On 1 April, the US Army announced it would be adding tails to the Mess Dress uniform, abandoning well over a century of tradition.
“My Squad loves tails,” exclaimed the Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A Grinston when discussing the move to add tails to the mess dress uniform, adding, “we’ve looked like bell hops for far too long.“
Army Chief of Staff General James C. McConville responded to media queries with, “it’s the only uniform we haven’t screwed up yet. It was time.”
According to sources close to the effort, there will be no wear out date for legacy tailless mess dress jackets but that those who don’t purchase new versions or at least opt for a button-in upgrade will be forced to empty the grog bowl at future dinning-ins.
During the announcement, SMA Grinston offered a look at other initiatives under consideration, “We’ve got a couple of other ideas we’re batting around as well. For instance, urinals…we’re getting rid of them. Everyone will have to sit down when they pee, but we’re going to get rid of skirts as well, so it kind of balances out. Aside from it’s just the right thing to do, the potential cost savings are enormous considering the size of the Army. Think about all of those broken urinals we won’t have to fix.”
On 30 March 2021, the Army awarded a $49.9 million, five year contract to Barrett Firearms Manufacturing Inc. (Murfreesboro, TN) to acquire the MK22 Multi-role Adaptive Design (MRAD) rifle as the Army’s new sniper weapon system.
The Army will buy approximately 2,800 MK22 rifles from Barrett, the current maker of the Army’s M107 .50 Caliber Long Range Sniper Rifle.
The MK22 is part of the Army’s Precision Sniper Rifle (PSR) Program which also includes the Leupold & Stevens (Beaverton, OR) Mark 5 HD scope and a sniper accessory kit.
The MK22 is a modular system that will be fielded with three separate calibers, the .338 Norma Magnum, .300 Norma Magnum and 7.62×51 NATO. Army snipers will be able to conduct a barrel change and select calibers based on their mission operating environment.
The PSR program will allow the Army an extreme range weapon systems that is lighter than current sniper rifles and includes features that will mask the sniper signature for improved survivability.
SOCOM previously awarded a contract to Barrett to purchase the MRAD as part of their Advanced Sniper Rifle (ASR) program.
NATICK, Mass. – Research performed in the Helmet Laboratory at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, or DEVCOM, Soldier Center has led to a revolutionary new combat helmet.
Due to the Soldier Center’s Helmet Lab technology, and subsequent efforts working with key industry partners, the new combat helmets will provide the warfighter protection against a higher level threat – protection that previously could only be accomplished with a much heavier applique/helmet combination.
Researchers in the DEVCOM Soldier Center Helmet Laboratory have spent the past decade working to optimize combat helmet performance by developing new modeling, design and processing techniques. Combat helmets are comprised of flat sheets of ballistic material pre-formed into a helmet shape and then processed at a high temperature and pressure.
“Wrinkling and folds occur as the flat fabric conforms to the three-dimensional shape” said Jason Parker, a DEVCOM Soldier Center mechanical engineer. “These seams, wrinkles, and folds seriously degrade the ballistic performance, requiring more material and more mass to protect against a given threat. Through our research, we determined how these defects are introduced, how they affect ballistic performance, and how to eliminate them. The culmination of this research is a novel machine and process which produces a seamless, uniform helmet, free from defects such as folds and wrinkles.”
In 2015, the Helmet Laboratory developed a novel pre-form apparatus, process, and optimized helmet ply layup design. The Soldier Center used this technology to develop prototype helmets demonstrating breakthrough performance, providing a higher level threat protection that could previously only be achieved with the addition of a ballistic applique.
“In 2017, we tested prototype helmets targeting a higher level threat that were fabricated using our novel helmet preforming apparatus,” said Robert DiLalla, team lead of the Ballistic and Blast Protection Team in DEVCOM Soldier Center’s Soldier Protection Directorate. “The results far exceeded our expectation as we were getting stops well above the requirement and at 40 percent less weight than the current capability. The results were replicated with another batch of prototype helmets confirming that we had developed a new capability to significantly increase Soldier protection.”
Since 2017, the Helmet Laboratory, at the request of senior Army leadership, continued to mature and transition the technology to industry partners by establishing several Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, or CRADAs, and Research & Development contracts.
