Military Preparing for New Era Of Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

• Author: Harper, Jon

COLUMBUS, Ga.--With the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in the rearview mirror, the Defense Department is preparing for a new era of explosive ordnance disposal that will bring fresh challenges and require new technology solutions.

Improvised explosive devices planted by insurgents were one of the top threats during the post-9/11 conflicts. But now, the U.S. military is refocusing on neutralizing bombs and mines that it could face in future conflicts against more advanced adversaries such as China and Russia.

"We have a lot of great capabilities," said Air Force Brig. Gen. William Kale, a member of the Pentagon's EOD program board. However, "what's good today is not good tomorrow, and there's definitely a lot of areas where we need to get after it."

"We need to find out what that new technology is and be able to exploit that technology to be effective for the near peer competition," he said at the Future Force Capabilities Conference and Exhibition in Columbus, Georgia, hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association.

The military needs to be prepared for large-area clearance operations, officials say.

"We're starting to get after this from a joint perspective," said Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Cole Pasley, superintendent of the Defense Department's joint EOD technology division. "A large area for [the Air Force] in our next wars will likely always be some sort of an airfield. For the Marines, it could be a beach. For the Navy, a carrier. For the Army, a huge mass of land somewhere."

The military is pursuing new technology to address these challenges.

A science-and-technology effort is underway to find a next-generation breacher to replace the legacy mineclearing line charge. The concept calls for mounting payloads on robotic combat vehicles that can help defeat minefields by using sensors to detect hazards, launching payloads from a standoff distance, and employing guidance systems that can tailor payloads for precision or scalable effects.

"We need industry's innovative ideas, whether kinetic or non-kinetic, on what the next-generation breacher will look like and how the entire kill chain can be integrated," said Army Col. Russ Hoff, project manager for close combat systems at the joint program office for armaments and ammunition.

Another large-area clearance challenge that officials are worried about is rapid airfield damage recovery, which could be required if U.S. air bases are hit by Chinese or Russian munitions.

In that scenario...