Power Armor or Personnal Shields (RAR!)

[Azazal]

What type of cooling does the shield have? Will a soldier wearing one in a desert of jungle environment overheat? If a gentle breeze can pass through the shield for cooling purposes, does that not leave said soldier exposed to chemical and biological attacks? How easy would it be to grab and equip a gas mask with the shield up and running?

[Borgholio]

I think only high-velocity items are stopped. So a bullet would be stopped, but gas would not. Since you won't be putting on a gask mask at the speed of a bullet I'd say you can do so just fine.

[Sky Captain]

I choose shields over power armor. Shields represent some sort of fundamental discocery in physics since it is impossible to make shield as described in OP under our current understanding of physics. Power armor is something that given enough time and R&D can be developed without requiring new fundamental discoveries.
OP said shields stop high velocity objects, what is the upper limit, do particles or high energy photons count here? If so lightweight radiation shielding for spacecraft, nuclear reactors and tons of other aplications would come from shield tech.

[Patroklos]

Most of it's reflected, some of it ends up in the projectors.

[/quote]

What do you mean by reflected? If you are deflecting shots then much of the kinetic energy will remain with the bullet. Some of it will still be transfered to the shield and in turn into the projectors and in turn into the body. How much that energy is depends on the angle of deflection but since you are usually shooting directly at the center of mass most of those bullets are going to shed all of their energy into the shield just like if they hit body armor.

My point here is 1.) these projectors can't just be clipped onto a uniform or they would just be ripped off at the first hit 2.) they need to be mounted in a way that distributes the force so that they don't dislocate arms or snap necks if they aren't ripped off and 3.) the body is going to absorb that round's energy in the end. If you can distribute that throughout all of the body you might just get knocked down but if its to a single projector mounted to 10% of your body for instance you may still suffer severe bruising and broken bones. Thats still preferable to getting shot and presumably this system is far less heavy than traditional body armor that can stop the same round but I don't think soldiers will be shrugging off multiple rounds and charging machine gun nests with reckless abandon.

Mounted to a vehicle I see a lot of potential here. If the absorbs enough kinetic force it can prematurely detonate shapped charges or deform penetrators even if it can't stop the round's mass from hitting outright. Who cares if the exploded remains hit your tank if the explosives are already spent? Who cares if the penetrator mass hits your tank if its already flattened into a disk or vaporized?

[Patroklos]

Sorry wrong button

[InsaneTD]

My thought is that would depend on how far from the body the shield effect extends. If it's a meter, you have a meter of deflection, even a shallow angle of deflection, less the five degrees, would be life saving at that point (assuming the shot would of hit the heart). Which is a thought, if it does extend that far, how does it interact with other soldiers being nearby and incoming rounds. Do the shields start to interfere with each other as each tries to deflect the round?

[Patroklos]

If it's effect is that far out then you are going to be interacting with every near miss. Hell every round that passes over the cover you are behind will hit it to some degree. A bubble that size also means you will be subject to even more blast effect from explosions that without it. You are not just talking about the surface area of the body facing the explosion absorbing shrapnel but now a meter outline around it. Would the concussion wave interact directly with the shield given the speed it's moving at? That would help prevent bodily damage, but would also probably launch you a cross the battlefield and maybe rip your limbs from your body along with the projectors. This is were an exoskeleton to mount them to would help.

[Purple]

If it's a bubble than I don't think we should even bother issuing them to infantry. Just mount the thing on their IFV and let it project a protective shield over the whole squad. Not only does it solve all the power and momentum issues but it also allows for a much more powerful shield on account of the power source.

