Hoplite Battle Armor

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Stephensonia

Exoskeleton Today Seems to be akin to the chevaline Hackworth has later but an artificial human like a powered human exoskeleton to be used in combat. ... The Constable was sitting in the middle of his bamboo grove, enveloped in a suit of hoplite armor, similarly filthy and scarred, that was twice as big as he was, and that made his bare head look absurdly small. He had ripped the helmet off and dropped it into his fish pond, where it floated around like the eviscerated hull of a scuttled dreadnought. He looked very gaunt and was staring vacantly, without blinking, at some kudzu that was slowly but inexorably conquering the wisteria. As soon as Nell saw the look on his face, she made him some tea and brought it to him. The Constable reached for the tiny alabaster teacup with armored hands that could have crumbled stones like loaves of stale bread. The thick barrels of the guns built into the arms of his suit were scorched on the inside. He plucked the cup from Nell's hands with the precision of a surgical robot, but did not lift it to his lips, perhaps afraid that he might, in his exhaustion, get the distance a bit wrong and inadvertently crush the porcelain into his jaw, or even decapitate himself. Merely holding the cup, watching the steam rise from its surface, seemed to calm him. His nostrils dilated once, then again. "Darjeeling," he said. "Well chosen. Always thought of India as a more civilised place than China. Have to throw out all of the oolong now, all the keemun, the lung jang, the lapsang souchong. Time to switch over to Ceylon, pekoe, assam." He chuckled. White trails of dried salt ran back from the corners of the Constable's eyes and disappeared into his hairline. He had been riding fast with his helmet off. Nell wished that she had been able to see the Constable thundering across China on his war chevaline. "I've retired for the last time," he explained. He nodded in the direction of China. "Been doing a bit of consulting work for a gentleman there. Complicated fellow. Dead now. Had many facets, but now he'll go down in history as just another damn Chinese warlord who didn't make the grade. It is remarkable, love," he said, looking at Nell for the first time, "how much money you can make shovelling back the tide. In the end you need to get out while the getting is good. Not very honourable, I suppose, but then, there is no honour among consultants." Nell did not imagine that Constable Moore wanted to get into a detailed discussion of recent events, so she changed the subject. "I think I have finally worked out what you were trying to tell me, years ago, about being intelligent," she said. The Constable brightened all at once. "Pleased to hear it." "The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code but their children believe it for entirely different reasons." "They believe it," the Constable said, "because they have been indoctrinated to believe it." "Yes. Some of them never challenge it they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw." "Which path do you intend to take, Nell?" said the Constable, sounding very interested. "Conformity or rebellion?" "Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity." "Ah! Excellent!" the Constable exclaimed. As punctuation, he slapped the ground with his free hand, sending up a shower of sparks and transmitting a powerful shock through the ground to Nell's feet. "I suspect that Lord Finkle-McGraw, being an intelligent man, sees through all of the hypocrisy in his society, but upholds its principles anyway, because that is what is best in the long run. And I suspect that he has been worrying about how best to inculcate this stance in young people who cannot understand, as he does, its historical antecedents which might explain why he has taken an interest in me. The Primer may have been Finkle-McGraw's idea to begin with-a first attempt to go about this systematically." ...

Community Entry: Hoplite Battle Armor

Hoplite Battle Armor is a powered suit of armor with built-in weapon systems designed for battle in the Diamond Age. It is only mentioned at two or three points in the book, so one must be happy with conjecture as to its more advanced features.

Features/abilities covered in canon: * The suit consists of rigid plates mouted over a flexible inner set of overalls. This can be done in relatively little time, so warriors can sit around waiting for action with their suits off, donning them when fighting is necessary. * When the plates are on, the person appears nearly twice their normal size. * The suit contains several weapon barrels on each forearm.
Future Fists of Righteous Harmony?
Just some kids jumping around on Powerisers(tm).

The suit enhances the strength of the wearer, possibly significantly. In the latter part of the book, Fists wearing Hoplite Armor leap from ground level into the third-storey window of a hotel. Weather this is due to the suit's strength-enhancing power or jet boosters of some kind is open to conjecture.
The armor plates are quite light for their size. The Constable's helmet, despite being of the same armor material as the rest of the suit, floats quite easily inverted in a pool of water.

Features/Abilities that are open to debate and conjecture: * It is not known what kind of weapon systems are contained on the forearms. They are quite large and described as "scorched", which might describe a conventional weapon system, or merely a conventional delivery system for nanotech weapons, such as mini-missiles or a grenade launcher. * These suits may have jet boosters of some kind. * The protective value of the suits are never shown, and thus open to debate. They, logically, should provide some protection against nanotech weapons. In the same vein, it's safe to assume that the helmet encloses the entire head, and features an air suppy/filtration system.

Exoskeleton

The idea of a powered exoskeleton to assist ground infantry in carrying heavy weapons, armor, and Communications, Command, Control & Intelligence (C3I) equipment such as radios, UAV controllers, mines and minefield controllers, GPS, laser designators, night vision goggles, NBC equipment, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and plenty of ammunition, etc. has been a staple of science fiction since Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman Series.

More recently, we have seen the classic battle between woman and alien in the final scenes of episode II of Sigourney Weaver's "Aliens" movie series, in which Weaver's character, Ripley, defends the orphan Newt against the predacious Queen Alien who has snuck aboard the human mother ship with a powered walker that is typically used to load massive cargo items. Exoskeletons were also featured in "Revolutions" the final episode of The Matrix trilogy, in which the humans of Zion defended their dock facility from the machine invasion with such weapons, equipped with arm mounted rotary cannon.

