This is our current tech level, a cable dependant powered exoskeleton. Bulky, slow and unwieldy, nevertheless this piece of technology will lead to the development of mecha. Don't you believe me? Well, this is how it all starts! First, you make the technology portable, less power dependent – you miniaturize and improve. Then you give it to the troops. Sure, at first that exoskeleton will be expensive and not many a soldier will be equipped with it. Soon after though, multiple tech companies will bid for that patent and start developing their own versions of that technology not only for the military but private sector use too. Imagine the unique advantages that this technology could unlock for building, ship and other construction processes, with the addition of just a few powered suits!
The true breakthrough though will come, when someone manages to successfully put lightweight and strong enough armor over that exoskeleton! And then we have the beginning blocks for creating a true mecha. The so-called powered armor, a mini mech if you will, is a small piloted machine with the firepower comparable to a section, maybe even one whole infantry squad. Soon those suits will dominate the battlefields of our future.
Yes, something like that might be the reality, soldiers will have to deal with on the battlefields in perhaps 20 years or so. Robotics and computer technologies advance at such an amazing pace, that even that might not be the end of it all. More advances will be made, and quickly, for the balance between the powers that be has to be kept. New and bigger mecha will be developed and built. Ever bigger, equipped with more and deadlier weapons. The addition of these and other such machines of war will revolutionize modern warfare and in turn rewrite many a strategic doctrine.
Sometimes science fiction authors imagine wars being fought entirely by machines. What can the future development of AI bring? Do we really want to design, build and use autonomous battle drones armed to the teeth? Even such that are able to carry nuclear weapons? I am of the sound opinion, that IF you have that technology, the option to construct and field mecha – do so with caution. A human pilot must always be the integral part of this relationship between robotics and weaponry, lest we dig our own graves when our AI rebel against us or go mad…
