Russia has started to test a sleek new super soldier suit that will endow its wearer with superhuman capabilities.
The suit looks just like the exoskeletal armors we have seen in science fiction movies, such as that worn by the fictional mechanical police officer in ‘RoboCop’ or the Stormtroopers in ‘Star Wars’.
The prototype military wearable, known as the Ratnik-3 ‘Soldier of the Future’ suit, was developed by military firm TsNiiTochMash and was first displayed at the Army 2018 International Military and Technical Forum in Moscow.
Built of titanium, the suit is designed to incredibly enhance the strength and stamina of the wearer while its body armor layer protects him from any incoming shrapnel and bullets.
The suit allows the soldiers to run at a super-human speed while also carrying huge amounts of weight with them. Still, that’s not all!
The most amazing thing about this military exoskeleton is that it allows infantry soldiers to fire machine guns using one-hand and that too with ‘computer-like accuracy’.
‘We have already held trials for the prototype of the active exoskeleton,’ Chief designer Oleg Faustov told Russian news agency TASS.
‘It really enhances a serviceman’s physical abilities. For example, the tester was able to shoot from a machine-gun only with one hand and accurately hit targets.’
The prototype exoskeletal suit has nearly got everything a soldier can desire but it is currently being held back by one major issue – the designers haven’t yet succeeded in building a room in it for storing local power source.
It means that a soldier can wear the suit for a limited amount of time before its battery runs out making it dead weight.
The developers, however, are confident that they will be able to address its battery issue before the suit is introduced to battlefields in 2025.
The suit was developed at the Central Research Institute for Precision Machine Building, a weapons development center based in Moscow.
Oleg Chikarev, the deputy chief of weapons systems at the institute, said last year: ‘On display is our vision of the suit we would like to develop within the next couple of years.’
Chikarev added that the suit was being developed alongside several Russian firms which contributed to different elements of the design according to their specializations.
‘Features of the suit include a task light on the helmet for examining things like weapons and maps,’ Andy Lynch, of Odin Systems, a military equipment company, told MailOnline.
‘It also has a pop-up display that can be used for tasks like examining a plan of the battlefield.’