At the request of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Army Research and Development (DASA(RT)), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, under the auspices of the Board on Army Research and Development (BOARD), will appoint an ad hoc committee to conduct a fast-track study that examines U.S. Army’s future power requirements for sustaining a multi-domain operational conflict; and to what extent can emerging power generation and transmission technologies achieve the Army’s operational power requirements in 2035. The study will be based on one operational usage case identified by the Army as part of its ongoing efforts in multi-domain operations.

To facilitate the request for a Fast-Track Study, the data collection phase of the project will leverage the recent work in assessing alternate energy technologies from the Defense Science Board, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the Army Science Board to survey and collate data on promising power technologies. Following the guidelines established by the Astro2020 decadal survey to create an opportunity for broad participation from the research community and ensure that the committee is aware of emerging technologies, early in the data-gathering phase of the project the committee will issue a request for white papers on activities, projects, or state of the profession considerations. Following the call for white papers, the committee will invite the authors of the most promising white papers to participate in a public forum to discuss their ideas with the committee.

The committee will (a) review the power needs as defined in the Army’s multi-domain operational scenario; (b) assess candidate power technologies against the requirements of the operational usage case; and (c) recommend the technologies that have the potential to achieve the operational requirements at the scale appropriate for the U.S. Army in 2035. The recommendations will help inform the Army’s investment priorities in technologies to help ensure that the power requirements of the Army’s future capability needs are achieved.