To my respected correspondant Havelock Stern,
Another new code word. I do miss those days of dozens of different phrases, sunny mornings spend solving them... There's a certain nostalgia about the act of solving a cipher that I find comforting.
On to the details of my original letter. You have a habit of obliviousness sometimes, Havelock, and I do hope that this letter will nudge you in the right direction. I myself have a problem with my passion getting in the way of rationality sometimes.
The Osprey Evo's coolant system was, to put it politely, a complete shambles. I personally witnessed one member of my squadron brush with death inside the suit as the cooling system failed - he escaped with a lengthy hospitalization, but that was only because the eject mechanism was still intact and functioning. As you're probably aware, Osprey Evolution armour is not designed to be easily opened from the outside. Commands to eject, diagnose problems and so forth are interpreted via eye tracking. A panicked soldier has little chance of peforming the exact and very deliberate sequence of eye movements and blinks necessary to open the suit, even if the eject mechanism is working as intended.
Once word got out that men had died inside the suits as a result of failure on the power distribution PCB - mostly due to burst capacitors, is my educated guess - morale took a nosedive. Nobody wants to get inside a metal suit that can turn into a personal oven.
Naturally there are failsafes - moisture and skin conductivity sensors to detect sweat and spilt blood, heartbeat monitors, accelerometers and so forth - but the suit's first-generation firmware didn't include an option to open the suit automatically in case of panic.
I have my theories about that, but none of them are cheerful.
Please be discrete with this information. Keep the cipher phrase, but destroy the letter.
-Corporal Punishment