nanotechnologists from the Institute of Military Technology are working to create new "self-building" materials that would create themselves, molecule by molecule. And the use of nanotubes would give them unprecedented strength qualities (we talked in more detail about nanotechnology in the last issue of "PM").
A working prototype of the external "skeleton" and "musculature" can already be felt. With money from the Defense Technology Development Agency (DARPA), it is being created at the University of California, Berkeley.
Called BLEEX (Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton), or "Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton", you can move around with ease with a 28kg backpack on your shoulders. It is enough to put on a special suit and boots, connect them together - and you can run and jump like never before: fifty sensors that track the position of the load and hydraulic drives will not allow you to lose balance.
Sword-treasure for the warrior of the future
But a super-soldier would not be a soldier if the tasks of equipping him were limited to just creating physical protection, strengthening muscles and giving superhuman ability to see and hear what is happening around. Its destructive power is planned to be increased by putting into hands a new weapon - the double-barreled XM29, which surpasses the M16, M4 and M203 by two to three times in many respects.
Several companies are working on the development of a new rifle, the integrator of which is the Plymouth ATK Integrated Defense (Minnesota). For the first time, a working model of a new small arms was shown in 1999, and in 2002, tests were carried out in terms of shooting accuracy and safety at a distance of 100 to 500 m, and army specialists gave the go-ahead for the continuation of the project.
The lower barrel of the rifle is designed for a standard 5, 56 mm NATO cartridge, and the upper barrel for a 20 mm explosive grenade with warheads at both ends. After a rupture at a height of 1.5 meters above the target, its fragments scatter around, hitting even the enemy lying on the ground or hiding behind cover. These grenades have a special burst mode, the so-called "window" mode: when they collide with glass or a thin metal barrier, they do not explode immediately, like ordinary explosive bullets, but after a few milliseconds.
Equipped with a compass, laser, inclinometer and other devices, the scope optics works like a video camera lens, allowing you to get a threefold magnified image.
The rifle, which is estimated today at $ 10-12 thousand (for comparison, the price of the M16 is about $ 1000), consists of two separable parts with a single trigger and programming device. The first is equipped with the same cartridge as the M4 carbine and M16 rifle, and, like the carbine, can conduct single, semi-automatic and automatic fire. Her magazine holds 30 rounds. The second is a personal "cannon" with a six-round magazine for 20mm grenades. At the same time, it is expected that the XM29, which will enter service with special forces in 2009, will weigh 10-30% less than modern M16, M4 or M203.
The new rifle, like all the equipment of the soldier, will be included in his communication and control system, and, consequently, in the system of "communication of all with all." Through her "on-board computer" all data will go to the display built into the "visor" of the helmet and at the same time will be available to all members of the unit.
Like the entire Future Soldier project, the development of his weapons is broken down into stages, involving the gradual improvement of sensors and electronics, materials, power systems, wireless communications and digital technologies.
