Weight watch: search continues for lighter alternatives to steel armor.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Tactical Vehicles

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Becoming a lighter and faster force--Army officials have iterated endlessly--is among the service's paramount goals. But the Army may have a tough time getting there as long as tons of heavy steel plates continue to bear down on its patrol and combat vehicles.

Lighter blast-proof materials that can protect vehicles as effectively as steel have been a continual pursuit at military and private sector laboratories, but so far success has been limited. While lots of exotic new armor materials have emerged, the military remains mostly committed to the rolled homogeneous armor steel for its combat vehicles--generally because of its proven protective qualities and its relatively low cost compared to next-generation technologies.

The Pentagon's science arm, meanwhile, believes that there may be practical solutions out there--from nameless small businesses or even from someone's garage--but that the military has yet to reach out and grab them.

That was the thinking behind the "armor challenge" sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Two years into it, DARPA boasts that it has tested at least 50 new technologies and that, so far, several of them were judged to perform well enough to merit further evaluation and government funding.

Leo Chfistodoulou, who oversees the armor challenge at DARPA, says this project is nothing like most traditional military research undertakings. In the armor challenge, the government does not fund research and development work but instead offers to test existing technologies and, based on the results, may choose to pay for additional trials and even provide guidance to companies so they can make their products available to military agencies.

Under this approach, DARPA acts as a mentor to companies or inventors who would otherwise never have a shot at a military contract. "We give them seed money to turn their idea into reality," says Chfistodoulou. "DARPA purchases the test articles and pays for tests, but is not funding any research and development efforts."

Traditional military contractors already are engaged in a litany of armor research projects at various defense agencies. But Pentagon officials for years have insisted on the need to recruit lesser-known firms that can inject innovation into military programs. "We want to engage new people," Christodoulou says. "The armor challenge is aimed at non-traditional companies ... It's aimed at small businesses, at inventors in their...