Knowledgeable Facts About the TALOS Suit

It probably won’t have Tony Stark’s jetpack or his Google Glass-like processer, but engineers at the U.S. Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) are occupied on an Iron Man-like set of body armor for Special Ops fighters.

The body armor, called the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit or TALOS, is scheduled for a demonstration with the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) on Nov. 19 at the MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, according to a report by the Defense Media System.

SOCOM Chief William McRaven said that TALOS is one of his big significances. “I’d like that last operator that we lost to be the last operator we lose in this fight or the fight of the future,” he said at a news conference in July. “I think we can get there.”

Jim Tinsley, a partner at the defense consulting firm Avascent, said that not all sorts of body armor are created equal. The Marine Corps started adding more body armor to soldiers, but SOCOM is unwilling to do that since it’ll decrease mobility. What TALOS aims to do is to get around physics and make lighter body armor, but also make it sturdier.

Nanomaterial Can Stop a Speeding Bullet, Strengthen Soldiers’ Body Armor

It seems counterintuitive that manufacturing body armor lighter could offer a soldier more fortification. RDECOM is planning to use magnetorheological (MR) fluids in TALOS to resolve this paradox. “MR fluid armor relies on magnetic fields that can be mixed to create different degrees of hardness and elasticity,” said Tinsley.

But the choice of MR fluids in TALOS comes as a bit of a astonishment to Tinsley. “The agreement has been that shear-thickening fluid, which reacts to a force or impact by hardening, is more practical than MR and further likely to be commercialized sooner,” he said. Maybe there’s been a breakthrough in MR that hasn’t been publicized yet.

In addition to TALOS’ defensive capability is its aptitude to combine numerous types of technologies, such as physiological sensors and power supplies, into a single piece of gadget. “Each of these technologies were developed in parallel,” said Tinsley. “Now, RDECOM is looking to SOCOM as an early adopter and seeing how to integrate all these technologies.”

November’s demo of the body armor also assists as a way for SOCOM to assess what it truly wants in TALOS.

Reference Link: http://www.everythinglubbock.com/story/iron-man-like-body-armor-for-soldiers-in-the-works/d/story/yNv14gLV9U6hvVwjy-1N6w

Images was from: livescience.com

 

TALOS Suit More Comparable to Other Science Fiction Characters

SOCOM, the United States Special Operations Command, is structuring an exoskeleton—a powered set of armor. Known as the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), the suit is meant for use by U.S. Special Forces and is intended to provide operators lighter, more efficient full-body ballistics protection and super-human strength. Antennas and processers embedded into the suit will escalate the wearer’s situational consciousness by providing user-friendly and real-time battlefield data.

This suit, says Stars and Stripes, is currently in the prototyping and design stage, and is theoretically to be out and in working order by 2018. It’ll look approximately like this:

 

The TALOS combat suit is sort of a frightening perception, if you think about it. On the one hand, it will surely do a prodigious job protecting soldiers on the forward-facing lines.

To get out in advance of any unclear feelings about the TALOS suit, the military has tied up in a bit of a subtle branding campaign, dubbing TALOS the “Iron Man” suit. William McRaven, who heads up SOCOM, is hoping to gather some of Tony Stark’s superhero good vibes.

But science fiction is stuffed with stories of characters cavorting around in battle armor and superpowered exoskeletons. Maybe Iron Man isn’t the most proper comparison? After all, soldiers wearing TALOS suits will not be able to fly or shoot high-energy beams from their hands.

 

Star Wars’ storm troopers seem a closer match, no super fancy powers except a nice utility belt. Appearance wise, TALOS looks much closer to a storm trooper. Though, hopefully SOCOM’s suit comes without the target suppressor.

If we’re looking for other comparisons, a good place to start is Popular Mechanics’ list of the most iconic exoskeletons in science fiction. From Starship Trooper’s nuke-toting, rocket-jumping infantry, to Metroid’s armadillo-impersonating Muscle Suit, many of these correspondingly miss the mark. But there’s one that might be a more suitable judgment for the army’s new suit; the Mark V, Master Chief’s combat suit from Halo.

The armor turns its wearer into a high-jumping, truck-flipping superhuman. As exciting as an armed Power Loader might seem, a stronger, up-armored soldier, capable of trudging miles through the 100-degree desert without tiring and then jumping into a Humvee without ripping out its suspension, is a more reasonable fantasy.

​How weaponries like drones and power suits are used in future combat depends, in part, in how they’re observed by the community. And that’s why the connotations we forge between actual tools and beloved science fiction characters matter.

This link talks about more relatable characters: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/SciFi-most-iconic-exoskeletons-5

Images was from: livescience.com, comicvine.com, mwctoys.com

A Real Life Superhero? Iron Man in the works and it isn’t Tony Stark creating the suit

The moment of truth is fast approaching. The recently industrialized Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), is on track to be tested this summer. The high tech suit, nicknamed the Iron Man Suit because of its innovative capabilities, has been stirring up a lot of conversation since production plans were first announced in summer of 2013. From our Nomex Flight Suit and battle armor, to basic uniforms, military apparel has always been developed with several things in mind including comfort, durability, and protection. However, the TALOS seems to focus more on the functionality of the suit, as a means to enhance survival efforts during battle.

U.S. Military Officials say that the suit’s main purpose is to help with more with the defense side of battle efforts, however the suit does feature offensive capabilities such as the full-body ballistic projections as listed above. Furthermore, officials are confident that the TALOS will improve survivability and capability odds for special operators, giving U.S. forces an advantage over their opposition and helping more to protect them from fatal injuries.

Three prototypes of the suit are set to be revealed and tested as early as this upcoming June. With the big reveal being only a few months away, questions regarding the complexity of the suit’s design are arising. Some of the cool features that comes with the TALOS suit are fire resistance, bullet resistance, form shifting capabilities or changing from solid to liquid form, Wound Stasis feature that prevents injuries from bleeding out,Vital sign monitoring, Full-body ballistic projections, and lastly, Air, oxygen, and heat supply. These features are impossible to

Sources say that the production of these futuristic suits is being worked on by a variety of organizations including, 56 different corporations, 16 government agencies, 13 universities, and 10 national laboratories. The prototypes of the suits are to be tested in June 2014, immediately followed by any revisions or updates that need to be made so that further testing can take place. Assuming that all goes well, military officials are hoping that the suit will be operational and implemented no later than 2018.

With the prospective release of the TALOS, people are beginning to wonder what this means for other variations of armor within the military. Perhaps our Nomex Flight suits will also get to experience a futuristic makeover in the near future.

Here is a youtube link that has some more interesting things to say about TALOS

Reference link: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/obama-says-us-army-is-building-real-iron-man-and-no-he-1532582334

Images was from: blog.usaam.com