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In Iron Man 2, when the armed forces analyzed Tony Stark's Mark II armor, why didn't they build an army of them?
Before anyone says they knew how to operate it, but not how it worked, remember that they modified it quite a lot when they turned it into War Machine, so they obviously must have figured out how it works...
They didn't have the arc reactor technology. Presumably, even with a working prototype (like the one Rhodes took) they weren't able to reproduce it.
Stark's real breakthrough is the miniaturized arc reactor.
James "Rhodey" Rhodes "confiscated" the Mark II armor from Tony during the birthday party and flew it back to the military base.
But it was Hammer Industries who upgraded it into the War Machine suit. Hammer Industries was also contracted to build an army of suits similar to the Iron Man suit. Instead of suits, Ivan Vanko built Hammer Drones.
Because Vanko was the engineer/developer, he was able to install a back door allowing Vanko to take control of the War Machine armor.
From the wikia:
After the fight he took the armor to an U.S. Air Force base. After he took it there they called Justin Hammer so he can add more powerful weapons to the armor. After he edited it they took the armor to the Stark Expo so they could present it there with the Hammer Drones. Stark arrived in his latest armor, the Mark VI, to reclaim the Mark II along with confronting his foes. He tried to force Hammer to reveal Ivan Vanko's location and get Rhodes to help him in his mission. However, Vanko took control of the armor and the Hammer Drones to kill Stark.
Even with the reverse-engineering done by Hammer Industries, the best they appeared to be able to do in a timely fashion was integrate weapon systems onto the outer shell of the armor including machine-guns, rocket launchers, and other external weaponry.
This presumes Stark had already built into the armor the capacity to utilize external components. It's unlikely Hammer was able to do much more than that given his initial timeframe.
War Machine from Iron Man 2.
- In the Iron Man comics, Stark's technology was not only proprietary it was nearly impossible for most scientists and engineers to duplicate it. Stark Enterprises, for a time, licensed his Guardsman armor design as a means of allowing the government to utilize parts of his design. The Stark technology was eventually stolen and Stark tech was appearing in armored suits across the globe. This eventually lead to the Armor Wars where Stark hunted down armored suit wearers and destroyed any proprietary components of their armors.
The Guardsman Armor, a lighter version of the Iron Man armor licensed to the government.
Having access to the Iron Man hardware meant:
They would have to be able to analyze and perhaps deconstruct the armor in order to understand how the suit worked at the physical level. Just because you have a piece of electronic equipment does not mean you will understand how it works. They would also be hesitant to take it completely apart, for fear putting it back together might be harder than they thought or completely impossible without Stark's help.
Obediah Stane had the remnants of Stark's first suit, access to at least some of the research Tony created, and gained limited access to the design specs. The best he could do was the giant-sized Iron Monger rig which he wore more like a mecha than an armor suit. The military would not have had access to any of the information Stane did, so they would be even less likely to be able to replicate Stark's work.
They would have also had to understand the repulsor, electronic, digital and hydraulic aspects of the suit which were likely filled with proprietary designs. The government could force the issue and pull the patents but they still would have had to understand how to put them together and integrate them with a viable operating system.
While Justin Hammer did manage to integrate some weapon systems into the Iron Patriot that were not there in Tony's designs, it is likely the modular capacity was already built into the suit and Hammer only had to build components that would fit and integrate into the design.
Lastly and most importantly, they would have needed a power-supply small enough to be in the suit at the same time as the operator, but powerful enough to manage all of the suit's capacities and weapons. They were no where near capable of building the Arc Reactor technology designed by Stark.
Not sure how much this helps.. but I also remember reading that one of the safety protocols built into the Iron Man suits is that it only responds to Starks thought patterns and brain waves.
That is why Natasha, in Iron Man 2, made a somewhat sarcastic remark in the Diner with Tony and Fury about how there are supposed to be security safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to the suits. Tony had already programmed the suits to respond to Rhodes brain waves and other biometric data which is why he was able to take it. . I would postulate that, because this advanced security method, which requires the brain scanning and mind reading technology that only Stark has, is why they could only modify the suit that Rhodes was already programmed to access, though by Iron Man 3 it's possible that others were able to figure it out or work around it.
I also thought that the lack of the miniature Arc reactors was also a stumbling block to anyone else being able to create or use the suits as well.
Even if they were able to physically recreate all of the technology, without a similarly advanced operating system such as JARVIS, it's likely that they were unable to get it all to work together as a cohesive unit, or work as smoothly and perfectly so that it responds to the wearers thoughts and desires as does Starks Iron Man suits.
If you see carefully we see Rhodes remove the Arc Reactor (Power Source) from the suit before calling Hammer. So Hammer cannot use the tech to build new suits.
Also when performing at the expo they wee supposed to be only kind of beta versions. So there was plan of mass production I think.
