AUGUST 29, 2025 – A panel of experts at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2025 Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference and Exhibition in Washington today addressed the need to field critical systems to warfighters at speed and scale.
“We can’t let perfection be the enemy of good enough. And I don’t say that as a means to say that we’re willing to take risks and put our uniformed men and women at risk,” said Justin McRoberts, program manager for the DOD Manufacturing Science and Technology Program.
He added that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made it very clear during a Pentagon town hall held Feb. 7 when he said: “We’re going to move fast, think outside the box [and] be disruptive — on purpose — to create a sense of urgency that I want to make sure exists inside this department.”
Building on that, McRoberts said, “we’re going to go faster, and we are going to break things, but we’re going to learn lessons and we’re going to put things into the hands of the warfighter faster. We have to think in days and weeks and months instead of years and years and years — that we’ve done for too long.”
Carbon deposits and carbon manufacturing will be important materials, as will metal alloys, said McRoberts, who specializes in advanced hypersonic materials needed for vehicles to travel at very high speeds.
The panel also discussed directed energy, which includes high-powered microwaves and energy laser systems.
Directed energy is a DOD priority as it can be used to defeat drone attacks and will be an important feature of Golden Dome, noted Timothy White, the director of the Army Manufacturing Technology program in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology.
“We have to make sure that we have a supply chain that is ready to support those systems as we begin to move towards production,” he added.
White said the systems are composed of intricate components that sometimes require specialized manufacturing processes, and part of the manufacturing challenge is determining how to produce those parts at scale and at an acceptable cost.
The ultimate goal is to ensure DOD is ready to have the supply chain to make those parts and scale them up, White said.
The panel also addressed advanced materials, including new alloys, polymers, ceramics and composites, multispectral materials, advanced coatings, electronic photonics and advanced electronics for sensor power and communications.
Alan Albert, the acting chief of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Manufacturing, Industrial Technologies and Energy Division, said the goal of manufacturing advanced materials is to accelerate the discovery, development and delivery of sustainable and affordable materials through a modernized science and technology infrastructure.
He added that it also includes materials for extreme environments and advanced energetic materials, and that some of these materials may not have dual civilian and military use.
By David Vergun, DOD News