Exoskeleton Operational Concepts: Lessons from Future Wargames
Dr. Michael Vickers, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment
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- Future Warfare 20XX - a program of wargames with players taken from the elite of the various armed orces.
- Based on the FutureWar program undertaken in 1993 to look at 2025.
- The awareness and connectivity, and the precision and miniaturisation requirements isolated in 1993 are now already available. We have the ability to reach out and touch with great precision.
- Dr. Vickers talked about Military Revolutions
- Napoleon
- Air power
- Nuclear
- Most significantly the Railroad-Rifle-Telegraph revolution in the 19th century.
- Current Military Revolution is unmanned aerial force and exoskeleton soldiers.
- Main feature is Speed: power projection with missiles, and information strikes at the speed of light.
- The Future Warfare 20XX games series involved a hypothetical 'large peer competitor' - basically China - called the Siberian Republic, and entailed a five year long series of games between UD field operators.
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- The Games threw up the following priorities: Desired exoskeleton attributes:
- 1. Mobility - strategic, operational and tactical
- 2. Strength, speed, endurance, STEALTH
- 3. SKIN rather than Sigourney Weaver machine
- 4. Information Protection more important than Ballistic Protection
- 15 yr old girl anecdote - read "Starship Troopers" aged 10, wants to be an exoskeleton regiment commander when she grows up. Look out large peer competitor.
- Mention of 'Predator' - type stealth and reduction of 'signature' as preferable to Sigourney Weaver machine.
- Comments afterwards included the often repeated demand for TRAINING and that it needs investment as a well as the new technology.
- There should be no de-coupling of the human and technological
- In the games, it transpires, the concept of robotic/human coupling was clearly preferred to any form of bio-enhancement for soldiers. You can leave your exoskeleton at the base when you go off-duty.
- Bio-enhanced troops getting drunk and smashing up the bar off-duty didn't appeal.
- Players in the games used exoskeleton regiments as discrete SOF - they had 5000 such troops out of a total of 300,000, but they were the Most USED.
- As the games unfolded the trend was clear - towards greater use of SOF infantry in exoskeletons with unmanned robotic support.
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