“Nanotechnology is an area which has highly promising prospects for turning fundamental research into successful innovations. Not only to boost the competitiveness of our industry but also to create new products that will make positive changes in the lives of our citizens, be it in medicine, environment, electronics or any other field. Nanosciences and nanotechnologies open up new avenues of research and lead to new, useful, and sometimes unexpected applications.
Novel materials and new-engineered surfaces allow making products that perform better. New medical treatments are emerging for fatal diseases, such as brain tumours and Alzheimer’s disease. Computers are built with nanoscale components and improving their performance depends upon shrinking these dimensions yet further”.
This quote from the EC’s “Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies: an action plan for Europe 2005-2009” clearly indicates the hope and hype of nanotechnology, expecting to bring many innovations and new business in many areas. Nanotechnology has the potential to have impact on virtually all technological sectors as an “enabling” or “key” technology including medicine, health, information technology, energy, materials, food, water and the environment, instruments and security. This has lead to a rapid growth of interest and spending in nanotechnology R&D, growing with 20-40% annually over the last 6 years up to roughly 10 billion Euro (public and private) in 2008.
Impact of nanotechnology on defence
With the highly promising expectations of nanotechnology for new innovative products, materials and power sources it is evident that nanotechnology can bring many innovations into the defence world. In order to assess how these nanotechnology developments can or will have impact on future military operations, the NL Defence R&D Organisation has requested to compile a nanotechnology roadmap for military applications, including:
Survey of current nano- and microsystem technology developments in both the civil and defence markets.
Clarification of the impact on future military operations and
organisation, 10-15 years from now.
Guidance on how to translate and adapt such nano- and microsystem technologies into a military context.
This nanotechnology overview of current developments, expectations for time-to-market and several future concepts for military applications. The structure is as follows:
Introduction to nanotechnology
What is nanotechnology, global R&D landscape, key technologies, overall prospects for defence (technology radars)
*expected impact on future defence platforms
Possible impact on future defence
Sceneries with future concepts, outlook on possible future defence platforms and product concepts, enabled by nanotechnology, for:
- land
- water
- air
- urban
Conclusions and strategy
- civil versus defence driven developments
- opportunities for soldier system