The concept of having an "Iron Man" suit to be used by Special Operations forces has been reported about since last year. The concept is called the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) and Popular Airsoft has written about the future SpecOps Suit last October 2013. The concept is to give superhuman strength, ballistic protection, high-technology equipment, and much more.

Thus, calling TALOS as the "Iron Man" suit is not far from the truth, and if the Pentagon gets its way it might have something which Tony Stark would give his seal of approval, according to the Wall Street Journal.

With a target of having a prototype this Summer, as hoped by USSOCOM Commander, Navy Adm. William McRaven, Hollywood special effects company, Legacy Effects, has been tasked to do the prototype and under pressure to  meet the deadline this year. The company has been tapped due to its experience in creating the suits for RoboCop, Iron Man, and Captain America. While research departments of such as DARPA and RDECOM can dabble in the technologies that U.S. soldiers will need, Legacy Effects has the design people who will visualize the final suit that has the technologies to meet the TALOS requirements.

Speaking of technologies, the tools are already there, night vision optics, ballistic armor, exoskeleton, enhanced situational awareness devices (think Google Glass), communications, and head protection system. However these technologies were developed separately from each other and the designs never factored in for use in a future super soldier suit like TALOS.

Indeed it is a big challenge for Legacy Effects knowing that their prototype(s) is something that will help enhance soldiers' capabilities and also help save their lives. Even before that, they have to design putting the technologies together into the TALOS suit without making it bulky that moving with the suit would be extremely awkward.  Even the suits they designed for the movies which are very sleek to look at would still be impractical to accommodate the present technologies until there are more advances in miniaturization, portable power units, and power management that will make such suit designs feasible.

Most probably, the initial designs would be close to what Tom Cruise wore in the recent film Edge of Tomorrow where he played a soldier in an Exo Suit and armor closer to present day exoskeleton designs from DARPA and other research institutes.

So that means there will be some bulkiness to be expected unless there are some advances being utilized in the design which haven't been reported and kept secret while the designers work on the requirements of the Pentagon.

Legacy Effects will soon unveil the prototypes this summer, with the latest being July 2014, which means this month. Thus, we will soon be treated to what might become the future suit of SpecOps operators if given the approval and budget by the Pentagon.