"Everyone knows 9-11 changed the world in terms of security challenges," said Ravi Athale, principle communications engineer at the Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, MITRE Corporation.

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington Wednesday, Athale evaluated the new challenges faced in the world of defense. He cited a wider variety of hard-to-detect threats, such as chemical-biological agents, a shorter timeline -- for example, reducing the time from look to shoot from hours to minutes -- and shrinking platforms as being among them.

"Do we have the tools to meet the new challenges?" he asked. Among recent strategies to combat the tests of a changed global environment, Athale spoke of nanophotonics -- a means of using light to generate, move, process, store, display and act on information.

Nanophotonic devices have already had an impact on the military. "In the first Gulf war, they say we basically owned the night, because we could see and the enemy couldn't," said Athale. The U.S. military used thermal imaging and night vision -- light carrying devices -- for the first time in a major combat environment.

Addressing the effects of a load of weight on a soldier's endurance was John Parmentola, director for research and laboratory management with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army.

"Increase a load and a soldier's endurance decreases," he said, speaking at Heritage. "What we'd like to do is be able to extend body armor over a soldier's body."

Explaining the army's goals in improving body armor, Parmentola said research is underway into new materials that are energy absorbing. Discussing new objectives, he said that both new material and processes that need to be invented are being researched. Much of this will be done through the use of nanotechnology.

Parmentola said that ballistic and climate-cooling materials are being investigated, as well as invention of a triage material in creating better body armor for soldier protection.

This triage material for uniforms would ultimately be able to detect the nature of an injury and be reactive in trying to take some action to stem it. For example, "a soldier receives a bullet wound in the leg, the uniform will detect that and try to stem the flow," or even administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation, he said.

With increasing steps taken into the field of nanotechnology, federal agency participation has increased in budgeting toward technological research and requirements, according to James Murday, executive secretary of the Nanoscale Science Engineering and Technology Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council.

"Environmental Protection Agency participation has gone up," Murday said. "Are there environmental health and safety implications with nanotechnology?" Answering that, research is still being conducted as the United States pays increased attention to the transition of the technology from the university laboratories and into application.

"Nanoscience is going to impact both commercial and military uses," said Murday, "from a security and defense perspective, the United States prides itself and wants to be ahead of the technology.

"It is an evolutionary technology," he said, exemplifying how nanotechnology will make kevlar body armor better.

Adding an example of U.K. nanotechnology use in the fuel of a bus line, which now claims it has achieved up to 10 percent better fuel economy, Murday said that nanoscience will enable different control systems.

"It is not likely it will open up a revolutionary new weapons system," he said, but "it is important that we pay attention to the implications so the United States doesn't become blindsighted."

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Related Links
Center for Innovative Computing and Informatics, MITRE Corporation
Heritage Foundation
The Long War - Doctrine and Application

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