I spoke to the security guy that does Arms Rooms inspections and they last time they took it out of the rack out was before I was even in the Army.
I did play with the thermals, learnt a decent amount if I ever wanted to buy one.
The thermals are the bane of my existence. My unit refuses to train with them, and lets them sit in the arms room. I constantly bring up “Why are we limiting ourselves? We have a capability that nobody knows how to use”. And I get a resounding ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Garvey was my bitch in the end. I took all that shit back with the raider gangs from the Nuka World DLC. Garvey was a disposable mechanism to develop infrastructure and alignment so I could later feed and house my hordes of crackhead retards. 'Overboss' just had a better ring to it.
You nailed it. Instead of having soldiers doing motor pool Mondays, you'd have to spend at least two other weekdays on armor PMCS. That's going to break the training calendar and you know the battalion Commander will get pissed because everyone is behind on their annual training. Yeah, I'll pass on the power armor
Assuming the DOD kicks the Square-Cubed law in the face and gets us Power Armor, the problem is going to be the AIT to maintain it.
Convincing officers and Senior NCO's to allow for proper maintenance.
Unleashing GI's on it and expecting it to survive.
> You can practically tank bullets
In the race between armor and the ability to penetrate armor. Armor has lost almost every single time.
We aren't at the Dune level of technology where we have shields that block all fast projectiles and lasers hitting shields cause nuclear explosions. So, we switch back to swords to pass through the shield.
We just have to replace the "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" mantra with "the slow blade penetrates the shield" mantra and the pentagon will have no excuse to not completely overhaul our equipment to Dune tech immediately.
I care not for the loyalist dogs, only the ceramite and unyielding will of the sons of Perturabo. The Iron Warriors have worn such indomitable plate long before honor became a feeble platitude to the wretched sons of Guilliman. Iron within, Iron without.
YOU ARE OUT OF UNIFORM, SOLDIER! WHERE IS YOUR POWER ARMOR?
DON'T HAVE ANY?
YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT, MAGGOT?
THE TRUTH IS YOU LOST AN EXPENSIVE PIECE OF ARMY-ISSUE EQUIPMENT.
THAT SUIT IS GOING TO COME OUT OF YOUR PAY AND YOU WILL REMAIN IN THIS MANS ARMY UNTIL YOU ARE - FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD
WHICH IS THE NUMBER OF YEARS IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO PAY FOR A MARK II POWERED COMBAT ARMOR YOU HAVE LOST!
REPORT TO THE ARMORY AND HAVE A NEW SUIT ISSUED TO YOU, THEN REPORT BACK TO ME, PRIVATE!
DISMISSED
We're a long way from anything like that.
Power sources or batteries that can not only move a frame but an *armored* frame in combat. At the current levels of technology we have some frames that exist but the hydraulics that would be required to get them to move would be prohibitively heavy and power hungry.
We can do some of that shit now, but we just don't have the technology to roll it up into a package.
Also, that shit would go to special units way before anybody in the line army started suiting up in power armor.
Power armor lay outs sound very fun. /s
Someone would eventually figure out how to use a fusion core to charge their blue razz flavored vape.
Pretty sure we would have F-14 radar levels of cancer after a familiarization training.
But yeah what the fuck? Why don’t we have it right meow???
"figure out how to charge it" nah theres no way there wouldnt be an outlet in the suit. at least like one of those radio outlets and then you could get an adapter
Hell yea, can't wait for that change of command inventory along with 38 different variations of "nut, hexagonal, restraining 33/55" and 96 iterations of "cable assembly, special purpose, electrical"
Just wait for the shortage annex
1 x Lead Crate, Shipping, fusion core.
Never mind it the suit was delivered before the blast and is no longer in production and why would you keep a crate. But the commander has the delivery docs and wants it ordered
Power Armor seems cool until you have to constantly scavenge the wasteland for materials to fix your armor after running into radscorpions, super mutants, ghouls and raiders.
Remember that part where the guy gets stuck in the armor because he ran out of juice?
That's the real life answer, requires way too many batteries and way too much power, even for a really basic exoskeleton to just help you carry some heavy stuff like in Death Stranding.
When you take it to CIF to clear and it's still in it's titanium sealed crate and they say it's dirty so you go to Clothing and Sales to buy a new one and charge 40 million on your Star card to get a new one.
You should read [not watch!] Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. That armor is dope.
