As the current Middle East difference continue on , futuristic military systems might be further away because of a fresh enemy : congressional budgets .
to begin with today , Defense Secretary Robert Gatesannouncedsweeping commute to the United States defense budget , commit the Pentagon on a track to mount counterpunch - insurgency attacks , as oppose to fighting formal military forces .
Included in these the change : swerve to the Army ’s Future Combat Systems program , a $ 92 Billion programme that was design to advance the military with manned and remote-controlled vehicles , as well as to introduce such programs as the Future Force Warrior , which explored such concepts such as exo - skeletons and nano technology . The idea was to produce a highly mobile fight force that would employ superior communication theory and technology to gain an edge in battle .
Introduced in 2003 , the programme was first introduce with the design to redesign elements of the US armed force to better conform to net - centrical war , as well as introducing new vehicles and equipment for soldiers to use . in the beginning , the plancalled forthe armament of 15 brigades , or around 3,000 soldier , over the next two decades . However , as ahead of time as 2005 , the program ’s costs began to skyrocket , and the program has been plagued with technical problems along the way . The full cost of the program do date isestimatedto be around $ 296 billion , which has left a number of its assistant within the government looking for a way out . Critics of the program have called for its destruction , pronounce that the combined technological cash advance would be too complicated to integrate and put into the battlefield .
A lag in funding for the political program , along with other elements , means that we ’re not live on to be seeing any power - armor soldiers alternate between streets in Baghdad any time shortly , but it also means the armed forces is adapting to on-going change . The futuristic suits that soldiers were visualise to wear went out as program price skyrocketed , as well as some of the other essential that the plan had started out with , according to Wired Magazine . But , while this might be a disappointment to scientific discipline fable rooter who were waiting for the day that Starship Troopers came to life , this move is not necessarily a bad one for the war machine to make .
If anything , the War on Terror , or whatever we ’re supposed to call it nowadays , has evidence that technology does n’t needfully equal superiority on the field of battle . Robert Baer ’s 2003 book , See No Evil , points out that while there was much funding for eminent tech surveillance , none of it replace the time value of an private eye in the field . P.W. Singer ’s belated book , wire For War , also brings up the problem integral on the battlefield with internet centrical warfare , from computer job to chemical chain of bidding issues . Army Col . Thomas Hammes , in his ledger The Sling and the Stone , cites this very proceeds as a problem with New war , as the United States sought to fight an Iraqi insurgence , using a eminent - technical school army in a conventional personal manner .
In a nutshell , powerful now , the United States fields one of the most modern militaries in the populace , and the motive to modernise how we fight is n’t as crusade at the moment , and the money that would otherwise be used for this finish could sure enough be used for puppet that we know work .
So will we ever see the first light of exoskeleton and power armor ? Probably , because these theme surely have deservingness , but with the constraint of modernistic technology and the changing nature of how state of war are fought , it ’s always a skillful approximation to wonder the use of a organization that does not necessarily allow an implicit in advantage over enemy forces armed with applied science from the seventies .
Image credit : Infantry , US Army , Tank , Defense Industry Daily
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