Individual Mechanized Armor & Future Warfighter Research Project

This project has the following requirements;

• GOAL: An examination of and design towards research, that will push the envelope of revolutionized warfare. Involved are applications simular to "Mechwarrior" and "Warhammer 40,000 Dreadnaught" related variations. Project limitations or restrictions left to members.
  
  
• PURPOSE: Open concept study of the current and potential use of advanced technology, for modern as well as future military use. This exercise will take advantage of both hypothetical and technical info.
  

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Sources and concept links;
U.S Developing troop exoskeletons

Army Future Warrior in 2025

Soldier 2025 *as in above link

Adaptive Camouflage Uniform/ACU

Universal Warfighter 2012 & Beyond

CROWS
& or
SRWS Lightning

IR-360 Force Protection / Surveillance Digital imaging FLIR

Soldiers Test High-Tech Weapons Under Development at Picatinny

The year is 2025, Urban Combat

"Exoskeletal technology seeks to enhance the physical ability...
...armor suits substantially better and lighter than Kevlar and SAPI..."

Advanced Armor and Projective Design Technology

Neuromorphic Control System

"The concept of exoskeletal enhancement of human limbs for both teleoperation as well as strength enhancement,"

This is a two part study on reconnaissance in future battlefield and the possible uses of individual mechanized armor and other advanced equipment.

Part 1
A) What is mechanized reconnaissance at present day?
B) How will the requirements change in the immediate future, regarding War on Terror and Other than war operations

Part 2
A) Present day equipment
B) Future possibilities
- Exoskeletons
- “Mech” type vehicles
- UGVs
- Wheeled Vehicles
- Tracked Vehicles
- Biological suits (Muscle suits)


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Part 1A: What is mechanized reconnaissance at present day?


From the early 20th Century Military units at Battalion or Regiment level have had dedicated units for scouting out routes of advance or to find enemy positions and to some extent penetrate enemy front line. At first these units moved mostly on foot or they used horses as transport.
The advent of Motorized and Mechanized infantry brought along the need for the reconnaissance troops to move faster in order to keep up with the infantry.

Mechanized Reconnaissance units can be loosely divided into two types. Heavy recon units consist mainly of Main Battle Tanks (MBT). Light units are commonly equipped with armored cars, tracked or wheeled APCs, soft vehicles and dedicated recon vehicles. Light recon units can be further subdivided into vehicle centered and infantry centered.

Recon units equipped with MBTs are mainly used to scout out enemy front line and to tie down the enemy forces in order to allow the main attack force to maneuver for engagement.
Vehicle based recon units commonly use dedicated recon vehicles like German Fenneck or Russian BMRs. These units use the advanced sensory equipment of their vehicles to observe the enemy movements. These units are highly effective in open terrain, but they suffer in the narrow and short fields of vision in urban or forested environments. Vehicle centered recon units are rarely able to infiltrate through enemy positions, but they usually offer good crew protection and decent armament for self protection. It’s fairly common to have combined MBT and Recon vehicle units; hybrid unit structure offers good combination of firepower, survivability and surveillance capability. Problem with fully mounted recon is the inevitable fact that enemy knows you’re coming because vehicles are relatively easy to spot.

Infantry centered units use APCs or soft vehicles mainly for transport. For example when enemy forces are either spotted or suspected ahead, unit will dismount for foot patrolling. Patrols will then move either along the enemy’s positions or try to penetrate the front in order to gain information on enemy’s command and communication assets as well as indirect fire emplacements. Usually after the dismount the vehicle will fall back and act as communication link between the patrols and main elements of the attacking force.

Later on this study will mostly handle the light recon units, since the heavy units will most likely use the same vehicles as the main fighting force of the armored battalion.

Common mission profiles for light recon units:
- Route reconnaissance
- Area Reconnaissance
- Target Reconnaissance
- Observation posts, both open and covert
- Engineering Reconnaissance
- NBC Survey

Route recon is used to scout out attack routes for advancing friendly troops. It’s objectives are usually finding out enemy positions, detecting minefields and obstacles, screening flanks of the main force and suppressing defenders by directing indirect fire.
Area recons objective is to find out if target area contains hostiles and or traces of hostile activity. It can also be combined with directing indirect fire.
Target reconnaissance is tasked if there is a specific point were enemy presence is suspected. It’s usually done covertly. Usually troops close in on foot to avoid detection.
Observation is used to monitor enemy movements. It’s mainly used in delay and defensive operations as well as in peace keeping/enforcing operations.
Engineering recon is normally part of the route recon, it includes not only the detection of minefields, but also survey of the routes condition, bridge conditions, survey of possible fortification sites, artillery positions and the work needed to make the route passable for both combat and supply units.
NBC survey is used to determine if the area is under the influence of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Properly trained reconnaissance unit can also be used as a Battalion or Regiments fast mobile reserve and organic spec-ops force.
Recon troops should be hand picked from the mother unit. Main qualities of a recon soldier are ability to work alone/in small teams, ability to react rapidly into changing situations and most importantly to improvise, because his superiors usually don’t have clue about recon operations.

Sources:
Reconnaissance and Surveillance Operations—Canadian Land Forces manual about armoured reconnaissance

Finnish Army Armored Recon Training

For a quick guide to recon in general, please refer to Wikipedia article:
en.wikipedia.org...

Author is an ex Finnish Army Recon NCO.

[edit on 6-7-2006 by northwolf]

A 3M tall " battlemech " prototype has been built in Japan , as a private venture :

article

Vid_Clip

IMHO seeing that in " action " sums up the absurdity of the principle of giant robots

Popular Science September 2006
Has a great article on two things of inportance. One very the other more of tech.
"The future of Robots" and "special report tech vs terrorism 5 years after 9/11"

Pg 61 covers "How to walk like a man"
Actuators put a "spring in it's step" and act as muscles, contracting and everything.
A really good read for those who have interest in this and further studies. Everything from knee and hip to ankle and toes. This info will be a great beneficial use to the project.