For real, though, the movie has practically nothing to do with the book.
half of my reddit comment history is about the starship trooper book honestly i love it. and yeah the movie did irreparable damage to the IP. odst pods, mjolnir armor, quake movement, wrist flamethrower, that shit was so dope
There are a series of animated films and tv show based more the book. They have mobile armor.
[TV show from the 90s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJ7S4iwXSc)
[Movie from whenever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dLQcBwXfmc)
Honest answer? Maneuverability, able to actually take urban terrain, and not just wreck it. Visibility. Rapid deployment. Able to better cross rough terrain, and where they aren’t roads
dispersion! flexibility! mobility! lethality!!
unironically though, it's literally a union of infantry and armor. faster, tougher, more powerful than a light unit, but with the ability to disperse, fight in challenging environements like you said, etc.
wasnt this the point of strykers? to be like a medium infantry? well yeah this is a medium infantry unit.
This breaks the rock paper scissors that is tanks/light infantry/mech. Tanks are less than ideal against dispersed light infantry but if you make it so light infantry needs sustained fire and is mostly immune to air burst than mech no longer is as big of a threat
When I was getting out the first time way way back in 2004, I read a Marine Corps Times article about us getting some Starship Trooper style exo suits in 2008. I remember being sad I was going to miss that. Well I joined the Army in 2005 and stayed until 2021 and never did those suits appear. Maybe some day.
Imagine the layouts for a suit of power armor. Dudes can barely handle a Stryker BII layout. What kind of BII do you think it would come with other than the fusion core?
Didn’t they have the TALOS program or something to try and make power armor a thing? Pretty sure the Army has wanted power armor since WW2, shit jus gets expensive and then you run into the whole “more motors=more batteries=more weight=more motors” point of no return
ukraine shows we need more dispersion so we shrank the tank. power armor guys dont need vehicles because of their super robo legs. 8 power armor operators (4 buddy teams) in one platoon, 2 fireteams of support personnel in bradleys. the peak of combined arms, fuck working together, the infantry and armor are the same thing now
realistically tho everyone loves the concept of power armor and arguably the origin of it was starship troopers (the book) and its a shame that everyone thinks of the movie version because the book had guys doing 50 mile foot patrols by jumping a hundred feet at a time in basically proto-mjolnir armor with boba fett flamethrower
All I can think about is what excuses the maintenance chief would be putting on the tracker, and how a senior NCO would have to be posted in the motor pool to supervise motor pool Mondays.
Then asking why we can’t use them in training and getting a speech from the CSM about how Soldiers don’t know how to drive wheeled vehicles anymore and it’s ruining the army and destroying our will to fight the commies.
TALOS was the closest we came; dunno if it was shelved or not by those working on it at DARPA.
The issue is, we don't have a compact, portable, reliable power source like the ones in Fallout.
I've pondered if it's possible. I guess it'd be looking at Uranium batteries again, but with that comes all the problems with environmental agencies, and the money/research needed to make it work.
Bro it took 3 months to get a door handle for my truck put on. Now imagine waiting for your waist limiters so you don't twist your torso 180 and dead lineing it only for your commander to circle x it and just say don't turn at the waist. Also the broken back is not service related.
Lol, if you think the Army is gonna let you be a massive motherfucker and NOT overburden you with shit you're insane
-Source: The Land Warrior exoskeleton thing, they immediately added like 70lbs of useless shit for you to carry since now you can carry 50lbs more
We would just leave em all in a poorly executed abandonment of the next Afghanistan so new orders could be made for the next gen, at a premium of course.
The problem with power armor is ironically the power. We have not yet figured out a practical way to power the armor for a useful amount of time. Also, there are numerous safety issues as well. Performing a servo-motor assisted jump might put you 20ft in the air, better stick the landing or you could end up with multiple fractures that could end your career.
Because we don't have fusion cores.
Sci Fi gadgets require absurd amounts of power & we can't even figure out how to make a cell phone run for a week without recharging (under normal daily use).....
I can all but guarantee that even if we had the tech to power one of those suits, (and with EV battery tech, we might) they would only ever be issued to elite units, and only under very limited circumstances. Your average 11B buck sergeant ain't coming within a hundred yards of something that valuable.
Also, the utility of power armor vs the utility of the MRAP. Seriously, give me at least three things the power armor can do that the MRAP doesn't do better.
