Dive into the results in these featured Hacking for Defense profiles below.
As a space industry leader, the United States grapples with the rising challenges of responsible behavior as space actors and satellite launches increase, creating an evermore congested and contested space environment. Team Kepler was formed in Georgetown University’s Fall 2023 Hacking for Defense course to tackle this robust problem.
The team took on an Office of Naval Research-sponsored problem headfirst to investigate methods of improving ballast tank inspections. The 10-weeks of Lean Launchpad problem validation, customer discovery, and rapid prototyping processes unexpectedly revealed that the US Navy was experiencing a crisis of vessel maintenance availability delays.
The 355th Maintenance Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ works to ensure deployment readiness of over 1,900 personnel by training mission-ready pilots and maintenance personnel. With a shortage of sufficiently trained maintenance crew, H4D Team “No Sim, No Train” from Arizona State University was tasked with increasing training efficiency to ensure safe and efficient missions for soldiers.
In the Air Force, the demand for Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) pilots has grown over 76% since 2013. Despite this demand, the retention rate for RPA pilots is below 10%. RPA pilots often struggle with burnout, anxiety, and work-life balance, which explains the extremely high departure rate. Furthermore, RPA pilots suffer from significantly higher rates of suicide ideation than the general Air Force population. During the summer of 2020, NSIN X-Force fellows Sahana Bhagat and Campbell Turner began investigating the specific challenges faced by RPA pilots.
Each year, roughly 10 fighter pilots must eject from their aircraft, and breaking a limb upon ejection or landing is not an uncommon occurrence. Currently, there are no splint type devices within the survival aid kit of a fighter jet. Fighter pilots who need a quick and easy way to become mobile to evade hostile environments turn to sticks or other resources they are able to find upon landing.
Team Splint-X was tasked with addressing this challenge and spoke with over fifty Air Force members, nurses, EMTs, and researchers to identify a viable solution. Initially the team struggled to identify a solution but with a combination of speaking to people and research, they began to recognize what the customer needed. They realized they needed to identify a splint solution that required little to no training to use, was small enough to fit into ejection kits, and something that would allow for quick mobility.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) supports the location and excavation of the remains of MIA individuals from past military conflicts. The DPAA tasked Team Swamped of ASU with solving a complicated wetland excavation of site 2711 in Grado, Italy and consider larger organizational challenges that would make these types of excavations more efficient in the future.
Hacking for Defense team GroundWatch was tasked by the USASOC to focus on integrating the visual and the machine learning algorithms.
Isolated personnel (IP) such as downed fighter pilots need an integrated power source on their person to ensure access to power for necessary electronics and to increase rescue probability. Team Anthro Energy used ‘polymeric solid-state ion conductor’ battery technology to develop flexible, non-flammable lithium ion batteries that can be stretched and flexed.
Department of Defense Engineers need the ability to assess post-quantum cryptography algorithms in order to ensure system encrypted data security.
The Department of Defense tasked Team Post-Quantum Cryptography with assessing post-quantum cryptography algorithms in order to determine which should be employed to ensure data security.
Infantry units and radio operators need a way to practice identifying and responding to electromagnetic spectrum jamming in order to remain effective in communication-compromised environments.
Initially, Team Magneto viewed this issue as a policy problem and sought to create a more efficient approval process for jamming training…
USASOC Operational Detachments seeks to improve the automation of sensory information processing within their Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System in order to identify potential threats. The U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) is developing a Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System (“Count sUAS”) platform that will be mounted onto military vehicles.
Hacking for Defense team GroundWatch was tasked by the USASOC to focus on integrating the visual and the machine learning algorithms.
National Security Agency (NSA) personnel need alternative techniques to use UAVs to improve time and success rate of Search and Rescue missions.
The National Security Agency (NSA) tasked Team Crow’s Nest with coordinating multiple Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs) to support Search and Rescue (SAR) efforts.