what military gear of the future will look like.

Q&A: Army’s top research scientist

By Kris Osborn - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jan 5, 2009 11:32:48 EST

Cutting-edge technologies such as robots that drive themselves, electronics embedded into uniform fabric and liquid armor are at the forefront of development efforts by the Army’s research and technology program.

The Army’s chief scientist, Thomas Killion, leads the service’s $11 billion research and technology program, which employs more than 10,000 scientists and engineers.

In an interview with Defense News, a sister publication of Army Times, Killion described the projects underway and what military gear of the future will look like.

Q. Which applications of nanotechnology are showing promise?
A. Nanotechnology will provide benefits across the spectrum. Think in terms of two classes — [one is] structural materials like armor. The other class of materials is functional materials, like a sensor function, electronics or a communications function. Some electronics in devices today are reaching down into the nanoscale in terms of nanofeatures and microelectronics. If you can build the electronics at the nanoscale, you can embed electronics into fabric. In the next five years or so, fibers will be made and put into uniforms.

Q. What kinds of functions would this technology perform?
A. A piece of cloth could have sensing information. It could be a source of information about the person wearing the uniforms. It could be a source of information about the physiology of the person wearing the uniform, to detect the things like heart rate, blood pressure and other physiological measurements. It could tell you what his state is so you know if he is alive and well, or maybe sleepy or sick or something else.

Those sorts of technologies are all enabled by being able to build that scale of technologies into your uniform, into your helmet or into something you are wearing.

Q. What are the latest developments with robots and autonomous navigation systems?
A. We have demonstrated that robots can, in fact, recognize that there are other objects that are moving. The question is: to what scale can you do that, and how complex is the environment? It is where we have to get to, to make sure that robots are safe. We have to prove that the robot can recognize the presence of a human or animal that it wants to avoid and go around the barrier.

The hardest problem has always been and continues to be perception — interpreting the world. The MULE [Multifunctional Utility Logistics and Equipment Vehicle] can climb over things you just would not believe, such as various types of barrier objects. It is a very impressive system.

Also, Boston Dynamics is focused on nontraditional means of motion for robots. They build walking robots which have utility for going across very uneven surfaces, perhaps following a walking person better than a rolling robot would.

Q. How will the weapons on the MULE be used?
A. There have always been weaponized robots. Cruise missiles are weaponized robots, but we have very tight controls over how the lethal mechanism is employed.

It will be a while before we can give a robot a gun or missile and allow it to operate in an environment without a human. Certainly we are at a point where a robot can maneuver to a particular point, observe what is going on and send back information saying: “I see a target.” If you happen to have a weapon on that, you could engage — but with a human in the loop to make that kind of decision.

The Predator, with a Hellfire missile on it, is exactly that. It has a sensor on it. It is looking for a target. It sees the target. The guys who are controlling the Predator observe it and launch the missile, so there is a human in the loop. I always tell people what is great about robots is that soldiers can send a robot rather than a soldier. This is what the future of warfare is going to be like. You have to learn to trust the robot to do its job.

Q. How are lightweight armor composites coming along?
A. I believe we have made stunning progress in terms of the capability of the armor to provide protection at much lighter weights than we could before. We worked with equipment manufacturers to incorporate the technology and armor into our systems.

In the last seven or eight years, as this conflict has gone on and the threat has increased, we have worked hard and rapidly to come up with solutions that were responsive to that threat and grew to meet that threat effectively. That is true whether you are talking about soldier armor, vehicle armor, the kits that we have worked and technology for FCS [Future Combat Systems]. What we have been able to do is take the technologies we have developed for FCS and apply that to design technologies that we can exploit today.

Q. How have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan affected armor strategy?
A. We have to sustain our capability to allow our soldiers to operate in complex and dynamic environments. To do that, you have to provide them with protection wherever they may go, whether it is a dismounted operation, body armor or the armor you are talking about for combat vehicles.

The threat will continue to grow as our enemies see the effects of our efforts. They are going to change their strategy, use bigger bombs and new means to try to attack us. We have to be prepared for that. We have to exploit the latest technology to come up with new methods to defeat the threats — not just the armor itself, but the jamming devices and active protection systems [APS], where we are able to intercept threats like missiles and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and disrupt them so that they really don’t have an effect. You have to look at a layered approach to protection.

Q. How are the armor composites helping the FCS Manned-Ground Vehicles prepare for tank warfare?
A. You have to design the composite to protect you against the threats that APS is not going to defeat, like medium-caliber fire and small-arms fire from a high-rate-of-fire weapon. You cannot defeat a machine gun with an active protection system because you can’t intercept every bullet. You would run out of your own APS interceptors before they run out of bullets.

A tank round is a kinetic energy round. That is something you would use APS against. It is a more significant challenge in terms of how you do the intercept because they don’t fire them in large numbers. We can detect them at sufficient range. Any vehicle that is hit by a tank round is going to sustain some level of damage — depending upon how high a level that is — and you really need to disrupt that threat before it gets to your vehicle.

Q. What about a new kind of liquid armor?
A. Today, for a number of different types of armor, we use Kevlar. It is actually a fabric that you can bend, so you can provide some kind of wearable protection for extremities.

Liquid armor is suspended in the layers of the Kevlar. When you concentrate the materials in the fabric, the molecules get compressed. It is very good for protection against things like someone stabbing you with a knife. It can still, at this current state, be broken by something like a bullet because it is operating at such a high rate of speed that it just breaks right through the materials, as opposed to compressing the molecules. This is in the research phases in terms of looking at various applications.
Q&A: Army’s top research scientist

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