The heavy infantry of the future

Sharon Weinberger:

It's the year 2030. As a soldier enters a crowded marketplace, sensors mounted on his helmet automatically scan faces in the crowd, identifying a known insurgent; a cursor in the heads-up display highlights the target and cues the weapon, which can be set to stun or kill; a simple voice command unlocks the trigger.

Aided by "smart drugs," enhanced with prosthetics, and protected by a lightweight suit of armor, this soldier of the future possesses near super-human capabilities and weapons that would make even Iron Man jealous. He's suited up in an "exoskeleton" - essentially a Storm Trooper-esque external shell - that allows him to carry heavy loads. Electronics integrated in his outfit allow for simultaneous language translation, automatic identification of potential foes, and video-game-like targeting. If the soldier is tired, overworked, or injured, neural and physiological sensors automatically send an alert to headquarters.

It's all part of the Army's starry-eyed vision of grunts 20 years from now, and it's just one aspect of the Pentagon's ambitious thinking about technologies that will transform the way the military fights. There are also plans for advanced robotic aircraft; missiles that travel seven times the speed of sound; and ship- and aircraft-based laser weapons that could blast missiles out of the sky.

These aren't fantasy. Many of these technologies are plausible, or in development. Whether the military can afford them is an entirely different question.

Each branch of the military has its own plans, but the Army concept of tomorrow's soldier borrows heavily from nearly every genre of science fiction. Dubbed "Future Soldier 2030," the vision is the brainchild of the Natick Soldier Systems Center in Massachusetts, an Army organization responsible for researching and developing new technologies for the individual fighter.

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There is more including this graphic of what the soldier of the future would look like.

Sometimes we lose track of or merge the differences between heavy and light infantry. They have different strengths and weaknesses. The easiest way to explain the difference is to look at how the English fought at Agincourt. The light infantry was made up of the archers whose longbows had superior firepower to the French crossbows, because they could fire a half a dozen arrows for each bolt fired by the cross bows which took considerable time to reload.

The heavy infantry at Agincourt was made up of the dismounted knights whose main function was to protect the light infantry. While this may seem counter intuitive, they were much more effective at the task dismounted than mounted, because havy cavalry had a tendency to want to chase enemy cavary leaving the light infantry exposed.

As described, this future warrior is closer to the heavy infantry than light. Even with an "exoskeleton"he will not be as agile as a light infantry special forces soldier using stealth to approach an enemy. The Agincourt principal still holds. You are much stronger when you use combined arms.