 is a lower-body, electrohydraulically powered exoskeleton designed to lift and carry heavy loads. Lift Assist, mounted on the back of the HULC exoskeleton, enables the wearer to lift up to about 70 kilograms.)
21ST-CENTURY SOLDIER: Lockheed Martin's Human Universal Load Carrier, (HULC, seen here with an upper-body Lift Assist Device) is a lower-body, electrohydraulically powered exoskeleton designed to lift and carry heavy loads. Lift Assist, mounted on the back of the HULC exoskeleton, enables the wearer to lift up to about 70 kilograms.
Image: COURTESY OF LOCKHEED MARTIN
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The U.S. military has evolved so fast in the post-September 11th era that much of its technology would be nearly unrecognizable to commanders, soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors only a few decades ago. Some of the biggest advances over the past decade have come with the development, application and integration of sophisticated information technology and robotics in daily operations.
The September 11, 2001 attacks created both motive and opportunity for military technology to advance rapidly. New types of weapons and equipment to fight a new type of war were in demand as the U.S. military and its allies deployed to the Middle East in late 2001, and the fighting has not stopped since. The U.S. Congress has approved nearly $1.3 trillion for military spending in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Noble Eagle, a program to improve security at military bases (pdf). About $2 billion has been spent on military construction as well as the research, development, testing and evaluation of new and improved technology to provide U.S. troops with better weapons, logistical capabilities and defenses against persistent threats such as roadside bombs.
This emerging technology ranges from the military's workhorse remotely piloted aircraft (more generically known as "drones") to futuristic soldier-supporting exoskeletons and laser cannons. Scientific American takes a look at some of the more significant developments in military technology occurring in the wake of September 11, 2001. [View a slide show of different military technologies whose development was spurred by the past decade of combat.]
Directed energy
Some of the military's research seems to come straight from the pages of science fiction. Lasers that attack enemy targets and disrupt missile guidance systems are closer than ever to seeing combat, as are "active denial systems" that emit 95 GHz millimeter-wave directed energy as a form of crowd control.
In April, the U.S. Navy and Northrop Grumman Corp. successfully demonstrated high-energy, solid-state laser defenses at sea by completing a test of the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD) against small remotely piloted boats. In a 2010 demonstration Raytheon's Phalanx Close-In Weapon System and a Navy solid-state laser shot down four unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) targets flying over water near the Navy's weapons and training facility on San Nicolas Island in California's Santa Barbara Channel.
Raytheon is also developing an active denial system that emits a focused beam of millimeter wave energy that travels at the speed of light, heating the water in a person's outer layers of skin and producing an intense burning sensation designed to stop crowds or combatants in their tracks without killing them. In another approach to directed energy, microwaves can also be used as a weapon by stimulating portions of the ear around the cochlea, creating extremely high and uncomfortable noise levels in the skulls of targeted individuals.
The high-powered millimeter wave systems "make you feel like you're getting a sunburn," says U.S. Air Force chief scientist Mark Maybury. "If you're trying to defend against or clear a way through an unruly crowd, you don't want to shoot into that crowd. This is an example of how, as we move to very low and eventually zero tolerance for collateral damage, we're going to see more and more of these tools."
The military has yet to use active-denial technology; one such system was sent to Afghanistan but later recalled. The Defense Department did not provide specifics about its reason for not using the system.
Body armor and exoskeletons
Far more of the Western military operating in Afghanistan and Iraq survive improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and direct-fire/small-arms engagements because of improved body armor made from ceramic, composites and other materials, says Kristian Gustafson, deputy director of the Brunel Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at West London's Brunel University. British Armed Forces use body armor rigs such as the Osprey, whereas U.S. Army soldiers favor Interceptor bullet-proof vests. Defense contractor BAE has developed a battery-powered body armor (weighing just over 7 kilograms) with its own GPS and night-vision goggles.
Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors are developing hydraulic-powered exoskeletons that soldiers will be able to wear to ease heavy loads while increasing strength and endurance. The Army is testing Lockheed's Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) exoskeleton at the Army's Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center in Natick, Mass. Lockheed designed HULC as an untethered, battery-powered, hydraulic-actuated anthropomorphic exoskeleton to provide soldiers the ability to carry loads up to 90 kilograms for up to 20 kilometers on a single battery charge.
Raytheon's second-generation Exoskeleton—XOS 2—is a 95-kilogram support system that enables the wearer to effortlessly lift about 23 kilograms with each arm. The company expects its exoskeletons to become available to the military in 2015. Those suits will likely be tethered by power cables, followed three to five years later by untethered versions. The exoskeletons are expected to be used initially to help soldiers carry heavier loads farther, whether they are performing combat or logistical operations.
