DARPA has announced a project that could embed radars into the skin of an aircraft.
The Transformative Design (TRADES) program aims to develop new mathematics and algorithms to exploit recent advances in materials and manufacturing methods.
While new materials are much stronger and lighter, incorporating them into actual designs has lagged.
"As a result, today's design technologies are simply not able to bring to fruition the enormous level of physical detail and complexity made possible with cutting-edge manufacturing capabilities and materials," according to a DARPA news release.
"For example, designing a structure whose components vary significantly in their physical or functional properties, such as a phased array radar, and an aircraft skin, is extremely complicated using available tools," DARPA said. "Usually the relevant components are designed separately and then they are joined. TRADES envisions coming up with more elegant and unified designs — in this case, perhaps embedding the radar directly into the vehicle skin itself — potentially reducing cost, size and weight of future military systems."
In addition to the classic computer-aided design and physical modeling communities, DARPA is also looking for input from experts in animation, materials science, applied math, data analytics and artificial intelligence. A Proposers Day has been scheduled for May 13 in Arlington, Virginia.
BONUS: Find out more about military IT and networks at the C4ISR & Networks Conference May 26. Speakers include Manish Patel, the CIO of Army PEO EIS, and Doug Wiltsie, executive director of the Army's System of Systems Engineering and Integration Directorate. Learn more and register here.
