Boeing to Build SHIELD Laser Weapon

The Boeing Company has been awarded an estimated $90 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for the development and delivery of an experimental laser pod. The contractor will provide research and development of high energy laser technologies through the next five years.

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Replicants Rising: the Meeting to Discuss Creating a Synthetic Human Genome Held

Earlier this week, over a hundred scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs gathered to discuss the radical possibility of creating a synthetic human genome. Strangely, journalists were not invited, and attendees were told to keep a tight lip. Which, given the weighty subject matter, is obvious cause for concern.

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SFnal Thought Experiment: Operation Cyrus

To: IRGC Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari
CC: High Council of Cyberspace
From: IRGC Cyber Army Major General Esmail Madani
Subject: Operation Cyrus
Date: Oct. 25th, 2021

How to Defeat America and Win Back the Persian Gulf: Operation Cyrus

America’s military center of gravity is, and has always been, public support for its endless wars. America’s enemies in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan understood this well. They drained public support by killing Americans and their puppets in hit-and-run attacks, forcing them to spend ever more blood and treasure to accomplish their ill-defined political goals. The public became fatigued and sought an end to the losses. They then elected politicians who promised to bring American forces home and end the wars of the day. Once the American troops left, their puppets collapsed. With our new cyber operational capabilities that can target America, we can now employ a variation on this well-proven strategy with far less risk to consolidate our control of the Persian Gulf: Operation Cyrus.

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Mars Circa 3015?

Looks like it, but, no, its the Namib Desert.  img src.

Physicists Suggest Looking for Dyson Spheres Around White Dwarfs

Back in 1960, the physicist Freeman Dyson publish an unusual paper in the journalScience entitled “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infra-red Radiation.” In it, he outlined a hypothetical structure that entirely encapsulates a star to capture its energy, which has since become known as a Dyson sphere.

The basic idea is that all technological civilizations require ever greater sources of energy. Once the energy of their home planet has been entirely exhausted, the next obvious source is the mother star. So such a civilization is likely to build a shell around its star that captures the energy it produces.

Of course, such a sphere must also radiate the energy it absorbs and this would produce a special signature in the infrared part of the spectrum. Such a source of infrared radiation would be entirely unlike any naturally occurring one and so provide a unique way of spotting such as advanced civilization.

Because Sun-like stars seem the most obvious homes for advanced civilizations, most studies of Dyson spheres have focused on the properties these kinds of systems would have when built within the habitable zone at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit.

These studies have revealed well-known limitations, however. Such spheres tend to be unstable and require huge volumes of material to build. But most problematic of all, anything or anyone on the surface of these spheres would experience low levels of gravity, a problem that could not easily be solved with known physics.

Today, Ibrahim Semiz and Salim Ogur at Bogazici University in Turkey, define an entirely new class of Dyson sphere. Instead of thinking about a sphere around a Sun-like star, Semiz and Ogur consider a sphere built around a white dwarf.

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Wait! What did Boeing Just Patent?! An Active Protection System for /Shockwaves/?!

Boeing's new patent may let the force be with you even in real life.

The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars-style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage.

Just liking the luminescent shields seen in the film, Boeing's "Method and system for shock wave attenuation via electromagnetic arc" could provide a real-life layer of protection from nearby impacts to targets.

The downside: It won't protect from direct hits.

The system can sense when a shock wave generating explosion occurs near a target. An arc generator then determines the small area where protection is needed from the shock waves.

It then springs into action by by emitting laser pulses that ionize the air, providing a laser-induced plasma field of protection from the shock waves.

"Explosive devices are being used increasingly in asymmetric warfare to cause damage and destruction to equipment and loss of life. The majority of the damage caused by explosive devices results from shrapnel and shock waves," the patent says.

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General Curtis LeMay and General Thomas Power Get Their Orions

It turns out the Orion Project was closer to happening in some ways than has been publicly acknowledged. It seems if not for McNamara's people, the US Air Force was going to push through building a fleet of Orion spacecraft. At the center of it all was the ever infamous Generals Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power. Power went as far sign off on a requirement for a 'Strategic Earth Orbit Base' and LeMay pushed the civilian leadership of the US Air Force to get Orion added to the 1962 USAF budget for the tune of $1.36 Billion. As much as my space cadet side sorta wishes for it, the adult side of me is glad the Secretary of the Air Force Zuckert killed it and he did so because McNamara would have been against it.

