Warfighter Sustainment Applied Research

Warfighter Sustainment Applied Research is dedicated to supporting the U.S. Navy's research efforts to advance artificial intelligence (AI) enabled decision aides, autonomy, human-machine teaming, augmented performance, command and control, and protective equipment for sailors and marines. This program also focuses on developing biocentric and advanced materials technologies to enhance the performance of warfighters and their platforms. Additionally, it supports the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Global mission by establishing connections between the international research and development community, Naval fleet/forces, DOD, other US Government agencies, and international partners. The program's applied research addresses warfighter protection and performance concerns through various efforts focusing on advanced naval materials, biocentric technologies, decision support systems, intelligent and autonomous systems, human performance optimization, training and education technologies, social and cultural science, and biomedical technologies.

The program's planned programs for FY 2024 include continued research on advanced naval materials such as agile manufacturing, integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) toolkit infrastructure development, and ongoing efforts to improve affordability and reliability of piezoelectric transduction materials. It also includes research on corrosion control technologies through investigation of corrosion inhibitor performance for coatings and corrosion mechanisms of compositionally complex alloys (CCA) and additive manufactured materials. Furthermore, the program will continue to advance applied research efforts to support the development of naval materials in support of naval power systems and platform design and engineering. The increase in funding for FY 2024 is specifically aimed at supporting Grid Vulnerability and On-Base Power and Water Resilience relevant research efforts.

In addition to the above objectives, the program also focuses on biocentric technologies such as bioinspired and biomimetic materials; synthetic biology for environmental surveillance; materiel production; bioenergy harvesting; warfighter augmentation; marine mammal health; human interaction with autonomous systems; naval biosciences; synthetic biology for naval applications; bioengineering; life sciences; multi-spectral camouflage; bioengineering systems for bioproduction/biodegradation of military relevant materials; gut microbiome-based tools for stress resilience prediction; prebiotic food additives/probiotics effects on microbiome; scaling up production of biogenic mineral nanomaterials; programmable microbial sensors for environmental monitoring into relevant Naval platforms; deployment of self-burying benthic microbial fuel cells at various depths to power new devices.

Overall, Program PE 0602236N aims to conduct applied research that addresses critical needs related to warfighter protection and performance while also fostering international collaborations in the field of naval research.