A week ago, Gizmodo published a series photos of "High-Tech Soldiers of the Future" featuring the "Future Soldier" programs being made by countries which usually either the budget or the will to develop such programs. It is always best if they have both since even having the budget but not the will leads to wastage and frustration if done with the will but no budget.

Future Soldier Programs are always expensive exercises which do not lead to all concepts being implemented at once. Researchers will always prioritise the most promising (which does not always mean to be the most cost-effective). Thus, most, if not all programs are conducted by developed countries. The exception is Sudan which is developing its own program but its concepts are generations behind what leading countries are doing. Still, the effort is there

Overall, even with all the contraptions as shown in the various photos at Gizmodo, Warfare will always be won by the most prepared in terms of information, equipment, and personnel. For now, the biggest problem of these programs is power, as the need to juice up comms, wearable computers, sighting devices, thermal and night vision devices have contributed to an increasing load for the soldier. But then, there are exoskeleton projects that may negate that problem and make feasible a "super soldier."

(Photo Source: Bundeswehr Gladius Program,  Heer/Ralf twin)

But for airsoft geardos, just looking at the photos are something for them to make a list to "collect" replicas or even non-working reproductions to create some "Future Soldier" impression just like those geardos who did Ghost Recon or any of the FPS video games loadouts. The photos contain a lot of "product concepts" that some ACM gear manufacturer would like to produce just to satisfy the geardos.

What do you think which among these programs show some great promise or have made great strides in development? Most of these are made by NATO members or main allies of the USA and I wonder if there is some information sharing or join project development. It's rather important that equipment developed from the programs should be able to interoperate with standard equipment or else it would be useless to operate such in cooperative missions.

Well, for now, it's more drooling over the photos of these "Future Soldiers" at Gizmodo, so off you go then and click on the link to start looking at the them.