Powered armour
From SaschaWiki
Powered armour is the military application of 21st century advances in the field of self-powered exoskeletons. First realised in the early 20s, the technology failed to find a significant military market and deployed in extremely limited quantities. Powered armour was revisited as a technology during the mid-Corporate Wars period (2063-2064) as a cost-effective counter to the prevalence of Crisis Agents, and is now common amongst Corpsec forces worldwide.
Contents |
Early advances
The field of artificial exoskeletons had been tentatively researched as far back as the 1960s, but it was only with the development of of practical micro-cells as an offshoot of the Mars colonisation project and the gradual replacement of pneumatic and hydraulic artificial musculature with dialective polymers (from the various projects concerned with bionic human augmentation) that the concept became a reality.
The first working prototype was the Arma suit developed at the Thanex Military Research Institute (the TMRI) in 2022. The Arma was a full skeletal suit, consisting of a armoured breastplate which housed the power source and articulated limb struts. The Arma suit failed to achieve NATO standards in combat effectiveness and deployment costs. The intended tactical purpose of the skeletal suit was to provide performance enhancement in line with bionic human augmentation without the necessity for extremely invasive surgery, but this was ultimately not to be a useful pursuit in military technology.
The basic Arma suit was licenced out to a civilian firm as a construction exosuit and the TMRI powered armour program was retooled towards the development of the Shield suit, prototyped in 2024. The Shield was the first completely sealed suit, designed to provide comprehensive ballistic protection as well as complete ABC protection. When the Shield suit also failed NATO trials it was licenced to the Mars Colonisation Foundation as a construction exosuit for use in vacuum. Widespread military use of the exoskeleton technology (as it had originally been intended) was seen as implausible during this period because the outrageous cost (mainly from the dialective bundles and the micro-cells) was considered to outweigh the economic and tactical value of the soldier within. The late 20th Century model of infantry tactics would continue through the Cold War 2.
However, in certain specific applications, suits found a market, particularly where the invasive quality of the sort of extreme bionic human augmentation necessary to duplicate the effects of powered armour was undesirable. Certain tactical law enforcement units, intelligence agencies and counter-terrorist outfits were known to have used suits, and some were retained for equipping vulnerable politicians and diplomats during crises. During this period, however, the spread of powered armour was significantly smaller than that of augmentations.
Revival of powered armour
During the gradual shift from the Cold War 2 into the Corporate Wars period, conventional combined arms forces were gradually rendered obselete by the massive reduction in the scale of warfare, and the shift from battlefields to hyper-urban environments. During the early Corporate Wars, the sole tool of conflict was the Crisis Team, conducting missions which first resembled industrial espionage and later moved more towards sabotage and assassination. The only effective defence against a Crisis Team was another Crisis Team deployed defensively, which was an extremely expensive operation.
Combat projections in 2062 predicted that unaugmented Corpsecs wearing upgraded Shield suits would be 50-80% as effective as Crisis Agents when deployed defensively, at a tiny fraction of the economic and logistical cost. The Shield program was updated and renamed Praetorian, and the Praetorian suit was the first completely modern combat suit of powered armour to be deployed and to see combat. The technology was rapidly licenced and upgrades, sidegrades and copies quickly flooded the market.
The Crisis Agents' advantages in flexibility and agility still leant them a significant edge in offensive operations, but the Corporations soon experimented with using Suits to mount cheaper attacks. During the late Corporate Wars period a number of signficant Suit-on-Suit battles took place which were noticeable for their high public profile by comparison to the early conflicts.
For more information, see Crisis Agent, Corpsec and Corporate Wars combat tactics.
Powered armour capabilities
The most basic requirements for a suit of combat-capable powered armour are that it provide superior ballistic protection and that it provide sufficient muscle enhancement to lift the weight of the suit and the wearer's other combat equipment. However, there are no modern production suits which do not provide additional capabilities.
The vast majority of modern powered armour is sealed with an internal air supply to provide ABC protection.
As a result of more sophisticated dialective bundles all powered armour suits provide enhanced muscular power which rates very highly on the Warwick scale, comparable with that of bionic human augmentation.
The latest models of powered armour feature hardpoint technology first used in tank and mech development, which allows for a range of more specialised or (in some cases) experimental weaponry to be deployed.
Powered armour weapons deployment
Armaments vary between different models of powered armour. The original Praetorian suits were designed to use conventional humaniform small arms, and this pattern continued in the succession of licenced copies. Later, more sophisticated models like the Immortal suit and the Destroyer suit made use of adapted hardpoint technology which required the development of specialised weaponry, known as Infantry Hardpoint Weapons. The additional capacity for weight and recoil provided by enhanced muscular power permits the use of Improved Combat Capacity Weapons originally developed for Crisis Agents.
Popular humaniform small arms include:
Popular Improved Combat Capacity Weapons include:
Popular Infantry Hardpoint Weapons include:
For more information, see small arms and Corpsec.
