HYPER ENABLED OPERATOR
FROM TALOS TO HEO Supporting the First Truth BY SCOTT R. GOURLEY
are more important than Hardware.” y “Humans Standing as the first “SOF truth,” that observation reflects the criticality of special operators across U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) elements. Consequently, it could be argued that the hardware projects and programs directly supporting those human operators have a unique importance within the SOF materiel arena. A recent representative example of one of those projects is the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS), which was quickly branded with a public persona as “SOCOM’s ‘Iron Man’ suit.” Although never intended to be a fielded system, the research and development effort is already supporting a range of warfighter needs, while establishing the foundation for follow-on efforts in both special operations forces (SOF) and broader military communities. “TALOS was initially envisioned to meet the need to protect the operator at ‘the fatal funnel,’ at the most vulnerable point, by providing enhanced survivability features,” explained Col.Alex MacCalman, former chief engineer and current director for Joint Acquisition Task Force TALOS. “From there we went very quickly into the solution space of deriving an exoskeleton powered suit that would provide full body armor protection. We then tapped into enhanced situational awareness, and increased surgical lethality. Those were the four original tenets: survivability, human performance, situational awareness and surgical lethality.” Characterizing the TALOS project as “a great experiment for SOCOM to get after something disruptive,” MacCalman offered, “Disruptive innovation certainly involves our ability to get after changing tactics, techniques, and procedures; how we do business. And we knew from the get-go that SOCOM had to do this in a nontraditional way and from a lot of fronts, not only just from an acquisition dimension, but also teaming up with nontraditional partners and assembling the right expertise in forums and venues to get aggregate insights across these different perspectives with the operator in mind. In fact, in many ways, the TALOS project pioneered many of SOCOM’s abilities and prototyping endeavors now evident in the SOFWERX ecosystem. That has been a great takeaway from the TALOS experience.” Elaborating on SOCOM’s early TALOS work with non-traditional partners, he pointed to “a lot of rapid prototyping events with the right people in the right forums to get an understanding of what the SOF needs were at the time. “Those vendors went off in different directions with a vision of operator needs in those areas,” he said. “And things emerged. Things were catalyzed by that. There was investment in some of
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Special Operations Outlook
