Wondering What's New in Military Technology?

AFRL is a scientific research organization operated by the USAF Materiel Command.

I was thrilled to be on a special tour today of the Air Force Research Lab at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio.

The Laboratory was formed at in 1997 as a consolidation of four Air Force laboratory facilities (Wright, Phillips, Rome, and Armstrong) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under a unified command. The AFRL is composed of seven technical directorates, one wing, and the Office of Scientific Research. Each technical directorate emphasizes a particular area of research within the AFRL mission which it specializes in performing experiments in conjunction with universities and contractors.

We were shown:

- the wind tunnel complex used to perform studies of turbine aerodynamics and flow control on aircraft.
- wearable monitoring devices with sensors capable of continuous, real-time analysis of biomarkers for targets indicating stress, fatigue, vigilance, and overall other physiological conditions. 

- a horizontal impulse accelerator, a vertical deceleration tower, and a vertical impact device used to generate impact acceleration profiles for tests with human and manikin subjects. 

The Aerospace Directorate is also a collaborator with DARPA, the U.S. Air Force Space and Missle Systems Center, Sandia National Laboratories, and AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate on the FALCON program, which includes the HTV-3X Blackswift hypersonic flight demonstration vehicle.