A peek at next-gen military hardware
Contractors at a high-tech Navy conference in Arlington, Va., show off prototypes for the latest battlefield devices.
Models of sleek unmanned aerial vehicles draw inquisitive crowds. Some contraptions are supposed to confirm the presence of explosives and toxic chemicals with far more accuracy than their predecessors. Software vendors claim their products will do everything from sensing underwater mines to estimating when vital ship systems are about to go bad.
Over lunch, I hear a representative from a major defense contractor remark: "It's like being a kid in a candy store, isn't it?"
I'm at the Navy Opportunity Forum, a three-day event for small businesses to gather and draw attention to technologies fueled in part by six figures in federal grant money. In some ways, it combines a deep-pocket trade show feel--complete with a string quartet at one evening's reception and three-course lunches--with something of an amped-up school science fair look.
All the small companies are about two years into crafting their nascent products. They've already delivered compelling enough proposals in response to military requests for particular technological solutions, and they've already landed as much as $850,000--and in some cases more--in start-up money through the Navy's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. But now they're approaching the phase at which their taxpayer-dollar stream will dry up.
That's because the SBIR program isn't in charge of financing the final stage, which is commercializing products for the market and the fleet. The companies must be on the prowl for help, and the some 1,200 representatives from larger defense contractors, academia and military offices on the forum's attendee list are viewed as a prime starting point. There's time to swap business cards at daytime coffee breaks and evening cocktail parties, and the more serious negotiators can reserve private conference rooms for one-on-one meetings.
It's not a new process, nor is it limited to the Navy. Established by Congress in 1982, the SBIR program has sponsored some 90,000 projects to the tune of some $19 billion. Participants span all of the Pentagon arms and a total of 11 federal agencies including NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy and Transportation.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who heads the Senate Small Business Committee and breezed in one day for a luncheon keynote speech, told us that the program is vital to give a lift to small companies whose ideas may be deemed too risky to finance by the normal market channels. That's particularly for defense-related items, which don't have a "normal" marketplace, he told us as we nibbled on salads in a mammoth hotel ballroom.
As I troll the exhibit hall and absorb 20-minute presentations, I'm struck by how scattered this year's 174 offerings are. But it's mostly a reflection of what the Navy itself requested.
After all, its latest call for proposals, issued last month, described the need for everything from an environmentally friendly cleaning solvent for removing hydraulic fluid from aircrafts, to sensors that can be dropped or thrown into ship compartments and send back information about the presence of fire, smoke or toxic elements.
Even officials who work closely with the government end of the grant program are loath to pinpoint the standouts at this year's gathering. Steve Sullivan, who works in the Navy SBIR Program Office, could point to only one major thread: affordability. In other words, because of Defense Department-wide budget squeezes, a promising prototype may not earn the military's stamp of approval if its price tag is too high, he said.
But I tend to hear less about the companies' projected price tags and more about the gaps their products are, at times, well on their way to filling. Mike Phillips, director of program development for Griffin Analytical Technologies, described two portable devices--one the size of a suitcase, the other the size of a shoebox--that can take air samples and confirm the presence of explosives and toxic chemicals in near real time.
Phillips said the gadgets, which should be ready for full-scale production and certification late this year and early next year, could be applied not only to military operations but also be mounted, say, in air conditioning intakes in buildings or planted in public areas where terrorist events may be more likely.
A number of business representatives also talked animatedly about prototypes for UAVs and related software that promise to bestow the devices with more autonomy and intelligence, theoretically freeing up humans for other tasks--or at least keeping them further away from harm. Some of their inventions are targeted for military use as soon as next year.
Other ideas are still many years off from the market. A Texas company called Invocon is working on a nonlethal weapon that it hopes will one day be the successor to the Taser and related devices that authorities use to disrupt bodily systems when they're hoping to defuse situations.There's no prototype yet, but the goal is to come up with a system by 2012 that would allow such signals to be transmitted through nonmetal walls, without requiring a machine to make direct contact with a human. The military has been seeking such a tool to aid troops who aren't sure what lies beyond closed doors but don't want to risk firing weapons and creating casualties.
Instead of interfering with the muscles, as the Taser does, Invocon's proposed system--which it is calling the Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control, or EPIC--would use electromagnetic waves to tamper with a person's vestibular system. Located in the inner ears, it's the system that, if disrupted, can make an affected person suffer from a bout of motion sickness, feel severely disoriented, or even be unable to stand or move. The idea is inspired in part by findings that the electromagnetic fields in MRI machines have created such an effect if the person exposed to them moves a certain way, program director Kevin Champaigne told a group listening to his presentation.
Right now, the tactic has been tested only preliminarily on a mouse--which did, for the record, register some cell-firing disturbances that indicate the device had some effect. In the next few years, the company said it needs to come up with at least $7 million to determine more fully the effects on mice--and then, of course, on humans.
Besides military and police uses, Champaigne said he could also envision EPIC being attractive to developers of flight simulators, video games and even amusement parks.
He quipped that "Walt Disney could save a considerable amount of money if it didn't have to move the rides you're riding on," but could instead send a signal that mimicked that feeling.
Later I find myself drawn to a model of a new remotely controlled, rapid-firing device that's under development by Metal Storm, a publicly traded company based in Arlington. Arthur Schatz, a company vice president, explains to me that a number of these devices can be networked together and programmed to fire by "one guy sitting at a central control station."
The weapon can accommodate both lethal or "less lethal" projectiles, whereas right now, it takes more than one weapon to do that, and that combination is bound to be more expensive than the Metal Storm device. The product isn't certified for the military's arsenal yet, but so far, it has been successfully tested on both fixed platforms and moving devices, including both flying and surface-based robotic vehicles.
For the moment, I'm comfortable standing just a few feet away from the weapon's four black barrels, each about the length of my arm. According to Schatz, it can fire faster than any existing system--in excess of 1 million rounds per minute. Then I catch a glimpse of myself in a live video image depicting the weapon's current target on a laptop beside the potentially deadly device. It seems to be trained directly on me.