America has two imperatives. It must innovate faster to maintain its technological superiority, especially in U.S. firepower. The other imperative is economic development. The two are related. Faster innovation means connecting labs to businesses and helping people meet both their needs. That potential exists in Southern Maryland.
The work we do at the newly established Velocity Lab within the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Indian Head Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division in Charles County is critical to maintaining the technological superiority of our weapons through constant innovation. The Velocity Lab allows scientists to rapidly develop prototypes throughout the year, rather than tying them to annual budget cycles, to help accelerate development times while meeting unique warfighter needs.
We research and develop "energetics" — propellants, explosives and associated energy storage and release systems — which are to firepower as micro-processing is to computing power. Energetics enable weapons to go faster, fly farther and hit harder. This technical expertise is learned primarily from mentoring and direct development experience. This military installation is unique, being the only U.S. entity that does research and development for all warfighting domains — undersea, sea, land, expeditionary and air weapons — while simultaneously running critical industrial scale manufacturing and a full spectrum of explosive ordnance disposal.
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