Robot pack mule
U.S. soldiers wearing exoskeletons will not be burdened with the entire weight of their supplies if Boston Dynamics's Legged Squad Support System (LS3) comes to fruition. The LS3 would be the first step in fulfilling the military's call for an autonomous, legged robot.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Tactical Technology Office and the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Boston Dynamics a 30-month, $32-million contract last year to deliver a prototype LS3. At the end of the contract the company is expected to deliver two prototype LS3s that can carry the required weight (181 kilograms) a required distance (at least 32 kilometers) without refueling across a relatively flat surface. The LS3s will also have to be able to run up to 16 kilometers per hour and feature at least a rudimentary version of the systems it will need to operate autonomously. [See a Scientific American video featuring military robots.]
Electronic warfare
What really separates combat post 9/11 from anything that came before it is the use of information technology. "Iraq and Afghanistan have been the first wars of the Internet age," says Chris Bronk, an information technology policy research fellow at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston and a former U.S. State Department diplomat.
*Correction (9/9/11): This sentence was edited after posting. It originally referred to Raytheon's active denial system as using microwave energy. The system employs millimeter waves.
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20 Comments
Add CommentAssymetrical warfare funded by paranoid attitudes and beliefs sounds like a collosal waste of time and money to me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would have thought a better response would have been to tell the Pakistani leadership to deliver Omar and Osama within 48 hours or there would be consequences(Pakistani intelligence were, after all, the intermediaries between Washington and their former proxies). It would have saved quite a bit of blood and treasure, made the current global financial mess more tractable, and won America admiration for restraint and adherance to law; instead of contempt for hypocrisy and over-reaction. The money spent on the wars since would have funded a lot of peaceful and productive science to refocus the US economy for a better US 21st century. The current spiral is not prognostically inspiring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoes back even further ,Hel. Back to the voice calling for an eye for an eye and the deification of vengeance(we seem to be anagramising Geneva to avenge)rather than impartial and objective justice. As someone remarked, its a recipe for all-round blindness, reductio ad absurdum, on the grounds you might just get to be the one-eyed king. Mohamed based his creed on the same biblical pre-scientific folk-tales. Religion played its ethical part in our human infancy, its time for evolutionary weaning. Religious antagonism is no solution, it just recreates the ignorance of centuries of sectarian and racist conflict. Given twentieth century hardware, not advisable. Still MAD.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParanoid?? Have you been missing in action for the last 20-30 years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy apologies scientific earthling, this comment was meant for dubina.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisParanoid?? Have you been missing in action for the last 20-30 years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, paranoia is too simplistic a term.More a sort of insatiable acquisitive obsessive-compulsive collective disorder. Spliced to an immature glorifying of war as some sort of machismo virtue. Our still evolving animal nature, and its territorial possessiveness, needs leashing. Otherwise we finish as mere hominids, rather than our potential human totality. Those trying to control the planet should perhaps begin by controlling their simian selves. A fear of death manifesting as over-aggressive behaviour, but still related to paranoia. Knotty little complex.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@opus diablos; I like your pseudo Latin! However, your incoherent english leaves me wondering; What planet are you from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo you have Totality Humanity there?
Oh, never mind. You don't have to answer.
After 9/11 attack America developed more and more destructive weapons, some very powerful x rays equipments.There is no effect on Afghan and Iraqi people, war is still going on and U.S is ready to withdraw defeated way from both counties. About your powerful lesser X rays machine you are insulting more and more people particularly foreign dignitaries. I think America did learn a lesson from both war as she did not learned any lesson from Vietnam and Korea war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure any lessons were learned. The Brits and Sarko just ran a Suez sequel, but whereas Eisenhower(a seasoned soldier)put the block on the original, Obama green-lighted Libya, and seems determined to follow on to Syria and Iran. That same military/industrial complex Ike warned about is wagging the dogs of war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTotality Humanity, Quinn? Who's losing coherence, here?I'm from the same dying planet as you. But the Martians(Mars is the god of both war and the eponymous market)seem to be anxious to ensure they reduce the Earth until they feel at home.If America invested half what it puts into weapons into a resumption of JFK's war on poverty half the muslims would be happy to bow towards Washington. If they were an honest broker to sort the Palestinian situation out the other half would comply, and we could all take a break from the idiotic 'war on terror'. America's problem is follows London's pattern, and has forgotten/erased its revolutionary democratic origins.