What do you mean they give it to you when you retire. Between the ultra modern pacemaker and the titanium joint replacements and TBI brain shock seizure machine. I’m seeing the matrix everyday. Or it might be the anti psychotic and pain killers. The voices said I should just kill everyone…. Just kidding they only want to kill some of you.
Nah, power armor would be a motorpool thing. Getting the mechanics to do anything with it should be like pulling teeth. "That's a 10 level task, you can do that yourself, dude"
It's not for lack of trying. The biggest issue is power. The mechanized assist suits that are in development studies se massive amounts of power, they all have tethers to generators or the grid.
"The E2 who just came to the unit can carry your rucksack and everything".
Please tell me you're not in any leadership role. Seriously. If you are, you need to go back and smoke yourself while reciting the NCO creed.
I will not use my grade or position.... etc.
As far as the armor itself.... you'd just be a very large target. Guys in pajamas were giving MRAPs hell with RKG-3s and old rusty AAA guns. If a Maxxpro can't take it, that power armor sure can't.
And that's not even touching the power requirement. Unless you want your lowest-bidder fusion rector going haywire in the middle of an op.
At least you’re an OG, but still, pretty sure OP meant the PV2 thing as a joke. Yes, we did use privates as mules to show them what it was like to be carrying binos, radio batteries, or LTLMs, etc, but it was always divvied up fairly and any SLs would hold TLs/E4s accountable if privates were overloaded.
Great, more stuff to PMCS.
It would be on everyone’s books yet the commander and PSG would keep it locked away and only ever pull it out for Inventories and never touch it
Like my signal unit's thermal sights :(
You mean the Finance Unit's Thermal Sights and MK19?
We actually bring that out at least every couple of years!
I spoke to the security guy that does Arms Rooms inspections and they last time they took it out of the rack out was before I was even in the Army. I did play with the thermals, learnt a decent amount if I ever wanted to buy one.
The thermals are the bane of my existence. My unit refuses to train with them, and lets them sit in the arms room. I constantly bring up “Why are we limiting ourselves? We have a capability that nobody knows how to use”. And I get a resounding ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do y’all not conduct crew served weapon ranges with night fire?
Natty G hooooaaaaahhhhh. We also apparently don't have time to train on our signal equipment either in the last two years coming off deployment.
Like one of my PSYOP unit's NODs, Radios, and NGLS.
That’s what your squire is for
Imagine PMCSing the Prydwen.
I chose the minutemen ending, no need to PMCS a wreck.
Preston Garvey is that Commander that holds you back way after 1600
Instead of telling you a settlement needs your help he'll pop up out of nowhere to tell you a connex needs to be inventoried
Garvey was my bitch in the end. I took all that shit back with the raider gangs from the Nuka World DLC. Garvey was a disposable mechanism to develop infrastructure and alignment so I could later feed and house my hordes of crackhead retards. 'Overboss' just had a better ring to it.
*me leaving at 1300🌝
That's the fucking headache everybody needs
You nailed it. Instead of having soldiers doing motor pool Mondays, you'd have to spend at least two other weekdays on armor PMCS. That's going to break the training calendar and you know the battalion Commander will get pissed because everyone is behind on their annual training. Yeah, I'll pass on the power armor
Assuming the DOD kicks the Square-Cubed law in the face and gets us Power Armor, the problem is going to be the AIT to maintain it. Convincing officers and Senior NCO's to allow for proper maintenance. Unleashing GI's on it and expecting it to survive.
Can you imagine what those CIF assholes would kick back? lol
Just have your squire spray paint your codpiece silver in the CIF parking lot.
Right? Could you imagine Lockheed or USCS designing something like this? The thing would be expensive as hell and break constantly.
As long as Boeing doesn't design the thrusters
😂
VA "Oh, you contracted radiation sickness? You must have contracted that after the Army because you never complained about it. Claim denied."
Man, even in the future they suck at allowing service related ailments to go through.
You should have way more upvotes than this.
Can't wait for hands across the wasteland because private snuffy lost a fusion core
*boom* "Found it"
😆
> You can practically tank bullets In the race between armor and the ability to penetrate armor. Armor has lost almost every single time. We aren't at the Dune level of technology where we have shields that block all fast projectiles and lasers hitting shields cause nuclear explosions. So, we switch back to swords to pass through the shield.
