The July/August 2015 issue of Army Technology Magazine focuses on innovation.

By David McNally, RDECOM Public Affairs

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (July 1, 2015) — The Army of the future will be fueled by innovation according to military leaders in research and development. 

“It’s up to us to establish the technical vision,” said Army Materiel Command Chief Technology Officer Patrick O’Neill. “We’ve got what it takes to meet the demands of the future. At the center of Force 2025 and Beyond will be the ability to provide technologies for supporting future operations and to streamline operational processes to produce a more adaptable, agile and effective Army.”

O’Neill is the featured interview for the July/August 2015 issue of Army Technology Magazine, which focuses on innovation. The magazine is an authorized, unofficial publication published under Army Regulation 360-1, for all members of the Department of Defense and the general public.

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Maj. Gen. John F. Wharton, U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (right) discusses advancements in armor and protection technology with Lt. Col. Sherwood P. Baker in front of TARDEC’s Concept for Advanced Military Explosion-mitigating Land Demonstrator during the 2015 DOD Lab Day at the Pentagon. (U.S. Army photo by Jerry Aliotta)

By William Norton, TARDEC

Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This quote is often used to authenticate his successful development and innovation philosophy. Ford reinvented the basic concept of personal mobility by applying emerging technology, manufacturing and business techniques to allow his company to achieve his personal vision.

A similar philosophy has emerged in Army research and development.

The Modular Active Protection System, or MAPS, program is a Research, Development and Engineering Command-wide effort led by the Detroit Arsenal-based U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center.

The program’s evolution rivals the American consumers’ move to cars as its “faster horse.”

An active protection system, or APS, provides a military vehicle with automatic protection from armor penetrators and direct-fire threats such as rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank guided missiles. An effective APS must include:

• sensing to detect potential threats
• high-speed processing to classify the threat and to derive a relevant fire control solution
• countermeasures to destroy the threat before the vehicle and its occupants are hit

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The ADIM, currently an 81mm mortar weapon system, uses “soft recoil” to reduce the firing loads transmitted to the platform by a factor of eight, well within the limits of light tactical vehicle capacity. This enables mounted firing and supports rapid mobile operations. (U.S. Army photo)

By Eric Kowal and Ed Lopez, Picatinny Arsenal Public Affairs

In certain battlefield conditions, such as the mountainous terrain and unimproved roads of Afghanistan, large-caliber indirect-fire weapon systems lack the mobility and maneuverability required to successfully execute an assault.

To solve this problem, engineers at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, are developing a revolutionary weapon system called the Automated Direct Indirect-fire Mortar, known as ADIM, which can be fired while mounted on a light tactical vehicle such as the Humvee or its potential replacement.

The ADIM, currently an 81mm mortar weapon system, uses soft recoil to reduce the firing loads transmitted to the platform by a factor of eight, well within the limits of light tactical vehicle capacity.

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Patrick J. O’Neill became the chief technology officer for the U.S. Army Materiel Command April 5, 2015, at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Previously, he was the U.S. Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity technical director at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. He holds a master of science in national resource strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, a master of science in computer science from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor of science in mathematics and computer science (double major) from Loyola University. He has published numerous AMSAA technical reports and presented numerous papers in national and international operations research and military forums.He was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in March 2011.

Interview with Army Materiel Command Chief Technology Officer Patrick O’Neill

Army Technology: What is your vision for the Army of the future, and what role will technology play?

O’Neill: We should try to be the best. To enable that, I encourage us to challenge the status quo, empower and encourage innovation and professional growth, navigate our thinking, and infuse industry and academia in our plans.

As we think about the deep future, we should work closely with industry and academia to identify potential technologies early and to identify ways to support them for use in existing systems. How should we think differently? By partnering with industry and academia on systems still under development.

The challenges the Army faces, especially with the continued competition for resources, will be daunting. Our chief of staff, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, characterized it well by describing that the “velocity of instability is increasing and protecting technology is very critical.”

