The Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane, Indiana, section is investing in six additive manufacturing prototypes as it seeks new ways to preserve military systems.
Additive manufacturing is a process that adds materials to existing objects rather than subtracting them. The Naval Surface Warfare Center believes that additive manufacturing can assist the military safeguard its systems from intrusion or compromise.
The six contracts were awarded via the NSWC Crane Strategic & Spectrum Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems, or S2MARTS, other transaction authority, a vehicle used by the Pentagon to fund expenditures in microelectronics, spectrum, and other mission areas. The National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL) Consortium manages the S2MARTS contracting process.
The proposals were assessed by the Naval Sea Systems Command, the Air Force Research Lab, the United States Navy, and the United States Army. General Electric, Johns Hopkins APL, Lockheed Martin RMS, Mercury Systems, ReLogic Research, and Charles Stark Draper Laboratories all received awards. In its announcement, NSTXL did not reveal the monetary worth of the awards.
At the end of the work, prototypes will be evaluated to determine how effectively they answer the problem, how readily they can be deployed, dependability, cost, size, weight, and power.
The awards are sponsored by the Trusted and Assured Microelectronics programme of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. It’s one of several initiatives under the Navy’s Additive Manufacturing for Technology Protection (AMTP) Consortium, which was formed in 2019 to drive government efforts to identify new ways to secure technology.
According to the consortium statement, there has previously been minimal research into utilising additive manufacturing to technology protection.
