DARPA's Rubble to Rockets Program Pioneers New Manufacturing Frontiers

DARPA's Rubble to Rockets Program Pioneers New Manufacturing Frontiers
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 19, 2024

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) introduces the Rubble to Rockets (R2) program, a groundbreaking initiative aimed at revolutionizing manufacturing in environments where supply chains are compromised. The Department of Defense (DOD) has identified an urgent need for the capability to produce critical structures on-demand using locally sourced materials, challenging the traditional dependency on pristine raw materials for manufacturing.

R2 is set to redefine the paradigms of design and production by developing methodologies that can adapt to variable input materials, enabling the creation of structures from an expansive range of raw resources. This initiative not only seeks to build a cost-effective, flexible, and robust platform for the production and characterization of raw materials for structural fabrication but also to adapt these innovations to the specific context of sounding rockets. These rockets will serve as a proof of concept for the feasibility and wide applicability of the R2 program's objectives.

Hunter Martin, the program manager for R2 at DARPA, emphasized the transformative potential of the program: "By establishing a framework that enables manufacturing with diverse materials under various conditions, we challenge conventional manufacturing limits in resource-scarce settings. Although sounding rockets are our initial focus, we envision this technology having broad implications across numerous domains, including spare parts fabrication, infrastructure repair, and even complete system production."

The R2 program plans to exploit advances in material informatics alongside novel processing and manufacturing techniques to significantly reduce the time and scale required for production. It aims to establish an analytical framework capable of incorporating new material discoveries and fabrication methods swiftly, mitigating the traditionally long adoption risks.

Anticipating a future where material conversion and insights gleaned from R2 could herald new avenues for materials with sustainable supply chains and energy footprints, DARPA is poised to unveil more details about the program in an upcoming Program Solicitation (PS). Furthermore, an R2 Industry Day scheduled for March 18, 2024, will offer potential proposers comprehensive insights into the program's goals. For more information and to register for the Industry Day, interested parties are directed to visit sam.gov.