 That does make for an interesting what-if.

Let's say right after the Cuban Missile Crisis, McNamara gets hit by a car in DC.  He's dead.  

LeMay takes another crack at after McNamara is dead.

We'll handwave he gets it.  We also handwave in the exception to the Partial Test Ban Treaty the US attempted to get for propulsion.  Even so, the probable outcome of Orion getting funded in 1963 is it gets cancelled around 1968.  Nixon comes on and, well, problem.  They honestly need a decade worth to get an Orion working.  This would probably end up like the MOL or Dynasoar.

LeMay would probably want to at least get a flight out before he retires.  That took place in 1965.  However, that was due to his hostility with McNamara who is in this Alternate Time Line (ATL) now dead.  LeMay was initially a supporter of Nixon, so its possible with the different SecDef, LeMay could skip over the stupidity of running with Wallace and end up keeping his job for a time at least.

Even so, I bet he'd push for a first launch of an Orion in 1968. This would probably end up something like the 880 ton version.  It becomes a space station, America's first.  If it were up to me, I'd dump the propulsion module and let it fall into the Pacific.  300 tons of spacestation would be rather impressive.  The ISS masses about 450 tons and Skylab was about 100 tons.  It would be imaginable the space station would have twice the volume of Skylab.  It would probably need a reboost or risk coming back into the atmosphere.    The second Orion launch in 1972 of the full size (4,000 ton) version does the reboost.

With the launch of the 4,000 ton Orions, we see a new Orion launched each year from 1972 to 1978 and one last in 1981 (unmanned as a cargo haul, redesigned to larger mass as a one off).  The militarized Orions would carry 12 orbital bombardment missiles of roughly the equivalent of the Polaris missile (call it 30 tons).  Each of these would have 10 warheads.  The remaining payload would have sufficient supplies and whatnot for 10 years of operation without resupply for the crew of 16 (open ended life support, about the best we could do at the time, requires 10 lbs/per person/day).

However, Orions cannot be left in LEO.  They would be extremely vulnerable to a nuclear strike.  This means placing them out at one of the LaGrange Points.  L-1 is easiest to get to.  So they go into a Halo Orbit at the L-1 point.  Crew cycling would take place every year.  An Orion would come down to LEO to dock with the space station.  The 'acclimated' replacement crew would have been ferried up by 5 Saturn IBs.  The crew rotating out would ride back down to the surface on the Apollo capsules.  This would continue until an alternate Space Shuttle was developed. Given what we got from the space shuttle OTL, we'd probably see the USAF purchasing a total of 5 of them.  These would compliment the 5 for NASA.

Five missions per year would be to the space station for personnel exchange for the Orions.  Another five missions per year would be to reboost and resupply the aging space station. 

With Carter or whomever takes over ultimately from the Nixon/Ford era, the Orion Program gets cancelled.  Or rather new built ones do.  The last three Orions built get retasked to be NASA spacecraft and unarmed.  Prior to handing over to NASA, they do a supply run for the other Orions at the L-1 point.  This would extend the Orion mission to 1992 minimum.   However, when the resupply run is done, it is acknowledged the Orions will need to be decommissioned in 1992.

While there is a study and the beginning of a replacement done under Reagan - the Strategic Offensive Initiative - it gets canned by 1989 without building much hardware.  Edward Teller had argued to place advanced weaponry on the Orions such as lasers and whatnot to counter the Soviet nuclear arsenal.  He thought the next generation Orions could be built as strategic defense as well as offense.  This muddied the waters and the program objectives and as the Cold War drew to a close, very few were interested in flying new Orions.

In 1992, the Orions were decommissioned.  The Bush administration used the 500th Year Anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the Americas to do so in a spectacular war.  Starting in 1988, Bush negotiated their withdrawal and the ban of nuclear weapons in space.  NASA was tasked with reusing the Orions.  These were not to be used as manned spacecraft, but rather as the first interstellar unmanned probes.  The first four Orions would launch off to Alpha Centauri (133 years to arrive), Barnard's Star (187 years), epsilon Eridani (330 years) and tau Ceti (400 years).  The fifth weaponized Orion was stripped of its thrust plate and its pulse bombs transferred to the NASA Orions.  It remained in place at the L-1 point as a space station and refurbished to that end (christened Columbus Station). 

