The AP ammo concern can be addressed by building the suit using slanted armor instead of flat plating. You want to encourage ricochet, getting hit with a rifle round hurts enough as is even with level 3 chest plating, and designing an entire suit of armor with the intention of it being able to take the force of a round is just asking for problems. Hell, this had already been addressed 600+ years ago when they realized that that the classic full helm used in the crusades was of terrible design, so they introduced the bascinet. Being as there is plenty of well educated individuals who study ballistics and would no doubt design a suit around how efficiently it is able to get rid of the AP problem, as some others have pointed out there is the power problem. You can’t use nuclear energy, you can’t just throw some solar panels on that motherfucker, gas is a no, and there isn’t a battery in this world with the energy capacity and compact enough to keep that suit running for upwards of days in extended firefights. A modern power armor suit would only be useful in close quarters operations such as the breaching of a building, and would need to be deployed very near to the target itself. Which means that it’s military viability is fucking zero, however if it was to be deployed by a law enforcement entity such as SWAT and the FBI, where it can be used in breach and clearing operations, it would be incredibly effective. It would be able to be deployed almost directly onto the site of the situation, and would dramatically reduce the time it would take to resolve said situation. You might even be able to send the fucker in alone to take most of the shock, and run a clean up crew when the dumbasses held up on site get tired of dealing with a two ton brick shit house that doesn’t give a fuck about your half assed fortifications and 50 round magazines you got from Jerry who upcharged you because you’re a bitch.
I was following until you entertained the idea of making it cheaper and easier to produce. This seems like a prime example of maybe we could, but should we. I’ll come out with it upfront, I know very, very little about anything in relation to nuclear power. I would like to pose a few questions however that I would like you to consider. 1. Would it be strategically reasonable to deploy a nuclear powered suit into a warzone? It is power armor, yes, but there are just somethings that are all too common in war that even a suit of power armor cannot stand up to. In the case that these containers are breached, what would the consequences be? Would the immediate vicinity need to be quarantined? How far could contamination spread? If, god forbid, one of our operators was to perish lets say next to a water supply, and we are unable to quarantine the area due to it being deep behind enemy lines, what then? 2. Wouldn’t transportation and disposal be incredibly costly and time consuming? Procedures need to be in place to insure containers are handled safely and with absolute caution. Security presence would need to be increased so that this does not fall victim to an enemy raid. Quite a list of things that will serve to increase costs of its transportation and proper handling, so even if you were to somehow make it cheaper, the money saved will no doubt just be reallocated towards all the shit needed to get it to the front lines. This is just some shit that immediately came to my mind. If you have an answer, please, I’d love to hear it.
Thats a bad idea in this day and age. You’re opening up the avenue for general usage of CBRNE weaponry. If that’s the way you want to do it, than we would need to restrict usage of power armor to wars fought against terrorist cells and insurgencies within allied nations. Imagine for a moment if we were treading a thin line waging a UN charter war with Russia, suddenly in a deployment these containers are damaged and we’ve now got radioactive contamination on nuclear armed foreign soil. That will immediately lead to cobalt bombing, and within months that leads to nuclear escalation. Death of multiple nations over a suit of power armor? Nah man.
Great, ill need to take your word for it. I could give a shit about what China does, any excuse to escalate with them would be fantastic. I was just worried of contamination of nations in which M.A.D. is a guarantee. Salting the earth of a nation that’s shown to be consistently problematic economically and politically would be like a fun day in the sun.