DARPA Research Aims To Make Halo-Style Super Soldiers

By Brian Williams | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Running at Olympic speeds, going for days without food, healing at an accelerated rate, and carrying enough gear to make a professional bodybuilder cry like a baby: sounds a little like Master Chief from the Halo series doesn’t it? Well now scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are looking at turning this all too familiar video game protagonist into a reality, and just like the Spartans from Halo, they want to do it with genetic manipulation.

Novelist Simon Conway revealed the plans to make a genetically altered super soldier after he was allowed special behind-the-scenes access to DARPA. Conway seems to have used his access as the inspiration for his newest book Rockcreek Park , which revolves around a dead body found in Washington, D.C. that appears to have superhuman qualities. About the research, Conway said…

 It’s all about improving the efficiency of energy creation in the body. Soldiers would be able to run at Olympic speeds, carry large weights and go without sleep and without food…

Although it isn’t exactly news that the military wants to make a better soldier through science, progress being made in this area certainly is. According to The Daily Mail, some aspects of the super soldier program have already been a success. One such success was a test that was preformed by U.S. military helicopter pilots who took a drug that turned off their body’s natural sleep triggers and let them stay awake for a 40 hour stretch without any decrease in mental performance. In fact, after remaining awake for two days, the test subjects actually showed an increase in their ability to concentrate.

DARPA is also putting serious effort into finding a way for wounded soldiers to re-grow lost limbs, and looking at ways to make the way the human body converts fat into energy more efficient, thereby reducing a soldier’s need for food on long missions. Once you factor in the work DARPA is already doing trying to create armored super strength exoskeletons for soldiers in the field its hard not to picture the soldier of the future being the spitting image of Master Chief. Let’s just hope they don’t teabag their enemies as much.

If this research pans out, then in the future, U.S. Military recruiting ads may have a little less Godsmack and a little more of this…