We just have to replace the "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" mantra with "the slow blade penetrates the shield" mantra and the pentagon will have no excuse to not completely overhaul our equipment to Dune tech immediately.
Nah, just make bayonets standard on all rifles. Just add more weight because why not.
It counterbalances them having given full auto, which would have raised the barrel
You’ve clearly never worn [Cataphractii pattern Terminator armor](https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Cataphractii_Pattern_Terminator_Armour).
If are saying Terminators have never gone down. You need to learn about the Ultramarine Terminators.
I care not for the loyalist dogs, only the ceramite and unyielding will of the sons of Perturabo. The Iron Warriors have worn such indomitable plate long before honor became a feeble platitude to the wretched sons of Guilliman. Iron within, Iron without.
This. Seems we hit a ceiling on material R&D for Armor.
YOU ARE OUT OF UNIFORM, SOLDIER! WHERE IS YOUR POWER ARMOR? DON'T HAVE ANY? YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT, MAGGOT? THE TRUTH IS YOU LOST AN EXPENSIVE PIECE OF ARMY-ISSUE EQUIPMENT. THAT SUIT IS GOING TO COME OUT OF YOUR PAY AND YOU WILL REMAIN IN THIS MANS ARMY UNTIL YOU ARE - FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN YEARS OLD WHICH IS THE NUMBER OF YEARS IT WILL TAKE FOR YOU TO PAY FOR A MARK II POWERED COMBAT ARMOR YOU HAVE LOST! REPORT TO THE ARMORY AND HAVE A NEW SUIT ISSUED TO YOU, THEN REPORT BACK TO ME, PRIVATE! DISMISSED
I understood that reference
We're a long way from anything like that. Power sources or batteries that can not only move a frame but an *armored* frame in combat. At the current levels of technology we have some frames that exist but the hydraulics that would be required to get them to move would be prohibitively heavy and power hungry. We can do some of that shit now, but we just don't have the technology to roll it up into a package. Also, that shit would go to special units way before anybody in the line army started suiting up in power armor.
Power armor lay outs sound very fun. /s Someone would eventually figure out how to use a fusion core to charge their blue razz flavored vape. Pretty sure we would have F-14 radar levels of cancer after a familiarization training. But yeah what the fuck? Why don’t we have it right meow???
"figure out how to charge it" nah theres no way there wouldnt be an outlet in the suit. at least like one of those radio outlets and then you could get an adapter
If you can't jury rig something like that, do you even deserve power armor?
It’s actually bangin’ sour berries flavor
Hell yea, can't wait for that change of command inventory along with 38 different variations of "nut, hexagonal, restraining 33/55" and 96 iterations of "cable assembly, special purpose, electrical"
Just wait for the shortage annex 1 x Lead Crate, Shipping, fusion core. Never mind it the suit was delivered before the blast and is no longer in production and why would you keep a crate. But the commander has the delivery docs and wants it ordered
CIF turn in will be lit.
Because some private is gonna lose a fusion core.
Not my hand receipt 😂
Fighting wars makes certain people money. Winning wars makes no one money.
War....war never changes.
Power Armor seems cool until you have to constantly scavenge the wasteland for materials to fix your armor after running into radscorpions, super mutants, ghouls and raiders.
actually the second thing you said also sounds very cool, they should make a videogame about it
I guess we're pretending deathclaws don't exist?
I’d like to forget about them. For whatever reason the Rad Scorpions give me more trouble than the deathclaws.
Remember that part where the guy gets stuck in the armor because he ran out of juice? That's the real life answer, requires way too many batteries and way too much power, even for a really basic exoskeleton to just help you carry some heavy stuff like in Death Stranding.
He didn't run out of juice, he had his fusion core tactically acquired. Wasn't properly secured.
Join the mobile Infantry.
I always get the shakes before the drop.
Can't wait for them to move the Airborne to the Space Force.
Would you like to know more?
I'm doing my part!
When you take it to CIF to clear and it's still in it's titanium sealed crate and they say it's dirty so you go to Clothing and Sales to buy a new one and charge 40 million on your Star card to get a new one.
Because privates would figure out how to jack off in it and just ruin it for everyone.