“After the Helmet Lab first demonstrated this breakthrough performance, the team worked diligently with our industry partners to rapidly transition this technology and contribute to the advancement from laboratory prototype to production ready helmets,” said David Colanto, PhD, who is the program manager for DEVCOM Soldier Center’s Integrated Multi-Threat Headborne System. “The collaborative effort with industry represents a successful technology transition and highlights the fact that Soldier Center applied research and technology demonstration efforts are critical to providing significant improvements to warfighter protection.”
In February 2021, Gentex Corporation announced that one of their Ops-Core® FAST Helmet Systems passed U.S. Government First Article Testing (FAT), a first for a helmet providing a higher level threat protection. This new helmet leverages helmet design and processing innovations transitioned through a CRADA with the DEVCOM Soldier Center’s Helmet Lab.
“This new FAST helmet is the culmination of a multi-year commitment to innovate the novel production processes necessary to manufacture helmets with next-generation ballistic materials,” said Des Walsh, vice president of Advanced Research and Development for Gentex Corporation. “It serves as an excellent example of successful, outcome-oriented government-industry collaborative development, resulting in the most advanced ballistically protective helmet shell ever qualified for production by Gentex and available to the warfighter.”
“It’s been a long road that started with an Army investment in science and technology which led to an invention,” said DiLalla. “That invention, when combined with industry knowledge, led to a finished product that offers a leap ahead level of protection. Today, the warfighter will benefit from that technological advancement. As a result of our efforts, we are currently undergoing a major renovation to our Helmet Lab having added new processing equipment to expand capabilities to help drive future research initiatives.”
By Jane Benson, DEVCOM Soldier Center Public Affairs
The Army is currently testing an oxygen generator that has a longer shelf life than the one currently in use and will meet the requirement of supplemental oxygen that medics provide to combat casualties.
The Field Oxygen Generator Resource (FOGR) is being considered as a replacement for the Oxygen Generator, Field Portable (OGFP) that is currently used to supply supplemental oxygen to sick and wounded Soldiers in the field. In February, the U.S. Army Medical Department Board (USAMEDDBD) conducted an operational test using Soldiers from the 44th Medical Brigade during a field training exercise to test the effectiveness and suitability of the set up and operation of the FOGR to provide critical care.
According to Archie C. Kinnebrew Jr., lead test officer with USAMEDDBD, the success of the February test event will inform decisions that determine if and when the FOGR is fielded to Army units.
“There is truth in operational testing. Army leadership uses the results from test events to facilitate risk-reduction for product fielding,” Kinnebrew said. “The test articles under consideration will not only be evaluated by the testing community, but will also include input from the intended end-users on the battlefield. These test events ensure that Soldiers have a voice in the acquisition and deployment of new and improved systems.”
Kinnebrew had words of praise for the 44th Medical Brigade Soldiers who put the FOGR to the test through a series of exercises.
“The Soldiers of the 44th Medical Brigade – 36th Medical Company Area Support and the 240th Forward Resuscitative Surgical Team – were enthusiastic while putting the FOGR to use during the test,” Kinnebrew said. “They provided honest feedback, which greatly assisted the test team in capturing the data needed. Their participation was key to the success of this test event and is greatly appreciated. The professionalism and dedication displayed by these Soldiers really made me feel proud.”
Austin S. Langdon, assistant product manager with Warfighter Deployable Medical Systems, U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity at Fort Detrick, Md., said the Army is replacing the OGFP because of sustainability issues.
“The old device was designed to operate 10-12 hours a day and 7 days a week. This is the case for most portable Oxygen Concentrators (POCs) on the market. However, when the device sits on a shelf, maintenance issues arise from lack of use, which are very costly,” Langdon said.
Langdon said that USAMMDA is currently testing two commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products. One of the devices being tested has the ability to be placed on the shelf for up to three years without any need for maintenance, a bigger advantage over the current model in use.
“Since this is a COTS item, the devices being tested are already in production and can currently be purchased. However, the Army still needs to test it for airworthiness and also MIL-STD-810H testing,” Langdon said.