The actual nuclear weapons we deweaponized and transported back to Earth under treaty obligatory supervision.  Under the treaty the plutonium was rebuilt as pulse bombs for the NASA Orions under Russian observation.  This would provide enough fuel for another two full loads.  However, it was agreed after this, nonnuclear or rather non-plutonium using propulsion would have to be used.

In the mean time...

NASA in 1980 used one of its Orions to build the first permanent Moon base similar to Operation Deep Freeze.  The last three Saturn Vs were not put out to pasture or used for Skylab, but to supply the Orion's mission.  After the initial push a base of 40 people was regularly resupplied from Earth.  The base, at the lip of the Shackleton Crater near the south pole has grown and is still operational today.  However, after 1982, no Orions were involved in the base.

On 1982, the two manned NASA Orions launched on their first mission to Mars.  Two carried carried 250 ton crewed landers (and 500 tons of fuel for another landing and take off: they were chemical rockets) which had been brought up by the unmanned Orion in 1981, the last retasked, rebuilt unmanned Orion.  These landers were SSTOs...Martian SSTOs, much easier than on Earth.  Six sites were surveyed on the first mission.  The famous picture of the astronaut saluting the Viking probe and the associated group picture of the 20 astronauts around it became quite famous.

The second Mars Mission took place in 1984.  It followed a similar pattern to the first mission, surveying another six sites.  A third mission took place in 1986 doing likewise.

In 1988, Operation Ares was launched and built a Martian base.  This was done near the Valles Marineris.  An 800 ton unmanned cargo lander was dropped from one of the Orions and the other brought another 200 ton unmanned lander as well.  The crewed lander put down and they spent the next 3 months building out the base.  A crew of 20 was left behind for the next two years.  It would be the last time both Orions would go to Mars.  Resupply missions to Mars would take place every two years, but one only have one Orion at a time.  The last Orion run to Mars would be in 2001.  The Mars base was semi self sufficient at that time and supported by other means for the rest.

In April 1993, the second Orion would embark for Jupiter for a 18 month mission (galileo flew in 1982 on time).  Landings would take place on three of the Galilean Moons: twice on Europa and once on Callisto and Ganymede.  A second expedition would be mounted in October 1996. And a final one in 2000.

The last mission for the Orions would be to Saturn.  It was a stretch.  They launched in 2005.  They would land on Titan and Enceladus; however, the crews were much smaller than the Mars or Jupiter missions, totally only 12 each.  The Orions would return to earth in 2008 where they would be decommissioned at Columbus Station.  Their thrust plates would be destroyed under treaty obligation.  The rest habitable sections of the ships would be remodeled and used as part of Columbus station.

Since there was no good replacement for them in the near term, it would not be until 2038 when the first laser implosion fusion powered ships were launched until their capability was replaced.

The Lunar Base by their end had an international population of about 1,000: multiple nations were landing and using the lunar base for science and exploration.  There are no native selenites.

Mars has a population of 203.  OTOH, there are three native born Martians.

Jan Scheuermann is the new Clint Eastwood, Becomes First Person to fly F-35 Simulator With Just her Mind

Jan Scheuermann, a quadriplegic and the pioneering patient for an experimental Pentagon robotics program, continues to break ground in freeing the mind from the limitations of the body.

The 55-year-old mother of two in 2012 agreed to let surgeons implant electrodes on her brain to control a robotic arm. More recently, she flew an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter simulator using nothing but her thoughts, an official said.

Arati Prabhakar, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, cited the breakthrough last week at the first annual Future of War conference. The event was organized by the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C.

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The Future is *NOW*: Using DNA to Generate Face Shots

While still somewhat primitive, this is something out of a science fiction book and, of course (!), already controversial.

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Britain Launching Laser Weapons Program

The UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is reportedly planning to launch a competition this year for the development of directed energy weapons (DEW).

An MoD spokeswoman was quoted by DefenseNews as saying: "This four-year project aims to understand what potential there is for high energy laser technology to be used in future military capabilities.

"The project aims to assess a number of sub-systems that will potentially be incorporated into a working developmental system for testing.

"We intend to conduct outdoor testing at a range, but exact details are yet to be determined."

The £30m project is being pursued by MBDA, Lockheed Martin UK, Qinetiq, Thales UK and Raytheon UK among others, and a winning contractor is expected to be selected before April 2015.

