- Pentagon Science Advisor Joseph Jewell weighs in on the Ukraine war and the integration of AI and biotechnology marks a paradigm shift in how the US military views future conflicts.
- Recently, the Marines 3D printed charges molded from coconut shells and coffee grounds that outperform conventional explosives by 25%.
- The Department of Defense is also trying to accelerate innovation in the industry by offering up to 500 free patents to private companies.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has had a devastating impact on those directly affected by the conflict, which has now entered its fifth year as both sides trade blows in what many consider a prolonged stalemate that is due in part to a lack of manpower.
However, the conflict, or rather its asymmetrical nature, has many modern militaries keeping an eye on developments that show what the future of combat between two warring nations could look like.
U.S. Under Secretary of War for Science and Technology Joseph S. Jewell recently spoke at length during the Defense One technology summit about how conflict information and advances in artificial intelligence and biotechnology continue to shape modern warfare as we know it.
Advances in production, integration of AI and focus on biotechnology
At the summit, the Under Secretary addressed a number of topics, including insights into how the Russia-Ukraine conflict is developing and the lessons the United States should learn from the ongoing war.
He referred to the fact that Ukraine essentially willed its entire drone industry into existence because it was key to its survival while also keeping the Russian navy at bay for most of the conflict despite not having a similarly equipped fighting force at sea.
The line coming out of it, however, could be that Marines repurpose coffee grounds and coconut shells to make 3D-printed shaped loads for the battlefield.
This underscores a major shift that has already taken place on the modern battlefield, as researchers and military personnel increasingly push the boundaries to find the best way to resupply and rearm, while also making advances in lethality in some cases.
The coffee grounds and coconut shells were just the tip of the iceberg; The Marines also tried the same thing with plastic water bottles and even crushed volcanic rock, and found that the latter worked better.
Jewell said the field-manufactured charge had reduced time to point of use by 99%, because it could be produced on site from materials “endemic to the Indo-Pacific” and, even more interestingly, showed “25% better focusing characteristics than conventionally manufactured high explosives.”
The underlying story is not just about how field-made loads are saving enormous amounts of time and money on future battlefields, but how military doctrine has changed to include ‘patent holidays’ to increase access to technology and encourage innovation, for better or worse, at least by the Pentagon in recent years.
While its focus has been on Ukraine, the United States has learned similar lessons in its on-again, off-again conflict with Iran, where the latter has resorted to using low-cost but high-volume weapons, including drones and missiles, to effectively force a stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz, indicating that a paradigm shift is necessary where the side with the best or most “efficient” weapons does not necessarily win.
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