Critical & Emerging Technologies

Reliability, maintainability, and availability (RAM) are three system attributes that are of great interest to systems engineers, logisticians, and users. Collectively, they affect both the utility and the life-cycle costs of a product or system.   Although significant improvements have been made in increasing the reliability of basic components such …

Since the invention of nuclear power, there have been numerous “accidents.” From Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to the more recent problems in Fukushima, it would seem nuclear power is not fully under our control. Recently  a Chinese scientist  has warned that the single mountain under which North Korea most …

The Department of Defense (DOD) has a well-documented history of taking much longer and spending much more than originally planned to develop and acquire its weapons systems. In particular, as systems transition from development to production, programs experience significant manufacturing problems. Billions of dollars in cost growthoccur as programs transition …

The rapid evolution of technology and outsourced manufacturing has created new opportunities, as well as new challenges and risks. Organizations today are under increased pressure to improve product designs as well as manufacturability and sustainability while reducing costs and development schedules. These initiatives are taking place in a competitive environment where …

The Department of Defense (DoD)’s Joint Logistics Enterprise, which spans both supply chain and logistics operations, provides the means to muster, transport, and sustain military power anywhere in the world at a high level of readiness. The Joint Logistics Enterprise is immense: for the Air Force alone, the number of aircraft …

Traditionally, electronics have been designed with static form factors to serve designated purposes. This approach has been an optimal direction for maintaining the overall device performance and reliability for targeted applications. As the world enters the age of ubiquitous computing, the need for reconfigurable hardware operating close to the fundamental …

Energetic materials and munitions are used across DoD in mission critical applications such as rockets, missiles, ammunition, and pyrotechnic devices. In these applications, energetic materials and munitions must perform as designed to ensure success in both training and combat operations. Energetic materials consist of fuels and oxidizers which are intimately mixed.  …

The ability to observe events on such timescales is important for basic physics — to understand how atoms move within molecules — as well as for engineering semiconductor devices, and for understanding basic biological processes at the molecular level. Today, researchers can easily reach into the realm of femtoseconds — quadrillionths …

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched a program helping the Department of Defense sustain and reinforce U.S. military readiness through the study of warfighter biology. The Measuring Biological Aptitude program seeks to understand biological processes and factors that could affect the performance of specialized military roles, according to DARPA. Service …