About 2,400 years ago, a clever Chinese fellow said that to force an enemy to fight (even though he might prefer not to), attack what he must defend (Manhattan?). He also said no country ever benefited from a protracted war. Even worse, he said that to win a war, a country must be morally superior to and cleverer than an enemy, so as to be able to win without fighting. To be forced to engage in combat, rather than to achieve one's aims by cleverness, is a sign of an inferior leader. I'm thinking he might have been right! Maybe what we need isn't superior weapons (although they would useful as a last resort), but superior leadership skills in someone who is clever enough to win without fighting, and who also, in spite of that, wants to run for public office.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(1)My heart goes out to all 9/11 victims & their families. I too have lost someone, a dear friend of 11 years on that terrible day. The only thing more severe than what transpired is the fact that our own government deliberately covered up, or worse, was directly involved in the event itself. This is a belief that is shared by at least 1/3 of the public, (and around half of all New Yorkers) but is vehemently denied by the mainstream media as well as many uninformed citizens. I refuse to believe that primitive cave-dwellers halfway around the world were able to knock down two skyscrapers and penetrate the most heavily defended building in the world in one fell swoop. Don't get me wrong, our leaders can be incompetent but if they were THAT incapable of keeping us safe, then I am truly appalled and far from "proud to be an American".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's been 10 years later and we are NOT safer. Just think of what has taken place since 9/11: prolonged and costly wars on multiple fronts-all part of a fictional "War on Terror" that is said to continue for the next 100 years, the PATRIOT ACT which has created a domestic security police-state that spies on its own citizens, the end of Habeus Corpus & Posse Comitatus, and the overall downgrade of the USA's reputation in the eyes of the global community, just to name a few. Something isn't right, anyone who accepts the "official” story of 9/11 at face value, without doing their own research, needs to have their head examined. You owe it to yourself and your family to learn the facts.
Here are just a few reasons why we need a new, independent investigation of 9/11, one that is NOT conducted by there very same people who seem to be covering it up:
(2)-THREE buildings fell in NY on 9/11, the Twin Towers & WTC Building 7, which was NOT hit by a plane and received minable damage that any similar structure could sustain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Before 9/11, no large steel-framed building had collapsed from a fire, ever. On 9/11, three of them did. The 32 story Windsor Tower in Spain burned for 24 hours in 2005, yet its steel frame didn't collapse.
-Many 1st responders, media, WTC employees, and other eyewitnesses reported bombs going off throughout the buildings before they fell. Some explosions were heard before the planes even hit. Scientists have pointed out that the government has no explanation for the molten steel that was present for 3 weeks after 9/11 and Niels Harrit, a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, reported finding high-grade nano-thermite in the dust from the buildings.
-The 9/11 Commission doesn't even mention WTC 7. Phillip Zelikow wrote the "official" 9/11 Commission's outline before the Commission was even formed. President Bush refused to release "classified" info to aid the investigation and even refused to speak under oath while meeting with the Commission. The head of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean, even stated that the Commission was set up to fail. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed.
-NORAD, the agency that's supposed to protect our skies, was ordered to stand down by Vice President Dick Cheney. Norman Mineta, former Congressman and Secretary of Transportation, was down in a bunker with Cheney on 9/11. He testified to this but it was not included in the Commission Report either. NORAD also "just happened" to be conducting military drills on 9/11, something that reportedly interfered with intercepting the hijacked planes. The commission's Senior counsel, John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the government made “a decision not to tell the truth about what happened,” and that the NORAD “tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public.”
-Over 1,500 professional architects and engineers demand a new 9/11 investigation. They all unanimously agree that the "official story" doesn't hold weight scientifically and their numbers are growing. Similar groups who demand a real investigation are popping up all over. These include: Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Veterans for 9/11 Truth & various groups of 9/11 families. Around 70% of the victim's families questions have not been answered.
(3)To top it off, the 1ST RESPONDERS-those who gave their all to help the victims of 9/11, many of whom are still sick and injured from it today and aren't receiving the benefits they deserve-are not being included in the 10 year 9/11 ceremony. Many of these firemen, medics, police, and servicemen share the same belief: that we’re NOT being told the truth about 9/11. Real Americans keep their government in check and not the other way around. Real Americans aren't afraid to question their government, the same government that has failed them again and again and continues to do so. The truth is, I really don't know what happened on 9/11.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just know that it isn't what they told us it was.
They kill, disable and maim THE INNOCENT along with their targets INDISCRIMINATELY. This means, they are war criminals and must be brought to a global court for trial, prosecution and Justice. The fact this periodical highlights these insidious ruinous weapons says VOLUMES about the nature of this magazine. Complicit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Post-9/11 Technology Brings Exoskeletons, Laser Cannons to 21st-Century U.S. Military."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWould that be the same US Military whose drone warfare against the "enemy" in Pakistan constitutes a war crime, as defined by international treaties to which the US is a signatory nation?
I am a SciAm subscriber and I value the magazine. But please stop celebrating weapons systems that bring terror, misery, and death to civilian populations whose only crime is to live in a region where some of the locals may disagree with the US about how to run their country.
Let's cheer those technological innovations that help people rather than those that maim and kill innocents in the name of "national security."
Screw the military and those that aid and abet it. $$$ down a rat hole and you Sci Am ought to be ashamed for giving the military publicity in the name of so-called science. You rate a big fat UGH for doing so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill scare and hatred stop by competing against your enemies for advanced technology? It may help reduce our scare if we read the Arts of Wars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is lunacy! "truthers" have no idea the pain that they cause.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe technology is fascinating but how is this realistically affordable for the military ? , Research and development is fine and should be encouraged but procurement the money just isn't there .
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