DSIAC collects and publishes articles related to our technical focus areas on the web to share with the DoD community.
Blast and bullet resistant, giant Lego-like blocks are making the old-fashioned sandbag a thing of the past. For hundreds of years, sandbags have been the standard for rapidly building fortifications— but now there’s a smarter and superior solution. It’s called McCurdy’s Armor. You can use them to build walls, guard posts and more, or even
A subsidiary of the Russian Electronics Holding Company (itself a subsidiary of Rostec) has developed a ferrite fiber designed for protecting the electronics of armored vehicles, air defense missile systems and aircraft against enemy electronic warfare (EW) systems, according to the Izvestia daily. According to the holding company’s director general, Igor Kozlov, a unique material,
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio (AFNS) — As any aircraft maintainer can attest, corrosion is a major factor affecting the overall health of military aircraft. Anything from changing temperatures to environmental factors can precipitate corrosion. One major contributor, however, is often overlooked — microbes. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s biological materials and processing research team
Diamond and graphene “nanoscrolls” could revolutionize lubrication. Friction and wear are terrible twins that bedevil any machinery with moving parts. Approximately 30 percent of a vehicle engine’s power is sacrificed to frictional loss, and wear is a consistent destroyer of engines and other parts. Argonne scientists have spent decades conducting cutting-edge research in tribology, seeking
The US Army doesn’t need the Russians to jam its electronic equipment when it can do so itself, according to the Army”s Electronic Warfare Division chief. The service is working to refine its electronic warfare (EW) tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) so there are no surprises on the battlefield when it comes to malfunctioning equipment,
The Pentagon is looking for the next wave in warfighting technologies, inviting industry to offer ideas in key areas, such as dealing with the electromagnetic spectrum and ways to manage the flood of data collected by its growing number of sensors. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is staging a Proposer’s Day Sept. 20 to
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new type of inverter device with greater efficiency in a smaller, lighter package – which should improve the fuel-efficiency and range of hybrid and electric vehicles. Electric and hybrid vehicles rely on inverters to ensure that enough electricity is conveyed from the battery to the motor
General Motors and the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center will reveal a Chevrolet Colorado-based fuel cell electric vehicle in October at the fall meeting of the Association of the United States Army in Washington. The vehicle is being developed under an agreement signed in 2015 between TARDEC and GM. The collaboration
Directed-energy weapons systems could provide efficient, cost-effective countermeasures in an age of drones and other airborne threats. Recent scientific and engineering breakthroughs are bringing these systems closer to deployment. Long before George Lucas conceived of the Death Star with its super laser focused on Alderaan, even before H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds with
A newly discovered optical vortex forms a ring around many intense laser pulses but was never noticed before. In a typical optical vortex, light waves twist around a dark line, or hole, through the center of a light beam. Researchers have now uncovered an entirely different type of optical vortex that forms a ring, or
Machine vibration often originates with rotating driveline components such as rotors, gears, bearings, and fans. Such vibration is the source of unwanted noise and can be destructive to the machine. The vibration ring is a mechanism that provides an indirect damping effect, and is rigid enough to be mounted within the driveline. The mechanical structure
One of the efforts the Navy is undertaking under the guise of the third offset strategy — commonly described as undercutting adversarial advances through human-machine teaming — is a recently established initiative to examine interoperability between the service’s sensors, platforms and weapons. Task Force Netted Navy, which began in May 2016, is all about maximizing