Today's robotics industry is demonstrating the first prototypes of such powered exoskeletons. UC Berkeley, in particular, is developing its lower body exoskeleton as seen here to assist US infantry troops carry heavy loads on extended marches in the field with little fatigue.
Another Exo prototype

Exoskeletons in modern and near-future technology

In the early 2000s a number of companies and research centres developed the first practical models of human exoskeletons. One of the main uses is enabling a soldier to carry heavy weights (50100 kg) while running or climbing stairs. Most models use a hydraulic system controlled by an on-board computer. They can be powered by an internal combustion engine, batteries or, potentially, fuel cells. Another area of application is medical care, nursing in particular. Faced with the impending shortage of medical professionals and the increasing number of people in elderly care, several teams of Japanese engineers have developed exoskeletons designed to help nurses lift and carry patients. Commercially-available exoskeletons are expected by the end of 2005. In the future exoskeletons are expected to become widely used by the military and police in the form of nanotechnological combat clothes. Civilian uses will no doubt be found later. However they will have to compete for adoption with another approach surgically and genetically enhancing the human body itself by use of artificial bones and muscles.

Human exoskeletons in science fiction

Science fiction authors utilize the idea of personal self-powered exoskeletons, usually referred to as powered armor or, in Japanese anime and manga, mecha. Examples include: 1. The armor worn by Gray Fox in WikiPedia: Metal Gear Solid 2. The loaders used to enable dockyard workers to move heavy weights in Aliens 3. The Armored Personnel Units seen in Matrix Revolutions 4. The novel Starship Troopers details the tactics involved with powered armor. 5. Standard issue battle armor in Joe Haldeman's book The Forever War is an exoskeleton using logarithmic force amplification. 6. Exoskeletal vehicles named "E-Frames" were one of the central aspects of the anime-inspired American action cartoon Exosquad. 7. In comic books, the superheroes Iron Man and War Machine, the supervillain WikiPedia: Doctor Doom and countless others wear suits of powered armor which have the equivalent exoskeleton function. 8. Not all SF exoskeletons are mechanical, as modification of biological systems can produce similar strength, such as the Pak Protector in Larry Niven's Known Space universe, Jim Shooter's X-O Manowar comic book, and the Guyver anime series. 9. In Japanese manga Gantz, the characters wear wet suit like exoskeleton, which gives them enormous strength and provides protection. 10. Biological suits known as skins are mentioned in Peter Hamilton's Fallen Dragon. 11. In the Battletech universe, genetically engineered Clan soldiers are bred for strength and other qualities to wear Elemental powered armor. Elemental armor also provides advanced medical technologies to keep the wearer alive in case of severe injury or trauma during combat. 12. Unsurprisingly, exoskeletons have surfaced in many video games, usually because thicker types of armor must require some mechanical power source. Some examples would be certain marines from Unreal II: The Awakening and MAX Units from Planetside. 13. Many Japanese mecha anime also have humans controlling gigantic exo-skeletons, such as Escaflowne. Although many of these are not exactly exoskeletons because of their size, the main principle is identical.

Example of Samurais in Armor

Body Armor

Armor is as old as war, from leather hide, shell, wood/bamboo armor, to bronze and steel, armor was commonly used in warfare up until shortly after the advent of the firearm, or shortly after firearms were introduced into particular regions. The ability of bullets to penetrate any steel armor light enough to be worn by a man and the loss of dexterity and vision made armor useless on the battlefield until the 20th century.

During WWII, bomber flight crews started wearing 'flak jackets' to protect against shrapnel from exploding flak anti-aircraft artillery warheads. Steel wire was woven and layered with cotton or other fibers. They were very bulky and limited mobility, which was alright in the fuselage of a bomber. While ground infantry wore steel and bakelite helmets, they were not very effective beyond protecting against minor shrapnel. A direct hit to a helmetted head was still commonly a fatal wound.

With the advent of synthetic materials, particularly the invention of Kevlar by the DuPont De Nemours company, the bulkiness of body armor was reduced such that ground infantry could carry them on patrols with regularity, although special forces troops tended to shun them for the movement noise and remaining hindrance to physical dexterity. Today kevlar body armor is commonly used by policemen on duty and most military infantry units. Further armoring, with ceramic plates for the torso, are now also common.

Beyond Kevlar

Armor Today Kevlar is by far the most common fiber used to make body armor, but other materials are being developed. The most readily available alternative fiber is called Vectran, which is approximately twice as strong as Kevlar. Vectran is 5 to 10 times stronger than steel.

Another rapidly emerging fiber is spider silk. Yes, spider silk. Goats have been genetically engineered to produce the chemical constituents of spider silk, and the resulting material is called Biosteel. A strand of Biosteel can be up to 20 times stronger than an equivalent strand of steel.

Another candidate is carbon nanotubes, which promise to be even stronger than spider silk. Carbon nanotube thread is still rare, and fabric is even rarer. CNet reports the current price of nanotubes at $500/gram. In time, prices should fall and make carbon nanotubes a viable fiber for body armor.

Question: But won't that run into problems with additional heat conductivity, requiring every wearer to wear Nomex over it to avert a catastrophic reaction to catching on fire? Answer: There will be a sophisticated heat cycling system capturing the heat to power the batteries. Nanotubes will likely be woven in lattice structures that have been proven capable of converting a large percent (50%+) of quanta of thermal energy to electricity.

It is carbon nanotubes which will most likely be the armor technology of the Hoplite Armor Suit in The Diamond Age. Combined with exoskeleton technology and assorted weaponry, it appears we are only a few years away from seeing the first models making their appearance.