The heat didn’t just sit on the skin; it hummed with the electric whine of the hardware that supposedly made them gods of the battlefield.

Staff Sergeant Marcus Vance checked his Integrated Helmet System. A translucent overlay painted the landscape in shades of infrared and thermal data. To his left, a persistent green chevron tagged a squad member’s vitals: heart rate, hydration levels, ammunition count. Behind him, a micro-drone—no larger than a hummingbird—tethered to his shoulder, providing a 360-degree augmented reality view of the valley ahead. He didn’t just see the terrain; he saw the digital ghost of every potential threat, calculated by predictive algorithms that had analyzed two decades of insurgent tactics.