Breaking the Brittle Barrier: DARPA’s INTACT Program and the Strategic Race for Damage-Tolerant Ceramics

Reframing the Materials Challenge For more than half a century, advanced engineering has been constrained by a fundamental trade-off: metals deform but melt, ceramics endure heat but fracture. This dichotomy has shaped everything from turbine design to hypersonic vehicle architecture. While nickel-based superalloys and titanium composites have steadily improved, they are approaching thermodynamic and microstructural…