MIL-STD-810 is a United States Military Standard that emphasizes tailoring an equipment’s environmental design and test limits to the conditions that it will experience throughout its service life, and establishing chamber test methods that replicate the effects of environments on the equipment rather than imitating the environments themselves. Although prepared specifically for military applications, the standard is often used for commercial products as well.
The OGFP weighs 12 pounds and was an advanced development item that was specifically designed for the Army’s use. FOGR outweighs the current device by a few pounds, but has less maintenance issues.
Langdon said that the Army is looking to get quantitative data from the testing that will allow for informed decisions on these variants and if they will fit the end user’s needs.
When asked when FOGR will be available to the Army, he added, “These devices are both already in production. If one is selected, it will be fielded to the force later this year.”
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Army-funded researchers demonstrated a machine learning approach that corrects quantum information in systems composed of photons, improving the outlook for deploying quantum sensing and quantum communications technologies on the battlefield.
When photons are used as the carriers of quantum information to transmit data, that information is often distorted due to environment fluctuations destroying the fragile quantum states necessary to preserve it.
Researchers from Louisiana State University exploited a type of machine learning to correct for information distortion in quantum systems composed of photons. Published in Advanced Quantum Technologies, the team demonstrated that machine learning techniques using the self-learning and self-evolving features of artificial neural networks can help correct distorted information. This results outperformed traditional protocols that rely on conventional adaptive optics.
“We are still in the fairly early stages of understanding the potential for machine learning techniques to play a role in quantum information science,” said Dr. Sara Gamble, program manager at the Army Research Office, an element of U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. “The team’s result is an exciting step forward in developing this understanding, and it has the potential to ultimately enhance the Army’s sensing and communication capabilities on the battlefield.”
For this research, the team used a type of neural network to correct for distorted spatial modes of light at the single-photon level.
“The random phase distortion is one of the biggest challenges in using spatial modes of light in a wide variety of quantum technologies, such as quantum communication, quantum cryptography, and quantum sensing,” said Narayan Bhusal, doctoral candidate at LSU. “Our method is remarkably effective and time-efficient compared to conventional techniques. This is an exciting development for the future of free-space quantum technologies.”
According to the research team, this smart quantum technology demonstrates the possibility of encoding of multiple bits of information in a single photon in realistic communication protocols affected by atmospheric turbulence.
“Our technique has enormous implications for optical communication and quantum cryptography,” said Omar Magaña?Loaiza, assistant professor of physics at LSU. “We are now exploring paths to implement our machine learning scheme in the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative to make it smart, more secure, and quantum.”
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By US Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs
TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, Pa. – Tobyhanna Army Depot personnel extended the organization’s reach last month when they traveled to a Romanian seaside community to train allies of the United States.
A two-person team traveled to Constanta, Romania last month to conduct Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) New Equipment Training (NET) for Romanian Air Force artillery battalions. NET is an enduring workload for the depot and delivers training to military units after receipt of new assets, ensuring Warfighters across the globe know how to use lifesaving equipment on the battlefield.
Depot personnel spent a week instructing Romanian Airmen on the overall operations of the DAGR, typically used as part of the Patriot missile system. While NET missions often encompass a wide range of service members, this iteration of the training focused on a targeted group of 11 users, who were educated on the functionalities of DAGR. Students learned through classroom instruction as well as hands-on, practical exercises designed to ensure they could perform to Army Standards when operating the asset. Tobyhanna’s instructors gave the students rave reviews for their enthusiasm.
“The Romanian Airmen were very sharp and quick to learn. They made our job easy,” said Gregory Wirth, a training instructor in the Field Logistics Support directorate. Fellow training instructor Vincent Zuranski agreed.
“We had a great rapport with the class,” they said, adding that one highlight of the trip was the authentic Romanian food the Airmen treated them to every day. Wirth and Zuranski also noted the region’s rich history, home to many ancient Greek and Roman settlements.
The mission was the NET team’s first excursion out of Northeastern Pennsylvania since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While travel into the country was relatively easy, returning home to Tobyhanna was a significant challenge, according to Wirth.
“Because COVID-related guidelines are always changing, there was uncertainty about what we’d need to do to get back to the U.S.,” said Wirth. “We ended up needing a negative COVID test for return travel through Germany – not something easy to navigate while in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language. Luckily, our students and personnel at the embassy helped us obtain the necessary information so we could get home.”
