The Pentagon spent decades chasing Iron Man. The exoskeletons that actually work are much simpler

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. The soldier of the future doesn’t carry his weapon into battle—he simply wears it. In Robert Heinlein’s beloved 1959 novel Starship Troopers, Johnny Rico’s powered battlesuit is a second skin of servos and armor that makes him faster, stronger, and more lethal than any warrior in the history of warfare. Standard issue for members of the Mobile Infantry, the suit enables Rico to leap across a battlefield in a single bound, shrug off small-arms fire like a predator swatting at errant gnats, and haul enough ordnance to level entire city blocks. This ultimate military exoskeleton, Heinlein wrote, was so seamlessly intuitive that “you don’t have to control it; you just wear it, like your clothes, like skin.” No intensive training or complex interface required—you step in and become something more than human. Within two years of Starship Troopers’ publication, the Defense Department was soliciting the U.S. defense industrial base for a real version: a “servo-soldier” wrapped in a suit of powered armor that will enable him to “run faster, stop qu…