SOCOM’s TALOS ‘Iron Man’ suit will be delayed another year

Way back in 2013, SOCOM Commander Adm. William McRaven announced plans to develop a high-mobility suit of armor that could better protect the first special operators tasked with entering contested spaces. This new suit was to be developed around an exoskeleton that not only permitted a high degree of mobility, but also bolstered the operator’s natural strength and balance — a necessary augmentation to support ballistic protection and a suite of on-board systems intended to aid in the operator’s ability to engage with opponents once inside.

The program, called TALOS for Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit, was quickly dubbed the “Iron Man” suit by the press, drawing comparisons to the Marvel super hero that uses a bulletproof exo-suit of his own (though a more apt comparison may be the Power Armor depicted in the Fallout Series, as shown above). The first four years of development saw a budget of $80 million, with testing of a near-complete system expected to take place in summer of 2018, but now as summer approached, SOCOM has announced that testing will be pushed back for another year.

TALOS is a unique engineering challenge that seeks to accelerate the development of emerging technologies across multiple domains simultaneously and integrate these disparate technologies into a fully functioning system that is intended to provide decisive advantage to future [special operations forces] in close combat,” Army Col. James Miller, director of Joint Acquisition Task Force (JATF) TALOS, explained about the delay.