In 2013, unnamed Thales UK executives told the publication that the company is planning to complete the development of a production-ready laser-powered soft-kill system capable of defeating electro-optically guided sensors on missiles in the next three years.

Thales has been developing the system for several years, but started searching for an international partner after a lack of funding support from the MoD.

MBDA's German subsidiary also possesses extensive laser DEW experience, having tested a counter rocket, artillery and mortar system, using 40kW of laser-power in 2012.

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DARPA Takes First SFnal Steps to Scalzi's BrainPals

DARPA has selected two universities to initially lead the agency’s Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program, which aims to develop and test wireless, implantable “neuroprosthetics” that can help servicemembers, veterans, and others overcome memory deficits incurred as a result of traumatic brain injury (TBI) or disease.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) will each head a multidisciplinary team to develop and test electronic interfaces that can sense memory deficits caused by injury and attempt to restore normal function. Under the terms of separate cooperative agreements with DARPA, UCLA will receive up to $15 million and Penn will receive up to $22.5 million over four years, with full funding contingent on the performer teams successfully meeting a series of technical milestones. DARPA also has a cooperative agreement worth up to $2.5 million in place with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop an implantable neural device for the UCLA-led effort.

“The start of the Restoring Active Memory program marks an exciting opportunity to reveal many new aspects of human memory and learn about the brain in ways that were never before possible,” said DARPA Program Manager Justin Sanchez. “Anyone who has witnessed the effects of memory loss in another person knows its toll and how few options are available to treat it. We’re going to apply the knowledge and understanding gained in RAM to develop new options for treatment through technology.”

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US Army, US Navy Make Progress on Deploying Lasers by Early 2020s

Lasers that can shoot down incoming missiles have been a work in progress since Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” days. Now, the Army and Navy not only have working demonstration models but ambitions to field real-world weapons circa 2021. This time, insisted Pentagon science advisor Howard Meyer this morning, it’s really going to happen.

Why so confident? I asked Meyer, himself a veteran of the Airborne Laser program cancelled in 2012, after his remarks to a small Marshall Institute seminar in the Congressional Visitor’s center this morning. The differences are both tactical and technological, he told me. Not only have lasers gotten better, the military’s expectations have gotten lower — and the urgency of the threat has gotten higher.

Technologically, as in so many other areas, commercial industry is leading the way: “I can buy lasers for welding, for cutting, [etc.],” Meyer told me. “There are thousands of these systems out in industry applications all over the world.”

In fact, the Navy’s “laser weapon system” (LaWS) is basically just six commercial welding lasers “strapped together,” Congressional Research Service analyst Ronald O’Rourke had noted earlier at the event. The six lasers don’t even cohere into a single beam, he said, they just “converge at the target.” The simplicity of that approach, O’Rourke argued, is what has allowed the Navy to advance LaWS quickly and affordably to the point that, this summer, it will head to the Persian Gulf for at-sea tests.

LaWS also embodies the more modest and yet more urgent missions the military now envisions for lasers. Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative envisioned a belt of satellites to shoot down Soviet warheads in space. The enormous flying airborne laser focused on shooting down a few ballistic missiles — say, a North Korean strike — shortly after launch, when warhead and rocket booster are still attached in one large, combustible target. The ABL technology actually worked, said Meyer, but the equipment and chemical power supply filled a converted 747, and the military felt the vulnerable aircraft would be easily shot down before it got into laser range.

By contrast, both the Navy LaWS and the Army’s “mobile high-energy laser demonstrator” are relatively small solid-state lasers, able to fit on a ship and a truck respectively. They’re also designed to fire over relatively short distances at targets much slower and less durable than a ballistic missile, targets such as small drones, fast-attack boats, precision-guided mortar rounds, tactical rockets, or — at the high end — anti-ship cruise missiles. Iran and its proxy Hezbollah have most of these weapons already and are working on the others, and many expects predict cheap precision-guided weapons will proliferate worldwide in the near future.

Meyer agrees. In future conflicts, “I am going to have mortar rounds or cruise missiles or UAVs coming in,” he told me. “We will be absorbing G-RAMM [guided rockets, artillery, mortars, and missiles]. We either have to take it out or we have to suffer the losses.”

