Two Armor and Mobility Breakthroughs Could Redefine the Battlefield

Paving the path to mech suits.

Licensed by the author from Envato Elements

I was bullied relentlessly in middle school.

One night, I remember riffling through my grandpa’s garage, looking at different odds and ends, pieces of metal and leather straps that I could craft into a working suit of armor.

Robocop had just hit the theaters and there was a certain appeal, especially to a bullied child, of wearing something that would make you bulletproof.

(I never found anything serviceable, but I did find a cool hot rod “Aooga” horn that he never hooked up to his car.)

Soldiers in mech suits or robotic-assisted armor have a deep literary history in sci-fi. My first exposure to this idea was reading Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein in the 1980s.

By the 21^st Century, armored heroes became mainstream with characters like Iron Man and the suits from Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow.

But the reality is that modern American infantrymen, serving in the most technologically advanced military on the planet, still go to war with cloth uniforms and a small 5-inch bulletproof plate, usually carried in a vest plate carrier.

But maybe not for much longer. American scientists are getting closer to turning mech suits into reality, two breakthroughs at a time.

At this year’s CES, two separate advancements made headlines, and when you combine them, it’s clear we’re inching closer to a battlefield where soldiers shoot, move, and communicate like something out of a sci-fi blockbuster.