ARC will deploy advanced manufacturing equipment organized into seven production nodes.
A top laboratory in the United States has taken a significant step to accelerate high-tech defense manufacturing. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a strategic public-private partnership.
The MOU is set to establish a strategic public-private partnership to accelerate the on-demand manufacture of qualified, mission-critical components for U.S. national security applications.
Advancing defense manufacturing
“The United States faces an urgent need to rebuild its manufacturing capacity for critical defense components,” said Bryan Wisk, CEO of ARC.
“By combining ORNL’s world-leading computational, materials science, and manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous production infrastructure, we can compress manufacturing and qualification timelines from years to months and deliver manufactured parts at the volumes the warfighter needs.”
The partnership — known as the Exascale Foundry — will combine ORNL’s computing and manufacturing capabilities with ARC’s ARCNet distributed manufacturing platform to create a closed-loop system for AI-enabled materials and manufacturing qualification and autonomous production at defense-relevant scale, according to a press release.
Under the MOU, ARC will deploy advanced manufacturing equipment organized into seven production nodes connected to ORNL via ARC’s secure ARCNet infrastructure. ARC will expand capability through ORNL’s high-performance computing (HPC) resources.
Urgent need to rebuild defense manufacturing capacity
ORNL revealed that it provide access to HPC expertise for simulation-driven materials characterization and qualification, along with technologies developed at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), the Department of Energy’s only large-scale, open-access advanced manufacturing facility.
ORNL’s Peregrine AI software, which has analyzed over 1.9 million additive manufacturing layers, will be integrated into ARC’s production nodes for real-time adaptive control and quality assurance, as per the release.
“ORNL’s advanced manufacturing and computing capabilities are uniquely positioned to help accelerate the transition of laboratory-proven technologies into production-scale defense manufacturing,” said Moe Khaleel, ORNL associate laboratory director for National Security Sciences.
“Partnering with ARC ensures we are transitioning our research into real production outcomes.”
It’s also revealed that the initial implementation will focus on high-temperature nickel superalloy turbine components for autonomous air vehicle engines using metal binder jetting technology, directly addressing demonstrated production bottlenecks in the U.S. defense supply chain.
It’s also being claimed that the new partnership supports DOE’s Genesis Mission, a national initiative to build the world’s most powerful scientific platform to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security and drive energy innovation. ARC and ORNL’s collective capabilities will help re-envision advanced manufacturing and industrial productivity, accelerate defense production and qualification, and secure critical supply chain elements, according to the press release.
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Prabhat, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, is a tech and defense journalist. While he enjoys writing on modern weapons and emerging tech, he has also reported on global politics and business. He has been previously associated with well-known media houses, including the International Business Times (Singapore Edition) and ANI.