So I have shown in the last three installments on this topic that we will probably come up with new and inventive ways to kill each other on the battlefield of the future, and that they will probably be a little bit different that what is commonly portrayed in science fiction. Along with this lethality will have to come better protection for those using the weapons. Otherwise, the life expectancy of an infantryman will measure in the minutes, if not seconds. Now, I will diverge for a moment to talk just a moment about the history of battlefield armor. One of the reasons the Spartans held out so long against the Persians at Thermopylae was better armor. Breast and back plates of bronze, helmets, greaves, and big round shields versus the wicker armor of the Immortals. The Romans also wore better armor than most of their opponents. Armor achieved is culmination with the armored knight. The plate armor offered great protection, even though it eventually got to the point where the general effectiveness of the cavalryman was degraded. Then armor went by the wayside, though it was still effective, at least the heavier grades, at stopping bullets. It was now the time of mass conscripted armies, carrying easy to master firearms. And so it went for centuries. In World War 1 the helmet made its reappearance to protect the head against that greatest of battlefield killers, artillery. I had read a study at one time that body armor was being considered in that war, and would have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths, if not the harder to prevent woundings. Now we come to the present, where US Infantrymen wear Kevlar armor with ballistic plates that can stop most small arms rounds. The men and women are still vulnerable on their arms, legs and lower torso. The major problem with the current armor is weight, always a precious commodity in infantry warfare. An infantryman can only carry so much, and weight of armor must result in something else being left behind. Ammo is another prime consideration, and there are very few soldiers who will not pack as much ammo as they can carry, so something else must be left behind. Heavy weight means slow movement. The solution seems to be to make the weight carry itself. And so the Army is experimenting with exoskeletons that can carry the soldier and all he packs. The main problem with exos is the power supply, they use a lot of energy, and rapidly exhaust batteries. That is something I am sure will be solved, eventually.
The future battlefield will be a hell of flying projectiles, light beams, high energy explosives, and radiation. A helmet and Kevlar vest just won’t cut it. Armor will have to evolve to cover the entire trooper, and move him at speeds at least as fast as a lightly burdened man, if not faster. Robert Heinlein introduced the solution to the problem, at least in fiction, with the powered armor of his seminal work, Starship Troopers. In its day it was groundbreaking, and has since become a common trope of science fiction. Almost everyone equips their soldiers of the future with powered armor. Why? Because it just makes sense. Even a genetically engineered soldier will die quickly in the hell of the future battlefield without protection. Khan would be dying of radiation poisoning soon after entering the future battlefield, if he wasn’t first incinerated by a swarm of particle beams. So they will have heavy armor, and that armor will enhance their strength to allow them to have the ability to carry it. From there it just makes sense that the armor would have many times the strength needed to just carry it, allowing the soldier of the future to carry more gear. Flying, or at least hovering over the ground, increasing speed of movement, is also a given, whether it be from rocket propulsion or something yet to be developed but much more advanced. Of course flying around is not always a good idea either. Hovering twenty feet off the ground would probably make the soldier the most noticeable target around, but not for long. What about force fields? If such a thing can be developed, and beside the electromagnetic fields we already know about it does not seem likely, given our current stare of knowledge, there would still be limitations. Things will still penetrate and burn through. Armor and force field combinations would be the best, if such could be developed. And of course the suits would have other features to enhance the survivability of their wearers. Built in medical systems, sensor suites, deployable scout robots, as well as the nanotech within the body of each infantryman. They could still be killed. Even nanotech won’t save a man with a quarter meter wide burn hole through the center of his chest. There may be exceptions to that as well, which I will discuss in a future blog entry. Invisibility fields could also prove useful, maybe not for total concealment, since sensors would surely be developed to pierce them, but as a way to reduce enemy acquisition of targets. Anything that buys the infantry precious seconds to maneuver through the open without being destroyed would be useful.
And of course as a result of this protection, weapons will get better at destroying armor. That’s been the game of warfare since the beginning of recorded history. An example of this is tank warfare, in which the infantry acquires new weapons to destroy tanks, and new tanks are developed with heavier armor to defeat those antitank weapons. No armor would long be impervious to enemy weaponry, unless that enemy were complete idiots. It probably wouldn’t protect a soldier from a close burst nuclear, antimatter or kinetic weapons dropped from space, but proper tactics would ensure that casualties were at a minimum. It’s all about beating the odds and having enough left to fight back.
I use powered armor in all of my far future military scifi. Some would ask why? Isn’t that just copying someone elses idea? To me that would be the same as not using swords in Sword and Sorcery, or tanks in military stories. It just makes sense that such protection would be developed. The one name for soldiers on a future battlefield without good protection is Dead. Near misses by some future weapons would kill such soldiers, while an armored soldier would need a direct if not sustained hit (and with some weapons sustained would be the word). In some situations a light stealth body suit would serve, infiltration missions and raids for example. In others systems with no electronic signatures might be best. But putting lightly or unarmored troops up against soldiers in heavy battle armor would be as wasteful as sending a battalion of highly trained Airborne Rangers into a frontal assault against an entrenched mechanized infantry. Or as George Patton said when watching Afrika Corps soldiers walking into an artillery barrage, that’s just a waste of good infantry.