On display at the Pentagon for three days are more than 100 exhibits related to energy innovation, including the Army's Tactical Microgrid Standard, the Navy's system to use microwaves to beam limitless power from space and the Air Force's Modular Energy for Tactical Expeditionary Operations Resource, or METEOR power system.
The Energy Sentry - Pentagon: DoW's Energy Innovation Expo, which began today, showcases War Department efforts to address the modern reality that operational energy at the tactical edge and energy used to power the installations inside the United States are the same thing.
"For too long, defense planners operated under a false construct," said Dale R. Marks, the assistant secretary of war for energy, installations and environment. "We built a firewall between installation energy — the power running our bases at home — and operational energy — the fuel and the batteries powering our assets at the tactical edge. Today, that seam is completely gone; it's blurred into irrelevance."
America's adversaries, Marks said, do not distinguish between a microgrid in Georgia and a generator in the Pacific.
"They know that they don't have to defeat our warfighters on a distant battlefield if they can cripple the domestic grids that power our control centers, our logistics hubs and our deployment platforms," he said. "Our installations are warfighting platforms, and we have to treat them that way. ... If the power at home is vulnerable, our force projection is compromised before a single boot hits the ground."
The energy expo, Marks said, showcases efforts by the department and military services to respond to the realities of energy security at home and abroad.
"The emerging technologies showcased here ... represent the rapid, aggressive innovation designed to secure American energy dominance," he said.
Marks highlighted four key energy focus areas within the War Department: Golden Dome for America, nuclear capabilities, space and energy superiority.
The Golden Dome kill chain, he said, is energy-intensive, and the War Department prioritizes getting what it needs to power directed energy systems.
"We're delivering the energy backbone for [the] Golden Dome," Marks added. "We're rapidly innovating to reduce integration risks for high-power weapon systems and advanced sensors. And if we want to deploy directed energy, high-energy microwave and advanced radar systems, we must solve the energy equation."
Directed-energy systems lower cost per shot and increase magazine depth, but Marks said they are "power-hungry," and the War Department must meet that power demand to make the Golden Dome a success.
"Energy is the lifeblood of the entire Golden Dome kill chain," he said. "It goes from space-based early warning sensors to ground-based radar and kinetic and non-kinetic interceptors."
He referenced two systems that will help make the Golden Dome possible: the Army's Tactical Microgrid Standard and the Navy's Common Operational Resilience and Energy Storage.
Nuclear Advancements
The department is accelerating development of TRISO — tristructural isotropic particle fuel — as a commercially available fuel for advanced reactors. Marks said TRISO creates a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain that supports the Army's initiative to deploy commercially owned and operated nuclear microreactors at domestic military installations, called the Janus program, and the Air Force's Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program, called ANPI.
"We're ensuring that we never rely on a strategic competitor for our nuclear fuel," he said.
The department is also investing in the Versatile Autonomous Kilowatt-Class Reactor Experiment project, called VALKRE, along with NASA. The program advances development of kilowatt-class nuclear reactor technology for use on Earth and in space.
"Project VALKRE directly supports [President Donald J. Trump's] national initiative for American space nuclear power, advancing space nuclear technologies as a national priority," he said.
More Energy To and From Space
"We're no longer treating space assets as static, disposable systems," Marks said. "We're building a dynamic, maneuvering orbital force. This requires space logistics and in-space refueling."
Two technologies on display at the energy expo for providing power to space and from space include the Navy's Assured Space Power Initiative and its limitless power from space exhibit, which Marks said can deliver power to the farthest reaches of Earth.
"By transmitting energy [wirelessly] across vast distances from space to space, space to ground [and] ground to ground, we can resupply remote sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and isolated units," he said.
Asserting Energy Superiority
"If a commander on the ground does not have real-time, energy-informed decision-making capabilities, they are operating blind," Marks said.
Tactical microgrids, vehicle-centric power systems and fast-forming microgrids, he noted, can keep operating, even when supply chains are disrupted.
"At the installation level, we're pairing these microgrids with long-duration energy storage and ironclad cyber hardening," Marks said. "We're ensuring that our bases can stand alone and fight through any cyberattack or physical disruption."
A Better Customer
The War Department must do a better job of being a customer to ensure the best technology developed in the private sector can get through the "valley of death" — a difficult period in technology development between success in the lab and becoming a fully funded War Department acquisition program.
The department, Marks said, is committed to bridging that valley.
"We've aligned our innovation funding programs to act as a unified pipeline," he said, citing the Operational Energy Capital Improvement Fund, the Operational Energy Prototyping Fund, the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program as examples.
"These programs ensure that energy innovation reaches the warfighter," Marks said. "It goes to the warfighter, whether the need is at the point of action or at the base that sustains it."
The War Department must focus its limited funds on technologies that actually matter to the warfighter, he added.
"As we streamline this process, we must hold ourselves accountable to an uncompromising standard," he said. "We're not funding science projects for their own sake. Every dollar we spend must go to the warfighter. Whenever a new technology is presented, I don't ask for a list of its theoretical capabilities; I only ask one simple question: 'Will we deploy with this?'"
If a capability cannot be deployed, is too difficult for a soldier to use, or is too dependent on a supply chain that might not always be there, he said, then resources might need to be redirected to something the warfighter can use.
"We're putting warfighters first," Marks said. "We're integrating our operators into the deployment process from Day 1. We're integrating our operators in development, and this is not a one-way street. This is a conversation we must have together: innovators, industry and operators."
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