Despite the challenges, the duo said the opportunity to travel was more than welcome.
“As someone who travels for a living, I found it difficult to not be able to support our important missions across the world. It was extremely exciting to get back out on the road to support our Warfighters,” Zuranski said.
In addition to DAGR, Tobyhanna provides NET for military personnel on the Common Remotely Operated Weapons System (CROWS) and a variety of other systems. The mission is directly aligned with the depot’s long-range strategic plan, Toby 2028, specifically the C5ISR Readiness and Shape the Future lines of effort.
The program benefits all members of Team Tobyhanna, according to Eric Walker, who supervises the NET team.
“NET ensures Soldiers worldwide get the training they need to keep themselves, and the world, safe. When our NET instructors return home, they share any new knowledge with the depot employees who are responsible for repairing the equipment here on-post. It’s win-win and a program we’re proud very to support.”
Tobyhanna Army Depot is a recognized leader in providing world-class logistics support for command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C5ISR) systems across the Department of Defense. Tobyhanna’s Corporate Philosophy, dedicated work force and electronics expertise ensure the depot is the Joint C5ISR provider of choice for all branches of the Armed Forces and industry partners.
Tobyhanna’s unparalleled capabilities include full-spectrum logistics support for sustainment, overhaul and repair, fabrication and manufacturing, engineering design and development, systems integration, post production software support, technology insertion, modification, foreign military sales and global field support to our joint warfighters.
About 4,000 personnel are employed at Tobyhanna, which is located in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. Tobyhanna Army Depot is part of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command. Headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, the command’s mission is to empower the Soldier with winning C5ISR capabilities.
By Danielle E. Weinschenk, Lead Public Affairs Specialist
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Army-funded researchers created nanosized robots that could enable locomotion, novel metamaterial design and high-fidelity sensors.
Cornell University researchers created micron-sized shape memory actuators that fold themselves into 3D configurations and allow atomically thin 2D materials with just a quick jolt of voltage. Once the material is bent, it holds its shape, even after the voltage is removed.
To demonstrate the technology, the team created what is potentially the world’s smallest self-folding origami bird.
“The research team is pushing the boundary of how quickly and precisely we can control motion at the micro- and even nano-scales,” said Dr. Dean Culver, program manager for Complex Dynamics and Systems at Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. “In addition to paving the way for nano-robots, the scientific advancements from this effort can enable smart material design and interaction with the molecular biological world that can assist the Army like never before.”
The research may result in future applications 10 to 20 years from now, he said.
In a peer-reviewed article published in Science Robotics, researchers said this work could make it possible for a million fabricated microscopic robots releasing from a wafer to fold themselves into shape, crawl free, and go about their tasks, even assembling into more complicated structures.
“We humans, our defining characteristic is we’ve learned how to build complex systems and machines at human scales, and at enormous scales as well,” said Prof. Paul McEuen, the John A. Newman Professor of Physical Science at Cornell University. “What we haven’t learned how to do is build machines at tiny scales.”
This is a step in that basic, fundamental evolution in what humans can do, of learning how to construct machines that are as small as cells, he said.
The researchers ongoing collaboration has generated a throng of nanoscale machines and components, each seemingly faster, smarter and more elegant than the last.
“We want to have robots that are microscopic but have brains on board,” said Prof. Itai Cohen, professor of physics at Cornell University. “That means you need to have appendages that are driven by complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor transistors, basically a computer chip on a robot that’s 100 microns on a side. The hard part is making the materials that respond to the CMOS circuits.”
This shape memory actuator developed by the research teams allows them to drive with voltage and make the materials hold a bent shape. The machines fold themselves fast–within 100 milliseconds. They can also flatten and refold themselves thousands of times and they only need a single volt to be powered to life.
“These are major advances over current state-of-the-art devices,” Cohen said. “We’re really in a class of our own.”
These actuators can bend with a radius of curvature smaller than a micron–the highest curvatures of any voltage-driven actuator by an order of magnitude. This flexibility is important because one of the bedrock principles of microscopic robot manufacturing is that the robot size is determined by how small the various appendages can be made to fold. The tighter the bends, the smaller the folds, and the tinier the footprint for each machine. It’s also important that these bends can be held by the robot, which minimizes the power consumption, a feature especially advantageous for microscopic robots and machines.
