Enabling Defense Applications through Engineering Biology (June 2020)
A Technical Roadmap
Enabling Defense Applications through Engineering Biology: A Technical Roadmap is an assessment of the opportunities and advantages in engineering biology to transcend current constraints to build new materials for diverse systems, enable new methods for sensing, monitoring, and communicating, augment performance, protect the human from harsh environments and combat mission states, and build resilience to evolving threats. Targeted research and development across the engineering biology enterprise — in academia, industry, and government laboratories — will help to build on current capabilities, existing infrastructure, and resources, with long-term technical advancements stemming from targeted investment and dedicated programs. Achieving the milestones and capabilities detailed in this roadmap will: 1) allow the utilization of diverse resources (including waste streams) and production of specialty chemicals and materials for protection, coatings, fuels, infrastructure and agile basing, and to sustain and enhance human performance, among other products that are needed in an available and affordable manner; 2) better enable the ability to discriminate, identify, track, and target a wide variety of friends and foe in cluttered, multi-dimensional, multidomain battlespace; and 3) allow humans and systems to operate continuously and intelligently under adverse conditions across time and space.
This roadmap is an independent study and does not confer U.S. Department of Defense endorsement.