SOCOM's Iron Man Suit: A Worthy Moonshot.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Editor's Notes

It was six years ago at SOFIC in Tampa, Florida, when then-Special Operations Command Commander Navy Adm. William H. McRaven first mentioned a technology development program that would go on to be popularly known as the "Iron Man suit."

While there were few details at the time, six months later at the National Defense Industrial Association's Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict conference in Washington, D.C, the command's science and technology enterprise had a slick, animated feature of a commando, crashing through a door and standing there as bullets bounced off his suit of armor as if they were nothing more than a swarm of pesky mosquitoes.

The tactical assault light operator suit, TALOS, made it in the main stream press as McRaven himself likened it to the popular Marvel super hero. The YouTube video was replayed widely on news sites and had thousands of hits. Placing the words "iron" and "man" in a headline created clickbait for military technology reporters, and the association with a popular movie character brought SOCOM publicity it could never buy.

McRaven's vision for the technology was exactly as shown in the video. It was an independently operating suit of armor that would protect the first commando in a raid to enter a room where insurgents might be holed up.

Special operators for the good part of a decade had been carrying out missions in Iraq and Afghanistan that required them to track down and--if possible--capture insurgent leaders, bombmakers and other assorted bad guys. That often required raids taking place in buildings.

The first special operator to go through a door was left vulnerable to bullets and bombs. McRaven wanted TALOS to protect that commando. Unlike the Iron Man character, this suit would not shoot energy beams or fly.

McRaven asked Congress for $80 million to develop the suit and he set a deadline of five years for a working prototype.

Six years later at a SO/LIC talk, Acquisition Executive James Smith went through an entire presentation on the command's science and technology priorities but never mentioned TALOS. A year prior, officials announced that TALOS' working prototype would be delayed a year, but they expressed confidence that it would be done.

With no TALOS update forthcoming, National Defense asked Smith in the Q&A for an update.

Smith said TALOS had fallen short of its goals. "It's not ready for prime time in a close-combat environment," he replied.

While not ready for the mission McRaven...