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I'm in the (airborne) infantry and I love anything that makes my pack lighter or easier to carry. For this though, the only thing interesting is that they said it made them walk more efficiently. I'm not sure if this would be true over broken terrain, which is where it must be proven. The individual soldier really doesn't need to generate much power, most items carried by the individual soldier have very light power requirements (i imagine that is more by design than anything else). There are a few exceptions though. Radio batteries are heavy, but that is more a fault of purchsing from the lowest bidder than necessity. Commercial laptop batteries are much more efficient. Outside of radios the individual soldier can go weeks on a pack of AA's and watch batteries (infra-red lasers, nightvision, powered optics). I changed the batteries in my night vision goggles a handful of times in Iraq over a year. Some of the more advanced man portable weapons might be able to benefit, might. There's a system called the Javelin, it can be carried by one man (realistically two, missle and launch unit) and the thermal sight sucks batteries big time. The problem is, if you are walking around you are not sitting there in an OP (observation point) watching. If you expecting company from tanks anyway chances are you have a vehicle not to far away so you can GTFO (you can guess what that means). A vehicle means supplies, so new batteries. Really if the vehicle had an AC converter as many are popping up in HMMWV's and other places, you could just use rechargables. I always took shit loads of batteries with me on patrols when I had the Javelin, but it was in the trunk of the HMMWV so I could care less what they weighed.

The folks who might really enjoy this would be LRRS (recon), RRD, and SF in some capacities. They go long distances for long amounts of time and don't expect much resupply. Like I said though, if you have to get up and move to recharge your batteries it's going to suck. It's only while you are sitting still in a hide site, snapping pictures, uploading from your laptop via your sat coms, and talking on the radio or sat, that you are going to run out of power, and you might not have the luxury of moving for a damn long while. Maybe you could just send the lowest ranking joe to run laps around the objective to recharge your batteries. Then if he makes it back alive you can use the recharged batteries to call for fire on your now througly pissed of enemy.

At the end of the day though the Army uses the WORST ruck frame design I have ever used and that's because of one thing, cost. When I joined I could carry alot more weight being in worse shape than I am now, but using my civilian pack. Moving 25M with an Army ruck makes you feel like someone beat you with a baseball bat. It's probably because I'm tall too. The rucks are made for short people. I guess they get their heads blown off less, hadji can't shoot straight anyway so who cares.