Army Technology: You’ve said that we should focus on being more efficient and effective. What is the best way to accomplish this?

O’Neill: It is important, especially with the threat of sequestration, to acquire technologies in a cost effective and efficient manner through joint collaboration and leveraging of investment dollars. It is critically important that the Army collaborate with other services, industry and academia to identify potential technologies early and to identify ways to integrate those technologies into the Soldiers’ kit.

The Defense Innovation Initiative is a new approach to allow new thinking focused on threats and challenges to our military and technological superiority. At the center of Force 2025 and Beyond will be the ability to provide technologies for supporting future operations and to streamline operational processes to produce a more adaptable, agile and effective Army. I believe the new Defense Innovation Unit Experimental in Silicon Valley will help create the presence we need in order to best identify and speed the technologies of tomorrow.

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Greg Peterson, U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center, exams a M-50 gas mask filter cartridge containing zirconium-based MOF material.

ECBC Public Affairs

Imagine a future in which a chemical attack on a Middle Eastern village in the dead of night has no effect on the people in its path. They are sleeping soundly in tents embedded with protective filtration material that prevents any harm. The village elders who come out to investigate have that same material in the headscarves they wear over their faces as they walk about with chemicals lingering in the air.

That day is coming closer. Two U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center scientists, Greg Peterson and Jared DeCoste, are working with chemists at Northwestern University to make it a reality.

For the past eight years, Peterson and DeCoste have been steadily refining and improving a recently developed class of chemical compounds known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. Chemists make them in a laboratory using organic struts and metallic nodes, much like an erector set, creating void spaces for chemical warfare agent or toxic industrial compound molecules to enter.

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Pam Kartachak is the G6 for the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command and chief information officer for the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center. (U.S. Army photo)

ECBC Public Affairs

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — The rapid pace of technology continues to be a catalyst for the way people live, work and play. Network connections have promoted mobile computing applications that have increased access to information and knowledge sharing, and as a result, empowered communication on an individual and organizational level. But is the network secure?

The U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center R&D IT Enterprise uses the Defense Research Engineering Network. Its secure network technology facilitates how scientists and engineers are able to get the right information to the right people at the right time in order to fulfill their mission to advance chemical and biological defense.

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A plug-in demonstrates slew-to-cue functionality, enabling efficient use of high magnification sensors for inspecting areas of interest on-the-move. (U.S. Army graphic)

Army engineers increase situational awareness for route clearance teams

By Allison Barrow, CERDEC Public Affairs

U.S. Army researchers are reducing the cognitive load on Soldiers by streamlining critical surveillance functions as part of counter-explosive, route clearance missions inside the Medium Mine Protected Vehicle, known as MMPV.

By collapsing the multiple video displays within the vehicle into a single touchscreen display, the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC, in partnership with Product Manager Assured Mobility Systems, set out to increase situational awareness and operator efficiency, while decreasing size, weight and power, or SWaP.

Because of the way the counter-IED threat has evolved, there are an increased number of individual systems inside the MMPV compartments, such as imaging sensors, weapon systems and communications equipment, said Sean Jellish, CERDEC Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate Multifunction Video Display lead engineer.

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The operational concept behind the Enhanced Area Protection and Survivability technology is to have a 50mm course-corrected projectile intercept an incoming threat. The warhead has a tantalum-tungsten alloy liner to form forward-propelled penetrators for defeat of rockets, artillery and mortars, while steel-body fragments are designed to counter unmanned aerial systems. The technology is in various stages of development and testing. (U.S. Army graphic)

By Ed Lopez, Picatinny Arsenal Public Affairs

As drone technology gains greater public attention, along with its potential for hostile action against American targets, U.S. Army engineers are seeking to adapt ongoing research to counter aerial systems that could threaten Soldiers.

At Picatinny Arsenal, the Extended Area Protection and Survivability Integrated Demonstration, or EAPS ID, began as an Army Technology Objective program. The goal was to develop and demonstrate technology that could support a gun-based solution to counter rockets, artillery and mortars, or C-RAM.

