Military calling all MEMS
as U.S. beats Iraq war drums

HOUSTON, Sept. 11, 2002 — With the U.S. military sizing up its battlefield needs for a new confrontation with Iraq, Army procurement directors have sped up a program to mass-manufacture new MEMS-based navigation and guidance systems for missiles and munitions.

“We’re trying to proliferate smart weapons on the battlefield,” said Albert Warnasch, a program director for the Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command. MEMS are a particularly critical component of that drive, he added, as they greatly reduce the overall tonnage of material that is directed to a battlefield, reducing the time and expense of preparing for war.

During Desert Storm, he said, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gave the U.S. military three to four months to gear up an attack. “If we did it again,” he told a group of microelectronics experts gathered for Nanotech 2002 in Houston, it would be unlikely that Hussein would be as accommodating.

Last May, the military sped up its selection of two contractors — consortiums led by Honeywell and L-3 Communications — as part of a $100 million plan to design and produce the new MEMS systems for missiles and munitions. The contractors are committed to paying 30 percent of the cost, said Warnasch, an investment that will be paid off by providing 90 percent of the military’s guidance systems — some 100,000 to 200,000 units a year.

The new MEMs program was given a “shotgun start,” said Vicki LeFevre, a co-program manager from the Army Aviation and Missile Command. “The hurdle is to mass-produce these,” she said, adding that the first new systems are expected to arrive in the first quarter of next year.

“We’re hoping the fact that we’re throwing a lot of money into this process will resolve this issue,” Warnasch said.

But the Army expects a sizeable return as well. Current systems not only weigh 2 pounds, but they cost $7,000 to $8,000 each. The new MEMS systems will be considerably lighter and should cost in the range of $1,200 to $1,500 each.

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