That’s the urgent but achievable mission driving the Army and Navy programs. The shipboard LaWS generates just 33 kilowatts of laser energy and still manages to shoot down slow-moving drones in tests; the Navy wants to build a follow-up model generating roughly 60 to 100 kw, potentially mounted on the small Littoral Combat Ship or the mid-sized Arleigh Burke destroyer. The Army, meanwhile, is looking at laser defense platoons with either three 100-kw lasers mounted on large trucks or five 50-kw lasers mounted on smaller Stryker armored vehicles.

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US Special Forces Gives Update on TALOS Powered Armor, Plans Field Testing in 5 Years

The U.S. Special Operations Command is using unprecedented outreach and collaboration to develop something special with revolutionary capabilities.

The Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, or TALOS, is the vision of Navy Adm. William H. McRaven, SOCOM’s commander. He challenged industry and defense representatives at a SOCOM conference in May 2013 to come up with the concepts and technologies to make the suit a reality. The goal is to offer operators better protection, enhanced performance and improved situational awareness.

McRaven spoke more recently at a February 2014 National Defense Industry Association Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict symposium, in Washington, D.C.

“The TALOS program is a collaboration of efforts,” McRaven said. “We are teaming with 56 corporations, 16 government agencies, 13 universities, and 10 national laboratories and we are leveraging the expertise of leading minds throughout the country to redefine the state of the art in survivability and operator capability.

“This innovative approach brings together the brightest minds in a national effort and we are already seeing astounding results in this collaboration. If we do TALOS right, it will be a huge comparative advantage over our enemies and give our warriors the protection they need in a very demanding environment.”

[...]

SOCOM’s goal, Fieldson said, is to have a TALOS prototype within the next year and to have the suit ready for full field testing within five years. That timetable is revolutionary for the military research, development and acquisition world, even for rapid-equipping programs.

As the only combatant command with acquisition authority, SOCOM is able to accelerate the TALOS project, Fieldson explained. The command’s acquisition executive and research and development staff share a building at MacDill Air Force Base, which he said promotes close collaboration and speedy decision-making.

“We have access that is nontraditional and that absolutely helps us,” Fieldson said. “We can bounce ideas back and forth against the leadership and ensure that what we are doing makes sense. I think that is critical to trying to develop this system within the timeline we are working toward.”

Also, in a departure from traditional development projects, SOCOM’s Acquisition Center staff established an innovation cell to lead the effort, advised by operators and focused on transforming business processes to solve the extreme integration challenges associated with TALOS.

“Because of the technical challenges and the compressed timeline, we are going to take more ownership on the government side than we typically take,” Fieldson said.

“We are going to go in and make some decisions that we sometimes rely on industry partners to make for us,” he said. “That allows us to reach out to a broader audience. That way, if there is a great idea in some nontraditional organization, we can integrate it” without relying on a commercial company to do so.

“We are really changing the process,” Fieldson said. “And the reason we are doing that is to try to streamline the overall effort and drive down both the cost and the schedule. That way, we get the best possible equipment to our force as quickly as possible.”

Although the TALOS is initially intended for special operators involved in high-risk missions, it has implications for the conventional force as well, Fieldson said.

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Paul Root Wolpe's Ted Talk Call for a Bio Ethics Review

Researchers Restate Dougal Dixon and Stephen Baxter's Hypothesis: Rats Will Inherit the Earth

Some researchers think the Earth is on the brink of its next mass extinction that could hit within the next several centuries, as a result of human-induced habitat destruction and environmental degradation, said Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom who studies Earth history. Just in the past several hundred years, thousands of animal species have become endangered, and hundreds have gone extinct, many as a result of human activity.

Zalasiewicz and colleagues have developed a thought experiment in which they consider which animal might be the most likely to survive and repopulate the world if this purported mass extinction were to take place — and they concluded that rats may be the best candidates.

The researchers based their hypothesis on rats' proven ability to infiltrate most major landmasses and islands on the planet, as well as their persistence throughout the world despite widespread attempts to control their populations. Other animals, such as cats and feral pigs, also do well in diverse ecosystems around the world, but they are not as widespread as rats. In the event of a mass extinction caused either by human activity or a catastrophic event, rats are theoretically the most likely mammals to be spared, given their wide extent and ability to cope in varied conditions, Zalasiewicz said.

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Selenian Boondocks Continues with the Venus Cloud Cities

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DIY Bio Types are not What the Hype Says

As the Do-It-Yourself Biology (DIYbio) community has grown, so have concerns among media and policymakers about these science enthusiasts' ability to wield DNA and manipulate life.

