This monograph is presented to further a discussion that has persisted for decades, namely: Is it possible to reduce the weight of the combat load on the in-fantry soldier that will allow for nearly unimpeded speed and tempo in foot mobile operations? Since the mid-1990’s the Marine Corps has advanced future operating concepts that seek to achieve the promise of maneuver warfare, that is, the capability to maneuver against the weaknesses of an adversary so rapidly that they are unable to respond to the multiple threats presented across the battlefield, thus shattering their cohesion and decision making ability. An impediment to achieving this endstate has been the fact that foot mobile infantry forces are so overloaded with equipment that they have been unable to maneuver at the desired speed and with the desired distribution on the battlefield to achieve this maneuver effect. Through the ages three solutions have been attempted to reduce the load on the average infantryman: reduce the weight of equipment, transfer the load to some vehicle or beast of burden, and improve individual fitness and endurance. Even as the weight of individual components is decreasing, more pieces of equipment are being added to the combat load for communications, target acquisition, navigation, self protection, and night operating capability. Organizational loads are also increasing as infantry companies are now being given command and control responsibilities that were once reserved for a battalion or higher. There-fore, it is time to explore another alternative to weight mitigation that has never been tried before: wearable exoskeleton technology. The Marine Corps has acknowledged that not enough aviation or vehicles assets exist to move the force in the initial stages of a forcible entry operation, thus, the Marine Corps needs to provide every Marine with the capability to carry the load in the form of some wearable mechani-cal augmentation, which is what an exoskeleton provides.

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