Today’s G.I.s are lucky if they get radios when they go on patrol in Iraq. But by 2030, their uniforms will be packed with nano-antenna arrays, capable of communicating with everything from drones to satellites. The soldiers will all be Hulk-strong, and Spiderman-agile, thanks to their nanotech-based exoskeletons. “Neural prosthetics” and “smart drugs” will make them battlefield geniuses. On-board computers will let them understand every language — and every cultural reference — as if they were natives. Naturally, their flexible, nanofiber uniforms will be all-but-impervious to bullets, flame, and lasers, too.

That’s the thinking, at least, over at the Soldier Research Design and Engineering Center in Natick, MA. Researchers there have spent years of effort — and tens of millions of dollars — to give tomorrow’s soldiers high-tech supersuits. The results have been… well, less than super. One such program, “Future Force Warrior,” was supposed to deploy next year. Now: never mind. A simpler effort, to give G.I.s digital maps and software radios, “Land Warrior,” had to fight a rear-guard action within the Army to keep from getting canceled.

So now the folks at Natick are starting over again. They recently released a white paper, on the “Future Soldier 2030 Initiative.” It’s not official U.S. Army doctrine or anything. “Nor is it intended to answer every question raised about warfare in 2030. Our intent is to stir imaginations, and start a dialogue about how best to equip the soldier,” the paper says.

“There is no budget. Right now it is an analytical tool,” Natick’s Jean-Louis “Dutch” DeGay tells InsideDefense.com. A bit of a fantasy, in other words. So maybe it makes sense that “researchers have maintained contact with Hollywood and the video game industry in order to exchange ideas.”

Movies like “Aliens” and “Starship Troopers” have inspired the military’s efforts to build exoskeletons, and SRDEC in turn has provided input to 2007’s “Transformers” and the upcoming “G.I. Joe,” in which characters wear armored strength- and speed-enhancing “accelerator suits.” “It used to be that art imitated life or life imitated life, and now that line has been blurred,” said DeGay.

Now, the military is making progress on building some early prototypes of the gear that the Natick white paper has in mind. Two companies are competing to build crude exoskeletons that can radically improve the wearer’s strength. In-helmet monitors have been deployed, to see if G.I.s get hit with a blast that might lead to traumatic brain injury. Still, that’s nothing like the panoply of sensors Natick has in mind, to check on a soldier’s “energy levels, work load, hydration, stress levels, thermal state, [and] sleep.” Nor can today’s exoskeletons automatically stabilize wounds, use face recognition to spot from foe, or provide “pulsed energy weapon protection.” And they certainly don’t come with a “digital buddy” who can remind soldiers of tasks, order them more ammo, handle inter-office e-mail, and “adapt to an individual soldier’s personality, strengths, and weaknesses.”

But a grunt can dream, right?

[Photo: U.S. Army]

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