Critical & Emerging Technologies

The Inescapable Challenge of VLEO As the space domain becomes increasingly congested, contested, and competitive, the United States is turning its eyes to Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO)—typically between 180 km and 450 km altitude—as the next frontier for tactical advantage. This region offers unmatched benefits: reduced latency for communications, …

Beyond Linearity: Fundamentals Reimagined Nonlinear optical (NLO) materials and devices manipulate light in ways that defy traditional physics—enabling quantum communication, photonic computing, and ultrafast sensing. Instead of behaving proportionally to incoming electromagnetic fields, these materials exhibit nonlinear responses when illuminated by intense lasers. This manifests in processes like frequency conversion …

  The Promise Unlocked For decades, silicon has served as the cornerstone of semiconductor technology, but its performance falters under extreme thermal and electrical conditions. Enter aluminum nitride (AlN)—an ultrawide-bandgap (UWBG) material with a remarkable bandgap of 6.1 eV, placing it far ahead of conventional materials like silicon (1.1 eV), …

Introduction: Hull Optimization at the Heart of Wind-Powered Shipping As the global shipping industry works to balance its pivotal role in trade with mounting environmental responsibilities, reducing greenhouse gas emissions has become an urgent priority. With maritime transport contributing nearly 3% of global emissions, the push for greener propulsion technologies …

The End of Federated Systems For decades, military aircraft, ships, and land systems have been overloaded with a patchwork of dedicated sensors and antenna arrays. Each mission-specific system—radar dishes for targeting, electronic warfare (EW) arrays for jamming, SATCOM domes for communication, and SIGINT pods for interception—demanded its own physical aperture …

The Challenge: Securing Communications in the Age of Persistent Surveillance Modern military operations depend on communication networks that are not only secure but also invisible to adversaries. Traditional approaches to hidden networking—ranging from VPNs to Tor and custom-encrypted channels—have provided limited protection, but they rely on heuristic assumptions rather than …

In the race toward practical quantum technologies, silicon carbide (SiC) has emerged as a transformative force—quietly transcending its roots in power electronics to become the most promising material for integrated quantum photonics. With its rare combination of quantum emitters, nonlinear optics, low-loss waveguiding, and scalable manufacturing, SiC is rapidly solving …