In this paper we review some of the landscape of research and development on power and energy as it pertains to the needs of the Army warfighter. We focus on the battlefield and consider questions related to vehicles, dismounted soldiers, and forward operating bases. The literature in the overall field of energy research is immense; we make no attempt to review all these reports but rather have looked at a few selected studies that focus on the military challenges. The context of the study is twofold: the National need to reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels and the Army's need to reduce the logistical burden and hazards of moving said fuels on the battlefield. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have highlighted the danger inherent in transporting supplies over terrain that is difficult to render safe from terrorist raids and hidden explosives. The Army seeks to reduce this dependence by improving the fuel efficiency for uses that cannot now be entirely supplied by alternatives. These efforts will also provide the opportunity to save a great deal of money and reduce the number of personnel in the logistics chain. Needless to say, there will still be convoys carrying other supplies to forward bases. However, any reduction in the amount of supplies convoyed will be desirable.

Since World War II, predictions of science and technology for military applications have occurred periodically. A study chartered by the Army Air Force predicted in 1947 a broad range of developments in aeronautics and air power and has been a model for such forecasts ever since. Projections in science and technology have been issued for many years by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, which publishes decadal studies for specific disciplines. Such studies for astronomy and astrophysics, for example, go back to at least 1964. An important task of DOD science and technology (S&T) programs is to avoid technological surprise resulting from the exponential increase in the pace of discovery and change in S&T worldwide. The nature of the military threat is also changing, with the result being new military requirements, some of which can be met by technology. Shaping the S&T portfolio requires predicting and matching these two factors well into the future. Some examples of technologies that have radically affected the battlefield include the Global Positioning System coupled with inexpensive, handheld receivers; the microprocessor revolution, which has placed the power of the Internet and satellite communications in the hands of soldiers in the field; new sensing capabilities such as night vision; and composite materials for armor and armaments. Some of these technologies came from military S&T, some from commercial developments, and still others from a synthesis of the two sectors, but all were based on advances in the underlying sciences. Clearly, leaders and planners in military S&T must keep abreast of such developments and look ahead as best they can. In the Department of Defense (DOD), the last series of forecast studies was done in the 1990s. In 2008, National Defense University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) assessed the Army's STAR 21 (Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century) study,3 in which the basic and applied sciences were assessed and forecast as separate and discrete disciplines. Future capabilities were discussed in a separate set of STAR 21 volumes on systems. In general, the technologies of individual systems were not discussed with reference to the underlying sciences. This separation of future capabilities from the underlying S&T forecasts was true for the studies of all three services.

Evaluating the potential threat posed by advances in biotechnology, especially genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and synthetic biology remains a contentious issue. The rapid development of the tools of molecular biology and metabolic engineering has enabled the development of chimeric organisms which possess characteristics which are not native to the wild variant. This is commonplace in the area of biomanufacturing, where genes are introduced into organisms such as E coli and products manufactured via large-scale fermentation. More recently, entire metabolic pathways, albeit of limited complexity, have been engineered into organisms, for example, for the production of artemisinin in yeast.2 In addition to such metabolic engineering projects, whole genomes are being sequenced, leading to the possibility of creating organisms de novo.

Living systems are capable of manufacturing processes, molecular recognition and other complex functions which cannot be replicated by synthetic chemistry or other industrial technologies. Cells routinely manufacture monodisperse nanoscale structures and assemble molecular machines, carry out biochemical reactions and production processes of great complexity, and interact with the environment in an adaptive and emergent manner. Biotic (i.e., living) system s can be labile and, by their nature, difficult to precisely control. The ability to elucidate key metabolic pathways and to replicate their functional properties in a synthetic (i.e., abiotic) format will ultimately permit the design of completely artificial systems with abilities similar to those of a biotic system but with the advantages of precise process control and enhanced ruggedness. This will have profound implications for the many and varied missions of the Department of Defense (DOD) which include, but are not limited to, small-scale power and energy, lightweight flexible armor, on-demand manufacture of high-value products such as pharmaceuticals, low observable materials and-the subject of this paper-chemical and biological defense (CBD).