New Delhi: The Pentagon is seeking new ways to power advanced weapons and protect military electricity supplies, warning that disruption to grids inside the United States could undermine operations overseas. Its Energy Innovation Expo brings together technologies intended to strengthen the links between domestic bases, logistics networks and frontline forces as their energy requirements grow.
The three-day event, which opened at the Pentagon on Tuesday, features more than 100 exhibits covering power generation, storage and transmission. The opening programme included remarks by the undersecretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, Michael Duffey, and the assistant secretary of war for energy, installations and environment, Dale R Marks.
Marks said military planners could no longer treat electricity for bases at home and the fuel and batteries sustaining deployed forces as separate concerns. His warning reflected a broader vulnerability: weaknesses in domestic power infrastructure could affect the military’s ability to prepare, support and conduct operations far from American territory.
He identified four priorities for the US Department of War’s energy work: the Golden Dome missile defence programme, nuclear power, space operations and energy superiority. Golden Dome’s requirements illustrate the challenge, with advanced radar, high-energy microwave systems and other directed-energy weapons placing substantial demands on electricity supplies.
Among the technologies highlighted were the US Army’s Tactical Microgrid Standard and the US Navy’s Common Operational Resilience and Energy Storage system. Marks linked such developments to the power infrastructure needed to support Golden Dome’s sensors and weapons.
The nuclear effort includes developing a domestic supply of tristructural isotropic particle fuel, known as Triso, for advanced reactors. Marks connected that work to the US Army’s Janus microreactor programme and the US Air Force’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations programme, while also highlighting a joint project with Nasa to develop kilowatt-class reactors for terrestrial and space applications.
Space-related exhibits explored wireless power transmission, with the potential to supply remote sensors, unmanned aircraft and isolated units. Marks also described plans to combine microgrids with longer-duration energy storage and stronger cyber protection so installations could continue operating through disruption.
The exhibition also highlighted the practical challenge of turning experimental technology into equipment that military personnel can deploy and sustain. Marks said usability and dependence on vulnerable supply chains should help determine which projects receive funding.
The department’s existing funding structure provides separate routes for developing early-stage energy technologies and testing their suitability for military use. Its Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund supports development before commercialization, while the Operational Energy Prototyping Fund demonstrates and validates promising concepts to help move them into acquisition programmes – a necessary step between an exhibition display and an operational capability.