Research into enhanced C-RAM technology had the goal of extending the range and probability of success against the incoming threat.

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Dr. Travis Taylor, senior scientist for Space Division, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command – Tech Center, at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., discusses Army space satellites during Lab Day at the Pentagon, May 14, 2015. He is shown holding a plastic and liquid nitric oxide container, which propels the satellite into low-Earth orbit after it leaves the mothership. Behind him is the imagery satellite and to the right is the smaller data and voice satellite. (U.S. Army photo by David Vergun)

By David Vergun, Army News Service

Tiny Army satellites may someday provide Soldiers with voice, data and even visual communications in remote areas, which lack such communications.

Already some of that technology has been successfully tested, said Dr. Travis Taylor.

Taylor is the senior scientist for Space Division, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command – Tech Center, or SMDC, at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He spoke during Lab Day at the Pentagon, May 14, 2015.

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A Soldier digs into a First Strike Ration in the mountains of Afghanistan. Nutritional information about the First Strike Ration and other individual rations is now available at the online combat rations database. (U.S. Army photo by Michael Stepien)

By Bob Reinert, USAG-Natick Public Affairs

When Soldiers rip open meals, ready-to-eat, also known as MRE, in a combat zone, most people probably are thinking more about flavor and filling their stomachs than about the nutrition.

However, that does not mean nutrition is not important. The new online combat rations database, or ComRaD, formally launched earlier this month by the Department of Defense’s Human Performance Resource Center, or HPRC, provides warfighters, military dietitians, food service officers and leaders the opportunity to learn more about the nutritional value of what is inside those packages.

ComRaD is the result of a collaborative effort between HPRC, the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, also known as NSRDEC, and the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, or USARIEM, at Natick Soldier Systems Center. The database contains nutrition information about the MRE, First Strike Ration, Meal, Cold Weather, and Food Packet, Long Range Patrol.

Before ComRaD, military customers needed to contact experts at NSRDEC’s Combat Feeding Directorate, or CFD, to obtain accurate nutritional information. The lack of public access to this information has left customers to obtain nutritional information from alternate sources that are sometimes unreliable and inaccurate.

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The Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordinance, or RADBO, prototype performs during the testing phase in February 2015 at Redstone Test Center, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama (U.S. Army photos)

By Carlotta Maneice, AMRDEC Public Affairs

The U.S. Army and Air Force are working together to develop Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles with laser technology.

Before, when the military wanted to disable a bomb, highly trained bomb disposal specialists wore body armor, protective suits or used robots to render an area safe.

With lasers, operators can negate the threat of improvised explosive devices, makeshift bombs, mines, and other unexploded explosive ordnance from a safe distance.

The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center Prototype Integration Facility, U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command and the Redstone Test Center developed the technology.

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Osie David (right), an RDECOM computer scientist, explains new communications and electronics technology to Mary Miller, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Research and Technology, at the Department of Defense Lab Day at the Pentagon May 14, 2015. (U.S. Army photo by Conrad Johnson)

By Dan Lafontaine, RDECOM Public Affairs

Military researchers demonstrated how their scientific and engineering efforts enable technological overmatch for Soldiers during the Department of Defense Lab Day at the Pentagon May 14.

Subject-matter experts from the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s seven centers and labs displayed examples of their latest research to hundreds of uniformed and civilian defense employees in the Pentagon’s Courtyard.

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MBSE Connects the Engineering Dots

By Thomas Haduch, Director of Systems Engineering, RDECOM

As our systems become more complex, integrated, interoperable and designed to operate in an increasing systems of systems environment, the use of modeling can enhance our ability to analyze and truly understand system performance behaviors and identify developmental risks.

Model Based Systems Engineering is an innovative approach that allows a systems engineer to organically create a methodology to assess and understand the challenges and risks and develop possible solutions associated with the development and implementation of systems.

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