Soldier Advanced Technology

This project matures and demonstrates individual and crew-served armament systems; weapon, munitions, and fire control that enable increased capability, lethality, survivability and reduced negative health effects of the dismounted Warfighter across the Joint Services. This project demonstrates blast overpressure characterization, monitoring and a wearable system that captures real-time physiological and blast exposure data to enable integrated Soldier monitoring in operational environments. Work in this project complements Program Element (PE) 0602148A (Soldier Applied Research) / Project DN2 (Joint Service Small Arms Enabling Tech). Work in this project is performed by the Armaments Center (AC).

This Project matures and demonstrates advanced composite materials and manufacturing processes to deliver materials with properties to support broad applications across the DoW. Focus will be on properties required for understanding operation in future contested environments. This Project integrates manufacturing processes and advanced automation through additive, subtractive, and digital manufacturing sciences of novel composite materials, for use in both existing and future DoW-wide systems. The Project will use unique contract and collaborative approaches to accelerate transitions into and from university programs. Work in this Project complements Project Element (PE) 0602184A (Soldier Applied Research) / Project DO1 (Modernized Composites & Manufacturing). The cited work is consistent with the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering Advanced Materials Critical Technology Area and the Army modernization strategy. Work in this Project is performed by the Soldier Center (SC).

This project matures and demonstrates enhancements to current mortar systems. This effort will provide solutions that increase the range and lethality of currently fielded systems and mitigate blast overpressure. Work in this project complements work done in Program Element (PE) 0602141A (Lethality Technology) / Project AH9 (Advanced Warheads Technology). Work in this project is performed by the Armaments Center (AC).

This project conducts applied technology development to provide critical breakthroughs in developing a technologically fluent force. This research will refine, adapt, and validate methods and measures to assess and develop the technological fluency (TF) of Soldiers across a career and technologies to maximize technological fluency resilience and performance in Soldiers and units. TF is defined as the ability of Soldier and units to use and rapidly adapt new and intelligent technologies without formal training on these technologies, and it will be a decisive factor in a future operating environment in which Soldiers and squads are teamed with increasingly sophisticated and evolving technologies. Soldiers and leaders in specialty areas (e.g., Cyber, and Emerging Tech) and General Purpose forces will require increased technological aptitudes and skills to adapt emerging technologies to evolving mission sets and avoid being overmatched by Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled smart technologies. This project supports key Army needs and will coordinate and/or leverage findings of several PEs to include 0602184A (Soldier Applied Research), and 0603007A (Manpower, Personnel and Training Advanced Technology). This research will be performed by the U.S. Army Research Institute (ARI) for Behavioral and Social Sciences, and in coordination with collaborative research between ARI and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) performed within 0602184A (Soldier Applied Research).