In 2009, for example, a Wall Street Journal headline summed up the popular misconception: "In Attics and Closets, 'Biohackers' Discover their Inner Frankenstein."

But in a first-ever survey of DIYbio practitioners (DIYers), the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars finds the community to be far different from these fearful and often sensationalist representations. A report released today, "Seven Myths and Realities about Do-It-Yourself Biology," analyzes the survey results and challenges seven widely held beliefs about DIYbio practitioners, particularly about their labs, capabilities and goals.

"The data suggests that almost all of the well-known tropes about the dangers of DIYbio and citizen science are untrue," says Daniel Grushkin, a co-author of the report and a fellow at the Wilson Center. "It's time for policymakers to consider how grassroots science movements like DIYbio can serve the greater good by fostering entrepreneurship and excitement about science literacy."

Among other conclusions, the survey finds that the number of DIYers has almost doubled in the last year and that the science they practice is far more benign than described in the popular press. The report suggests that the DIYbio community offers national education and entrepreneurship opportunities, rather than over-inflated risks.

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The Robopocalypse Comes for Your Furniture

An Essay on Creating Life on a Gas Giant for the Cosmos Series

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These images, especially the last one, really captivated me as a teen.  They are gorgeous.  They are fascinating.  They are utterly alien.

Special Forces TALOS Criticism: "A dead soldier from the 10th Mountain Division counts just as much as a dead special operator."

US special operators are notoriously low-profile “silent professionals.” But lately the Internet’s been abuzz over Special Operations Command’s effort to build a high-tech suit of bulletproof armor – TALOS, the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit – that the normally understated chief of SOCOM, Adm. William McRaven, actually compared to the metal-clad superhero Iron Man.

Make no mistake: This is no mistake. SOCOM is deliberately drumming up the hype because TALOS is the one thing they’re doing that they actually want everyone to hear about. It’s a conscious effort to get the word out to innovators in industry, academe, and even high schools who might otherwise have never thought of working with SOCOM. Why? Because without their help, TALOS is doomed to fail.

TALOS’s goals stretch the art of the possible to the breaking point. By contrast, the regular Army is moving steadily forward with incremental improvements to existing body armor – which is already way ahead of the protection troops had ten years ago – and intends to field a “Soldier Protection System” at least 10 percent lighter than current suits by 2016. But SOCOM wants to leap ahead to a bulletproof suit so heavy that a human could hardly move in it without a strength-enhancing mechanism called an exoskeleton – and it wants a functioning “proof of concept” prototype by 2018.

“The media frenzy that you’re talking about, that’s by design,” said Michael Fieldson, the SOCOM civilian who’s in charge of TALOS. “We want to get out there because this is a very challenging problem,” he told me. “You might not get there if you stuck to the traditional approach.”

[...]

While today’s body armor is issued to almost everyone, from special operators to support troops driving supply trucks, TALOS is currently intended only for a subset of a subset of a subset. It’s not for the whole ground force. It’s not for ordinary Army or Marine Corps infantrymen, who suffer the most casualties in most modern wars. It’s not even for lower-priority special operators like Civil Affairs, advisor teams, or, quite possibly, even the Army Rangers. It’s only for “direct action” units like the SEALs – of which McRaven is a veteran – that go on the highest-risk missions against the highest-priority targets, such as Osama Bin Laden in 2011 or, less successfully the Somali-based terrorist Ikrimah earlier this month.

“We really don’t think everybody in SOF and certainly not everybody in the army would end up with one of these things,” said Fieldson. “It would be cost-prohibitive.”

“Of course they say that!” exploded Robert Scales, the retired two-star commandant of the US Army War College, who’s been pushing since at least the mid-1990s for better equipment, including exoskeletons, for every infantryman. “This needs to be something that applies to the ground services [in general],” he told me. “A dead soldier from the 10th Mountain Division counts just as much as a dead special operator.”

“It’s not about cost: It’s about priorities,” Scales said. “You’ve seen the cost of the latest F-35?” (The latest installment of Joint Strike Fighters went for $7 billion). Yet no fighter pilots have died to enemy action, as opposed to accidents, since the Iraqi air defense system was destroyed in the “shock and awe” attacks of 2003, compared to thousands of ground troops killed in the decade since.

Why isn’t the nation investing billions in keeping infantrymen alive? Scales fumed. “Why isn’t that a priority?”

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