The devices consist of a nanometer-thin layer of platinum capped with a titanium or titanium dioxide film. Several rigid panels of silicon dioxide glass sit atop those layers. When a positive voltage is applied to the actuators, oxygen atoms are driven into the platinum and swap places with platinum atoms.
This process, called oxidation, causes the platinum to expand on one side in the seams between the inert glass panels, which bends the structure into its predesignated shape. The machines can hold that shape even after the voltage is removed because the embedded oxygen atoms bunch up to form a barrier, which prevents them from diffusing out.
By applying a negative voltage to the device, the researchers can remove the oxygen atoms and quickly restore the platinum to its pristine state. And by varying the pattern of the glass panels, and whether the platinum is exposed on the top or bottom, they can create a range of origami structures actuated by mountain and valley folds.
“One thing that’s quite remarkable is that these little tiny layers are only about 30 atoms thick, compared to a sheet of paper, which might be 100,000 atoms thick. It’s an enormous engineering challenge to figure out how to make something like that have the kind of functionalities we want,” McEuen said.
The team is currently working to integrate their shape memory actuators with circuits to make walking robots with foldable legs as well as sheet-like robots that move by undulating forward. These innovations may someday lead to nanorobots that can clean bacterial infection from human tissue, microfactories that can transform manufacturing and robotic surgical instruments that are 10 times smaller than current devices, according to Cohen.
The team is also researching the principles that need to change in order to design, manufacture and operate machines at this scale.
In addition to ARO, the National Science Foundation, the Cornell Center for Materials Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science funded the work.
By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Joint Army- and Air Force-funded researchers have taken a step toward building a fault-tolerant quantum computer, which could provide enhanced data processing capabilities.
Quantum computing has the potential to deliver new computing capabilities for how the Army plans to fight and win in what it calls multi-domain operations. It may also advance materials discovery, artificial intelligence, biochemical engineering and many other disciplines needed for the future military; however, because qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, are intrinsically fragile, a longstanding barrier to quantum computing has been effective implementation of quantum error correction.
Researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst, with funding from the Army Research Office and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, identified a way to protect quantum information from a common error source in superconducting systems, one of the leading platforms for the realization of large-scale quantum computers. The research, published in Nature, realized a novel way for quantum errors to be spontaneously corrected.
ARO is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. AFOSR supports basic research for the Air Force and Space Force as part of the Air Force Research Laboratory.
“This is a very exciting accomplishment not only because of the fundamental error correction concept the team was able to demonstrate, but also because the results suggest this overall approach may amenable to implementations with high resource efficiency, said Dr. Sara Gamble, quantum information science program manager, ARO. “Efficiency is increasingly important as quantum computation systems grow in size to the scales we’ll need for Army relevant applications.”
Today’s computers are built with transistors representing classical bits, either a 1 or 0. Quantum computing is a new paradigm of computation using quantum bits or qubits, where quantum superposition and entanglement can be exploited for exponential gains in processing power.
Existing demonstrations of quantum error correction are active, meaning that they require periodically checking for errors and immediately fixing them. This demands hardware resources and thus hinders the scaling of quantum computers.
In contrast, the researchers’ experiment achieves passive quantum error correction by tailoring the friction or dissipation experienced by the qubit. Because friction is commonly considered the nemesis of quantum coherence, this result may appear surprising. The trick is that the dissipation has to be designed specifically in a quantum manner.
This general strategy has been known in theory for about two decades, but a practical way to obtain such dissipation and put it in use for quantum error correction has been a challenge.
“Demonstrating such non-traditional approaches will hopefully spur more clever ideas for overcoming some of the most challenging issues for quantum science,” said Dr. Grace Metcalfe, program officer for Quantum Information Science at AFOSR.
Looking forward, researchers said the implication is that there may be more avenues to protect qubits from errors and do so less expensively.
“Although our experiment is still a rather rudimentary demonstration, we have finally fulfilled this counterintuitive theoretical possibility of dissipative QEC,” said Dr. Chen Wang, University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist. “This experiment raises the outlook of potentially building a useful fault-tolerant quantum computer in the mid to long run.”
By U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs
