INSIGHTS: Alliances form, products emerge

By Jerry Langheim, Strategic Alliances, Defense Systems & Assessments, Sandia National Laboratories

In a world where national security threats evolve more rapidly than ever before, the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security are facing new challenges: How will innovations that save lives quickly reach the warfighter, analyst, or emergency responder without breaking a stressed federal budget? Who will develop and make the next-generation products that meet rapidly changing national security needs?

Commercial firms are under similar time and budget pressures. Technology innovation is essential as they anticipate customer problems that require fast but comprehensive research and development programs. Firms in the aerospace and defense industries often face a double whammy: how to quickly bring innovations to market while meeting stringent military or regulatory requirements and specifications. Increasingly, these firms are seeking alliances with universities and national laboratories, whose R&D infrastructures are in place and whose multidisciplinary staffs allow them to tackle questions at all points along the product development cycle. Sandia has formed many military and industrial alliances, some of which extend back to the lab’s founding, that are helping firms develop new capabilities and enhance their own capabilities.

A few of the products created through alliances with Sandia’s Defense Systems & Assessments group are described here. Such alliances are the foundation for Sandia’s future as well a wellspring for tomorrow’s national security technology.

Fast target analysis

Automatic target recognition (ATR) in battle is not as easy as it is portrayed on TV. The ability to analyze a radar signal and reliably identify a target requires many computational steps to be performed rapidly. Raytheon has turned to Sandia to help improve the software algorithms for the next-generation radar for the F-15 C and E Eagle, extending that fighter’s utility as F-22 Raptors take on their air superiority role. Bringing ATR capabilities down from the large Joint STARS 707-based aircraft into a pod carried by fighters into a rugged environment is a key military need.

Electric guns

Gunpowder has propelled projectiles for more than 900 years. Ranging a shell fired by high explosives is both a science and an art, due to variables such as the amount of explosives used and differing explosive chemistries. Range is limited by the strength and weight of the guns themselves.

Electromagnetic launchers, first proposed more than 25 years ago, are now feasible. Their advantages are more precise muzzle velocities, as the “charge” can be finely tuned; far greater range, as the shell can be accelerated the entire length of the launcher; and a smokeless, heatless launch, which helps to conceal the location of the launcher.

Lockheed Martin is developing both long-range launchers (many times the range of traditional guns) with very heavy payloads, and mortars for closer-in battles.

Welding without sparks

Boeing and Sandia collaborate under a broad cooperative research and development agreement signed in 2002 that covers 14 technical projects.

In one effort, Sandia adapted its computer modeling codes to understand the chemical processes at work during Friction Stir Joining (FSJ) operations. The technique, invented in 1991, is a method of joining metals that avoids the heat, filler material, and other potential problems of conventional welding. FSJ welds are created by frictional heating and mechanical deformation of the materials.

Another Boeing-Sandia collaboration is improving the analysis of fracture and failure in composite materials. Sandia developed the peridynamic theory of continuum mechanics, a potentially revolutionary advancement in the analysis of structural failures in materials because of its ability to model the growth, interactions, and effects of any number of cracks in complex geometries.

Boeing has applied the code to problems in metallic materials and is collaborating with Sandia to extend the model to fracture in composite materials.

Boeing’s new commercial airliner, the 787 Dreamliner, makes extensive use of composite materials.

Hitting high-value hideouts

Holding at risk hardened, deeply buried facilities in rogue nations is a significant national security challenge, especially if they harbor components of a nuclear or chem/bio weapons program. A massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) is one way to breach blast doors, but MOPs could spread contaminants by its blast.

The Matrix trilogy of movies showed machines burrowing deep into the earth to penetrate and destroy the deeply buried home of unplugged humans. Through a DARPA program, Sandia is developing a weapon with similar capabilities, albeit less dramatic than circular saws whizzing at the ends of robotic arms. A number of corporations are interested in partnering with Sandia for phase II development.

Seeing what the enemy can’t

In any battle space, many actions are purposefully done at night, or under daytime conditions that hinder an enemy’s ability to see what is happening. Clouds, smoke, fog, dust, and heavy rain blind most optical and traditional radar systems. In World War II large night movements and aerial bombardments occurred frequently. Only a fortunate break in the clouds revealed the Japanese fleet steaming toward Midway.

The battle spaces in today’s asymmetrical warfare are much smaller. A new generation of radars promises to help soldiers see during these conditions. Synthetic aperture radars (SARs) use computational techniques to see over a hill or around a corner. Rockwell Collins, General Atomics, and ITT Corporation are working with Sandia to develop enhanced SARs based on differing payload sizes and advanced capabilities.