News Releases

Solid-state semiconductors don't handle heat very well. If they're operated at high power, they tend to burn out. Heat poses other problems as well—the hotter the device, the greater the electrical resistance (and the lower the efficiency). Digital semiconductor devices also have capacitive elements...

In today's new world of network centric warfare, where there is an ever-greater dependence on vast amounts of information that must be received and transmitted, too many antennas are a shipboard problem. They're heavy, they tend to interfere with one another, and they're unstealthy because they...

Stovepipes—old "legacy" software you've bought and can't easily replace—that can't work together are one of the biggest obstacles to getting the most out of information technology. This is especially true in Naval operations. Sailors and Marines use many systems that have been acquired over the...

Shooting down enemy air threats—whether they're ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, or aircraft—is a tactical problem that leaves little room for error. The targets move fast and must be verifiably, catastrophically, destroyed. An incoming missile hit and broken into pieces by an air defense...

As the services scramble to adapt to 21st century visions of "network-centric warfare" that call for vast growth in tactical information exchange, they'll be looking for innovative ways to multiply communications networking capabilities—while slashing costs. All the services are looking at...

Hitoshi Narita tells us that as a child growing up in Nagoya, Japan, he was fascinated by large structures…airplanes, ships, trains… anything that was large, mechanical, and moved. Watching the large cargo ships coming in and out of the ports near his home, he knew even then that he wanted to be...

For the last 50 years, the Office of Naval Research has been in the business of guiding the most "imaginative research" * found across the country. Technologies taken for granted today – the cell phone, the Global Positioning System, the laser, the national bone marrow donor program, for example –...

It's mighty daunting to be called a " brilliant young innovator" whose " work and ideas are apt to change the world…a visitor from the future, living among us here and now." Talk about pressure. But that's exactly what MIT's Technology Review Magazine called Howie Choset, mechanical engineer and...

If you know anything about methane gas – and the Office of Naval Research thinks you should – it probably has something to do with swamp gas, and a faintly unpleasant sulfurous smell that rises from country marshes on sultry, summer evenings, or perhaps – for more romantic types – stories of Will-o'...

Arlington, VA -- The Unmanned Undersea Vehicle office at the Naval Sea Systems Command has announced the rapid transition of synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) into the Long Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS). The Office of Naval Research's Commercial Technology Transition Office made possible the...