If the average soldier was in better shape (i.e. special-forces-tier fitness level), powered suits would be totally unnecessary. Other alternatives would be performance-enhancing drugs, sportswear (braces to help avoid injury, etc.), more comfortable fucking footwear… If we train and treat our soldiers like professional athletes, each one would be vastly more effective, more capable of carrying armor that protects the entire body, etc.
I've also seen the idea of armored bicycles brought up before. Armored electric bicycles, motorcycles, or other powered personal vehicles would be cheaper than all the R&D required to build mechanized body suits. Shit, what about an armored, all-terrain Segway?
The military wouldn't be necessarily responsible for taking an average dude and turning him into a super soldier. They need to start with a better-than-average dude and invest in him so that he WANTS to improve. They ought to be more selective, with recruiters targeting top college athletes and paying them well. The PFT should be difficult as opposed to the joke it is now. Performance-enhancing drugs should be available (in safe quantities) to those who want them. Maybe have the Army sponsor shooting competitions (not just average marksmanship competitions, but more along the lines of a 3-gun or something else that requires tactical ability AND marksmanship.)
>This wouldn't work when operating in conditions their body isn't accustomed to
This is obviously true, but you can't tell me an athlete wouldn't be able to deal with it better than the average dude.
>several hundreds pounds pushing down on the ground in a very small footprint that makes it impossible to use in any slightly difficult terrain
Totally agreed. On a similar note, it's important to remember that the very shape of a human places limits on its strength and maneuverability, so any powered human-shaped suit would suffer from the same limitations. Would a powered suit really be able to make super-strong fingers, for example? Probably not. Yeah, someone could make a purpose-built robotic hand with very strong fingers, but it would be deficient in other ways; it would add a disproportional amount of weight or complexity to the arm, or it would have a lower range of motion, etc.
>ankles
Agreed. Sure, they could add all sorts of plating AROUND the ankle to protect it, at the expense of reduced range of motion or excessive weight or high energy consumption (with the shape and structure of the human body, it requires 4 times the energy to move a pound at the feet as it does a pound on the back.)