Sorry, missed it. Did they say who was developing it? In the late 90s/early 00s the tacit agreement between MoD and US DoD was DARPA would do this. We led on other programme elements/technologies. Other countries on others. US employed some very clever people on it, but the best technical paper we got to see was a dissertation written by a young whizz kid at school.
There was a rather typical argument over concept of use. Was it for Mobility or Survivability? Or even Sustainability or Lethality. Do you carry it in case someone gets injured and needs it, or do you wear it from the off? This was important because if you couldn't specify, then the beancounters pounced and it was difficult to get funding. It was one of those areas where a good answer was "Let's run with it for a while and see where we get to". The US concept in 2001 was use it in event of injury when extraction was difficult.