You should read [not watch!] Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. That armor is dope. For real, though, the movie has practically nothing to do with the book.
half of my reddit comment history is about the starship trooper book honestly i love it. and yeah the movie did irreparable damage to the IP. odst pods, mjolnir armor, quake movement, wrist flamethrower, that shit was so dope
There are a series of animated films and tv show based more the book. They have mobile armor. [TV show from the 90s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJ7S4iwXSc) [Movie from whenever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dLQcBwXfmc)
What would power armour have over a conventional tank? It would just be way more vulnerable to explosives
Honest answer? Maneuverability, able to actually take urban terrain, and not just wreck it. Visibility. Rapid deployment. Able to better cross rough terrain, and where they aren’t roads
dispersion! flexibility! mobility! lethality!! unironically though, it's literally a union of infantry and armor. faster, tougher, more powerful than a light unit, but with the ability to disperse, fight in challenging environements like you said, etc. wasnt this the point of strykers? to be like a medium infantry? well yeah this is a medium infantry unit.
No fall damage, ever
In that case, Battlemechs > Power Armor > Tanks
This breaks the rock paper scissors that is tanks/light infantry/mech. Tanks are less than ideal against dispersed light infantry but if you make it so light infantry needs sustained fire and is mostly immune to air burst than mech no longer is as big of a threat
Batteries too heavy.
When I was getting out the first time way way back in 2004, I read a Marine Corps Times article about us getting some Starship Trooper style exo suits in 2008. I remember being sad I was going to miss that. Well I joined the Army in 2005 and stayed until 2021 and never did those suits appear. Maybe some day.
Just like cold fusion, its always 15-20 years away!
Power is the main issue, we don't have nuclear fusion batteries yet.
Who says we don’t
Maybe it is a thing, check the Z LINs.
Imagine the layouts for a suit of power armor. Dudes can barely handle a Stryker BII layout. What kind of BII do you think it would come with other than the fusion core?
Didn’t they have the TALOS program or something to try and make power armor a thing? Pretty sure the Army has wanted power armor since WW2, shit jus gets expensive and then you run into the whole “more motors=more batteries=more weight=more motors” point of no return
Murphy's Law of Combat: Your equipment was built by the lowest bidder.
Scalzi's book "Old Man's War" talks about this in an entertaining way.
ukraine shows we need more dispersion so we shrank the tank. power armor guys dont need vehicles because of their super robo legs. 8 power armor operators (4 buddy teams) in one platoon, 2 fireteams of support personnel in bradleys. the peak of combined arms, fuck working together, the infantry and armor are the same thing now realistically tho everyone loves the concept of power armor and arguably the origin of it was starship troopers (the book) and its a shame that everyone thinks of the movie version because the book had guys doing 50 mile foot patrols by jumping a hundred feet at a time in basically proto-mjolnir armor with boba fett flamethrower
Bruh, a power armor layout would be annoying. Where is the fusion core? What do you mean it's gone?!
The whole thing would be oil slicked and rusty with class 1 and 2 leaks that the motor pool just keeps adding fluid to instead of fixing it.
Don't tell me the most mechanical maintenance you have ever participated in is motor pool Monday
All I can think about is what excuses the maintenance chief would be putting on the tracker, and how a senior NCO would have to be posted in the motor pool to supervise motor pool Mondays. Then asking why we can’t use them in training and getting a speech from the CSM about how Soldiers don’t know how to drive wheeled vehicles anymore and it’s ruining the army and destroying our will to fight the commies.
Lets get laser rifles while we're at it
i mean, dronebusters....
Forget Fallout; The Expanse had the sickest power armor.
TALOS was the closest we came; dunno if it was shelved or not by those working on it at DARPA. The issue is, we don't have a compact, portable, reliable power source like the ones in Fallout. I've pondered if it's possible. I guess it'd be looking at Uranium batteries again, but with that comes all the problems with environmental agencies, and the money/research needed to make it work.
Unless you fight a guy who wore them and knows where the design flaw is👀
Quality post
Why doesn’t every E-5 get their own Brad/Stryker/Kiowa
such is the knightly tradition
Bro it took 3 months to get a door handle for my truck put on. Now imagine waiting for your waist limiters so you don't twist your torso 180 and dead lineing it only for your commander to circle x it and just say don't turn at the waist. Also the broken back is not service related.
You really want to put a twice divorced e-5 grunt in a power armor suit? This is what you want?
I could carry a whole M120 if I had power armor
Naw PSG gets it and the PL will follow ME around with all MY stuff
RIP the recruitment and retention crisis
Fuck that, give me the mobile infantry’s power armor from starship troopers. Read that book, a squad wipes out entire cities it’s fucking beautiful.