[Starglider]

The existing shields are clearly the beginning of a massive revolution in military affairs, not to mention a major impact on domestic policing. Future versions will undoubtadly have better efficiency, control systems and scalability to larger platforms. There are numerous non-military applications which will probably transform many industries. The unique novel physics involved probably have futher unrelated applications as well. Aside from the fact that the initial version can be quickly rolled out, widely applied and easily maintained, the US will want to gain and maintain a lead in the whole technology area as quickly as possible. Power armor on the other hand is a neat but incremental advance in robotics, applicable only to a subset of infantry operations, constrained by your ability to get the suits and their extensive maintenance and logistics chain into theatre. Useful to be sure, even revolutionary in the domain of combined arms operations, but not as utterly transformative and desireable as the shielding technology.

[Patroklos]

If it's a bubble than I don't think we should even bother issuing them to infantry. Just mount the thing on their IFV and let it project a protective shield over the whole squad. Not only does it solve all the power and momentum issues but it also allows for a much more powerful shield on account of the power source.

Yeah the shap of the field would matter. Is it a bubble lik eST shields or a skin hugging deal like SW shields. Maybe it shell effect around the access of a wire so you can run it down your arms and legs and keep it realatively confined to around your body. That would help with momentum absorbsion if it is spread along the length of a wir rather to the point of a projector.

[Me2005]

You people seem to forget that a power suit enables the soldier to carry a lot more stuff (he can lift a car, damnit!). You know, the very one thing that army developers try to implement with the electronic mule and stuff? These suits will allow soldier to go on longer missions, not shorter - just carry a lot of power cells with you in a backpack, on top of a mortar, shells, and maybe a couple of javelins, without bogging the soldier down. Almost all systems are now man-portable by one soldier!

While it's true the soldier can carry more, it doesn't help mission endurance if your guy who is carrying the supplies for the whole squad needs to recharge/swap batteries every 8 hours. Even carrying more power is a diminishing return; at some point you're using all that great lifting capacity just to carry around power cells, which are likely at least slightly volatile (it's never a good idea to blow holes in a battery).

Zor, could you clarify how much of the weight of the suit is considered power and how much the suit impedes movement when unpowered? I'm working on the assumption that it basically immobile or severely limits movement when unpowered (basically, the soldier needs to be able to carry the whole 225kg of the suit). If it has 8 hours of 'heavy-duty' power for doing super-human stuff but then diverts to regular/armored regular human capabilities after that for a week unless re-powered/recharged (or some mix of the two, like the shield's low-power setting), it'd be a better deal because it does provide protection continuously.

What's the normal mission time of an infantry squad these days? How long are they out before they return to base, even if it's just a mobile supply station meeting up with them? half day? one day? two days? - you can EASILY carry enough stuff with you to make it that long and longer.

Depends on the area. I have friends who aren't quite normal infantry if I understand properly, but are out for weeks/months on foot. They would be ineligible to use the armor because it wouldn't have the duration to operate for their whole mission and becomes a 225kg deadweight (so far as we know) after 8 hours of any operation. A shield could be switched off and preserved, or a resupply could be carried in via drone and dropped with enough power for weeks of operation.

Also - sealed, airconditioned. That's about the best thing that can happen to a soldier. Winter? Desert? Jungle? Who cares!
This suit solves a lot of problems at once.

No question there, that's a good deal. They just absolutely need to get in and out in less than 8 hours.

The shield, on the other hand, only works about 90 minutes if it's on. And if it's not on full power all the time, a sniper or IED will probably get you, because it only turns to full power AFTER the first shot. What's killing most soldiers these day, again? Oh right, Snipers and IEDs... Apart from protection, this system provides no bonus.

Snipers with anti-material rifles or AKs? The shield is spec'd to take a burst of AK fire at low power, which is the most likely thing to be used IMO.

IEDs are a legitimate concern, but that's where you'd have bomb-disposal units equipped with power armor come in. IEDs suspected along a well-traveled route? Send in the power-armored bomb squad. And IEDs might not be as effective against shielded units anyway - the shield is spec'd to take more punishment than the armor, it'll just kill battery power.

Another huge reason to use the shields - light weight. For the weight, You can send ~3 shielded soldiers into battle for every 1 armored one. That matters when deployments are frequently by helicopter or other aircraft.

