fiction in action.....

Ah the woes of technological infancy. The admiral looked cross-eyed after taking off the VR goggles, and they expect to have a suit within a year?

I think this article is a bit premature—this is simply an RFP (Request For Proposal) from Admiral McRaven to to military and tech vendors on a pretty loose wishlist, and I'm certain, not meant for public consumption—the accompanying video seems very crude and thrown together.

"for a period of less than one year, and projects requiring in excess of $2 million for that period will require serious justification."
Chicken feed funds. The only thing preventing powered armor from getting traction in the armed forces is the power to weight of the power pack at a reasonable cost.
This is being aggressively pursued in the private sector to satisfy average Joe. He is looking for the $20-30k electric SUV with an idiot proof power cell giving the vehicle its 0-60 in 4 and 400 mile range. Joe also has ADHD so he wants it now now NOW !
It will also take a war where the US is fighting a foe that has equivalent technology before they shift the focus away from the Air to the ground. ie - where US air superiority is matched, forcing the unlikely alternative.
Every little step in this direction will eventually lead us to the creation of the beloved and revered Space Marine. :) Something tells me it will take 400 not 40,000 years before we get him. But we will get him !

@Nairda
Robots will be used in place of humans before the end of this century for warfare.
Humans will not fight each other (atleast when it comes to great powers fighting like US Russia China etc.) but robots will be used instead, it is already happening. What makes you think that anybody would put a human in a suit and send them to fight when you could use a machine which can be made more efficiently and mass produced, has no feelings and has a much lower level of err than compared to a human.

By the time they get the suit ready for a human to use, a full humanoid robot will be also ready and more suitable. A humanoid drone or avatar is probably going to be more useful than just a fancy suit of armour.

Re: FabianC
Suspect it will take a while for machines to get up to speed and be fully autonomous to the point of matching human cunning. The power suit will be an interim solution as there will likely always be one man on the ground providing higher level decisions for the "swarm"
ie - powered suit human commander(s), supported by autonomous: *mechanised (tank like) *smaller mobile weapons platforms (Bigdog like) *recon drones (land and air)
This will be seen as a suitable solution because human elements will mostly be away front the front so casualties will be low.
The combination will work well because for one, humans take it personally and history shows some prefer to be where the fight is even at their peril.
And for the second less nice reason being that human population will explode in the future, so the price of life will be less. Or the price of winning the war is life itself if in the case that future wars are over fresh water or food.

Aye, but aside from the possibility of a 'real' war between two or more major powers, the biggest battle the millitary currently fights is against public opinion and morality. Robots in an old-fashioned battlefield killing armed combatants is one thing, but in the more realistic environment of a city, town or village... 'robots' (human operated or autonomous) accidentally killing innocent civillians would be a serious issue. Available technology or not, there are good reasons you would take humans into combat over killing machines.

It would be much cheaper to ban war.

Okay so we have mentioned space marines - but not robocop, battlemechs or the obvious terminator - seems like it might be a bit scary soon as either we all need to learn to live together or someone wll get smushed