Earlier this year, the Office of the Under Secretary of War Manufacturing Technology Office (OSW ManTech) issued an Organic Industrial Base (OIB) Modernization Challenge to the nation’s Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs), including the ARM Institute. This challenge supports the Department of War (DoW)’s focus on transforming and modernizing defense manufacturing through practical technology and workforce innovations. Through this challenge, the ARM Institute was awarded nearly $90M in funding for ten projects led by the ARM Institute and its consortium members. Fifteen (15) member organizations will deliver viable working solutions within a two-year timeframe to solve exceptionally complex automation and modernization challenges at 12 military manufacturing sites, often referred to as the OIB, across the United States.
The US Organic Industrial Base is a complex network of arsenals, depots, and ammunition plants that build and maintain the equipment that powers our military, playing a critical role in both supporting our warfighters and ensuring national security. The DoW has embarked on an extensive strategic effort to modernize the operations at these facilities through advanced technologies, such as robotics and physical Artificial Intelligence (AI).
ARM Members stepped up to this challenge by bridging innovation with practicality to propose solutions that will tangibly benefit the OIB and its workforce. The selected innovations range from improving safety in energetics production and increasing manufacturing quality using AI, to accelerating mission readiness utilizing drones, to removing bottlenecks through robotics. These solutions solve challenges impacting each branch of the military.