Now, if the company providing these armors decides to key them to the biometric signature of the new occupant so they can't be hijacked; provide them with programming to do limited basic work on their own, independent of occupant; upscale them slightly (2,000 or so kg); build them in orbital factories; designate them Titans; and ship them via on-demand rapid-reentry; - well, then I may need to reconsider my previous choice

[Zeropoint]

For a specific, short-duration, get-in-get-out firefight, I'd take the power armor, armed with something like a 25mm autocannon as the primary gun and a heavy machine gun as a sidearm. They'd be great for highly specialized commando raids.

For general issue, the shields all the way. Is it not written, "an army marches on its stomach" and "tactics wins battles; logistics wins wars"?

[Simon_Jester]

SWAT teams should armor up almost immediately.

Also, yeah. The problem is that while you CAN no doubt carry enough extra batteries to seriously extend battery life on the armor, you're still up against a hard limit of how long the infantry can operate (in the sense of just walking around, climbing on things, and so on) before they run out of juice.

This is one of the big things about the real life tactical role of infantry: they never run out of gas. The soldiers get physically tired, but when they do, they can rest for minutes or hours and be good to go, even if you're unable to get supplies to them. Here, the soldiers won't get physically tired, but every minute of operations (including physically strenuous noncombat tasks like moving around, or running sensors, or operating the suit's air conditioner in desert heat) cuts into total deployment time.

And that deployment time is a hard limit, like for aircraft where running out of gas means you crash and die. Not a 'recommended' limit like "soldiers need to be resupplied with food every four days," because normal riflemen will still be able to fight (sort of) if they skip a meal. Power armor soldiers won't be able to fight if they skip a recharge cycle.

Also, IEDs, the main threats are blast and shrapnel. It's still not clear how the shield handles blast, but it should provide quite satisfactory protection against shrapnel. You still wouldn't want to cuddle up towards the "front towards enemy" of a claymore mine, but that would be utterly fatal to any human and probably to a power armor soldier too, especially since pretty soon people will think to start building improvised bombs that fire explosively formed penetrators into your soldier's armor.

[InsaneTD]

Well IEDs can already disable vehicles now, Power Armour would be just as vulnerable.

[Lord Relvenous]

As much as I love power armor, shielding represents such a massive leap forward in tech that I'd have to pick it.

Now, if the company providing these armors decides to key them to the biometric signature of the new occupant so they can't be hijacked; provide them with programming to do limited basic work on their own, independent of occupant; upscale them slightly (2,000 or so kg); build them in orbital factories; designate them Titans; and ship them via on-demand rapid-reentry; - well, then I may need to reconsider my previous choice

Yeah, but now we need someone to design jet boots.

[Sky Captain]

Power armor would be most useful in places where vehicles can't enter, like clearing buildings from insurgents and similar urban warfare missions. However personal shields would have similar utility. Both give protection from shrapnel and bursts of machine gun fire. Endurance don't matter much in this case because supply base/truck usually aren't very far away in typical urban warfare situations.
Main drawback of shielded vs power armored soldiers is that shielded soldiers don't have superhuman strength however how often you have situations where such strength would be mission critical?

[bilateralrope]

Power armor would be most useful in places where vehicles can't enter, like clearing buildings from insurgents and similar urban warfare missions.

How many of those buildings have doorways big enough to the power armor the go through ?

[Simon_Jester]

Well IEDs can already disable vehicles now, Power Armour would be just as vulnerable.

It depends on the IED.

The thing is, a lot of weapons CAN be scaled up until they're powerful enough to threaten a light tank. You CAN build a man-portable rifle that will penetrate inch-thick armor plate, or a land mine that can blow up a heavy armored vehicle.