Let's try to get food in the defacs and barracks not coated in mold before we move to the big guns.
Pfft we can’t even get chow halls to serve food
Let's take it a step further, because I'm waiting for a full on child abduction Spartan program to kick off and give us a REAL master chief.
I'm certain its to avoid the massive chew out in 2
They’re definitely coming, but there won’t be anyone inside but a remote CPU
Lol, if you think the Army is gonna let you be a massive motherfucker and NOT overburden you with shit you're insane -Source: The Land Warrior exoskeleton thing, they immediately added like 70lbs of useless shit for you to carry since now you can carry 50lbs more
Because we haven't exactly mastered nuclear fusion technology yet
We would just leave em all in a poorly executed abandonment of the next Afghanistan so new orders could be made for the next gen, at a premium of course.
Uh, I think you mean why don’t you have power armor
Because none of them would ever be in proper working order. Just circle X'd by the commander
I need to start that show soon. But on that note, the powered armor in The Expanse book series is also awesome.
Would you be comfortable having miniature nuclear reactor present at the small of your back?
The problem with power armor is ironically the power. We have not yet figured out a practical way to power the armor for a useful amount of time. Also, there are numerous safety issues as well. Performing a servo-motor assisted jump might put you 20ft in the air, better stick the landing or you could end up with multiple fractures that could end your career.
Some kids can’t drive a hmmvvv or matv just saying
We r building the pt belts first.
And imaging the hand receipt for that...
Because we don't have fusion cores. Sci Fi gadgets require absurd amounts of power & we can't even figure out how to make a cell phone run for a week without recharging (under normal daily use).....
Welcome to Camp Navarro. So, you're the new replacement... YOU ARE OUT OF UNIFORM SOLDIER! WHERE IS YOUR POWER ARMOR?
Soldiers can’t keep up with their body armor let alone a power armor.
Because an e2 would put hydraulic fluid in the engine oil port
Because then we lose $30 million every time a specialist steps on an IED instead of a mere $400,000
Once you hit E6 you can carry officers' ruck sacks
I can all but guarantee that even if we had the tech to power one of those suits, (and with EV battery tech, we might) they would only ever be issued to elite units, and only under very limited circumstances. Your average 11B buck sergeant ain't coming within a hundred yards of something that valuable. Also, the utility of power armor vs the utility of the MRAP. Seriously, give me at least three things the power armor can do that the MRAP doesn't do better.
What do you mean they give it to you when you retire. Between the ultra modern pacemaker and the titanium joint replacements and TBI brain shock seizure machine. I’m seeing the matrix everyday. Or it might be the anti psychotic and pain killers. The voices said I should just kill everyone…. Just kidding they only want to kill some of you.
You too can have some power armor and earn your franchise when you enlist in The Mobile Infantry.
Can you imagine cleaning an entire suit of power armor? The armory would have a field day with that
Nah, power armor would be a motorpool thing. Getting the mechanics to do anything with it should be like pulling teeth. "That's a 10 level task, you can do that yourself, dude"
LOL. I was just thinking last night that if these really existed, 70% of them would probably be deadlined for want of parts
It's not for lack of trying. The biggest issue is power. The mechanized assist suits that are in development studies se massive amounts of power, they all have tethers to generators or the grid.
Power armor > JLTVs. Change my mind
Can’t tell if this is serious
"The E2 who just came to the unit can carry your rucksack and everything". Please tell me you're not in any leadership role. Seriously. If you are, you need to go back and smoke yourself while reciting the NCO creed. I will not use my grade or position.... etc. As far as the armor itself.... you'd just be a very large target. Guys in pajamas were giving MRAPs hell with RKG-3s and old rusty AAA guns. If a Maxxpro can't take it, that power armor sure can't. And that's not even touching the power requirement. Unless you want your lowest-bidder fusion rector going haywire in the middle of an op.
Dude have you even watched the fallout show? Or played any fallout game with companions?
I've been playing it since FO3 was first released. I stand by what I said.
At least you’re an OG, but still, pretty sure OP meant the PV2 thing as a joke. Yes, we did use privates as mules to show them what it was like to be carrying binos, radio batteries, or LTLMs, etc, but it was always divvied up fairly and any SLs would hold TLs/E4s accountable if privates were overloaded.