But the cost of doing so is that the system gets much more expensive and bulky. Whereas any soldier can carry around an automatic rifle capable of killing lightly armored humans and also hundreds of rounds of ammunition for it, an anti-materiel rifle capable of penetrating armored vehicles is slower-firing, heavier, harder to carry, and each bullet weighs several times more.

Likewise, an antitank mine can blow up a tank- but it's several times heavier than an antipersonnel mine designed to explode with just enough force to wound or maim relatively unprotected humans. So if I'm going out and setting minefields, I have to plant fewer mines, and it takes more technical sophistication to lay each one. And because they're bigger they are likely to be easier to detect. Iraqi guerillas trying to set bombs capable of penetrating and destroying heavy tanks had to scrounge up old artillery shells from prewar ammunition dumps; those are neither easy to get nor easy to handle.

So basically, the power armor system protects its wearer from most small arms now on the market, any foreseeable small arms weapon that will be conveniently portable, shrapnel from exploding grenades and shells, to a large extent blast from explosions...

It's like, if the only thing that can kill your soldiers is a direct hit with a bazooka, very few of them will be killed in combat because bazookas are much rarer than ordinary rifles, and it's harder to land a hit with one.

[Sky Captain]

Power armor would be most useful in places where vehicles can't enter, like clearing buildings from insurgents and similar urban warfare missions.

How many of those buildings have doorways big enough to the power armor the go through ?

I don't think that would be major problem for sensibly designed power armor, after all most doors are large enough to get big pieces of furniture through so guys in power armor also should fit. If they can't it's no longer a power armor but mecha.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, furniture has to move through doorways awkwardly, whereas soldiers who move awkwardly through doorframes get used for target practice by the occupants of the rooms they enter.

[PKRudeBoy]

Of course, furniture has to move through doorways awkwardly, whereas soldiers who move awkwardly through doorframes get used for target practice by the occupants of the rooms they enter.

I expect that would depend on precisely how concerned for the doorframe the person in the power armor is.

[Simon_Jester]

Busting through the doorframe still takes time and struggle, which can be a problem if someone is waiting for you with a weapon and time to line up a shot. Especially since not all buildings are lightly constructed American residential homes; even if your power armor can smash through two-by-fours, that doesn't mean it can easily smash through bricks.

[Sky Captain]

Of course, furniture has to move through doorways awkwardly, whereas soldiers who move awkwardly through doorframes get used for target practice by the occupants of the rooms they enter.

If soldiers in power armor can't move through buildings as easily as normal humans can then their power armor is too big. The whole point of power armor is to provide protection from most commonly used small arms while retaining ability to go where normal humans can go. Sure, even large chunky power armor would be useful, but if it can't easily move inside buildings you no longer can use power armored soldiers for missions where power armor would be most desirable. In case where armor is so good that someone emptying an AK 47 into your power armor is just an annoyance then taking a bit more time to get through narrow door may not be major problem.

[Simon_Jester]

The catch is that the awkwardness also gives them more time to bring heavier weapons to bear- say, a large-caliber rifle firing armor piercing rounds, whose main disadvantage in combat is its awkwardness and large size.

[Patroklos]

I would imagine that at least initially you would end up with one of these per squad vice an entire unit of them. It brings the heavy weapons, it brings the "first in the door" bullet spung capability, it plays overwatch outside the building while the rest go in. Inside the building setting you have it go through the doorway first and blocks one side so the following infantry can clear the opposite corner more easily. Or it steps into a halway and blocks it while the rest of the squad moves behind it. Maybe it rips a hole through a wall so you don't have to go through the anticipated chokepoint the defenders set up to cover.

There shouldn't be an assumption that it does EVERYTHING better than lighter infantry. Just like you have the guy with the light machine gun its another element of a squad or platoon sized unit to augment a specific skill/equipment set. Maybe you don't use it for combat at all. It might just be an equipment mule that hikes up the mountain with you carries all the non combat gear (water, food, spare ammo, etc.) so you can worry about just your weapon and ready ammo while advancing.