Photo By Jack Bunja | A C5ISR engineer instructs Soldier from the 25th Infantry Division Lightning Labs how...... read more read more
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD – Austere, remote operational environments call for adaptability and agility from Soldiers and their equipment alike. When conditions worsen or circumstances flip the script of their mission, warfighters must remain ready and lethal—a requirement that often depends upon their kit and supply lines. To help maintain Soldier readiness, the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command is spearheading an effort to expand and enhance the Army and Joint Services’ advanced manufacturing capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region by utilizing their fleet of Prototyping Integration Facilities (PIFs).
DEVCOM’s Chemical Biological Center’s (CBC) mobile engineering and advanced manufacturing platform, the Expeditionary Lab (ExLab), is essentially a Swiss Army knife when it comes to repair, modification and innovation while in the vicinity of battle.
The transportable 20-foot climate-controlled, standard CONEX (shipping) container houses a fully-fledged machine shop containing everything a Soldier might need for the future fight: computer aided design and manufacturing software, a computer numerical control mill, a polymer 3D printer, an air compressor, a handheld 3D scanner, welding equipment, a plasma cutter, a slew of hand and power tools, a sewing machine for soft goods and textiles as well as electronics equipment to enable warfighters to conduct equipment troubleshooting, build cables and conduct basic soldering. According to DEVCOM CBC Mechanical Engineer Kevin Wallace, the ambidextrousness of ExLab allows it to be utilized by any Soldier for any need.
“It has everything,” said Wallace. “Just as critical as the equipment, the ExLab is currently supported by DEVCOM’s engineers and technicians, overlaying their subject matter expertise with the warfighters’ tactical knowledge and skill sets.”
ExLab enables warfighters to invent and iterate on what they need. This capability’s adaptability shows just how flexible Soldiers can be when it comes to resupply and sustained presence on the battlefield while remaining timely and robust through this streamlined system.
The ExLabs were deployed to Afghanistan from 2012 through 2020 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel under the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF). DEVCOM CBC managed the ExLabs with REF for six years. After the REF was discontinued, the ExLab effort transitioned to DEVCOM CBC’s oversight. Today, alongside DEVCOM Command, Control, Communications, Computers,
Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR), the Center presides over the PIF Council where a handful of other DEVCOM centers participate with PIFs of their own to utilize for their own specific problem sets that, ultimately, better equip and prepare our warfighters.
To add to the already inter-agency nature of ExLab, PIFs are customer-reimbursable R&D entities designed to collaborate with other organizations, benefiting customers without prototyping expertise to either provide urgent solutions or general experimentation.
“[DEVCOM CBC] recently deployed the only remaining functional ExLab to support the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii,” said Angel Cruz, lead mechanical engineer at DEVCOM CBC and former ExLab project manager. “While ExLab support was previously only available to the U.S. Army, we have gotten away from that restriction. The ExLab capability is now available for Joint Force partners to accelerate schedules and technologies– one team, one fight.”
Fitting this into an operational context, the teams at DEVCOM CBC and DEVCOM C5ISR have been improving their own logistics flow with a new methodology called the “Hub & Spoke” method. By operating in logistically complex environments such as the Indo-Pacific, operators are able to conduct remote missions away from the mainland (hub) by relying on their nearby PIF (spoke) for steady resupply and redundancy.
“It’s designed to put equipment in the right places while shortening response time and transit,” said Tom Brutofsky, chief of DEVCOM C5ISR’s Ground Integration & Engineering Division. “By placing our far-forward PIFs in more distant locations, our ‘hubs’ continue to act as just that, a hub for resupply that provides reachback support for our forward ‘spokes’. For areas such as Hawaii and the rest of INDOPACOM, this greatly reduces infrastructure requirements and shipping costs.”
DEVCOM CBC has been ensuring proper practice and testing for ExLab’s performance within the INDOPACOM arena. The climate and remote operability make Hawaii one of the more critical places to determine if the ExLab can perform when called upon. With exercises like October’s Beholder’s Gaze held at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, Oahu, Hawaii, researchers were able to identify just how effective it is to springboard ExLab into an operational location.
With more upcoming Advanced Technology Demonstrations (ATDs) on the horizon, DEVCOM’s PIFs are working on more ways to improve and iterate on themselves. Taking Soldier feedback into consideration, researchers are ensuring that ExLab’s future coincides to warfighters’ criteria. By bolstering more software capabilities, ExLab has the chance to make itself a one-stop-shop for more than just tactile materiel.
“We talk a lot about repairing and building physical widgets but the world, our equipment, and the fight has also moved to electronics and software,” said Cruz. “The ExLab should have a software component as well, giving Soldiers the ability to code.”
“We’re making efforts for cloud-based repositories of data that can be interwoven between all members of the Joint Force,” added Wallace.
Looking ahead, the team plans on continuing their iteration process to help determine what the near future ExLab “spoke” configuration should be as a system. History and present times have shown the need for this capability and ever-evolving method of ensuring Soldiers stay equipped and lethal in the future fight.
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The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, is Army Futures Command’s leader and integrator within a global ecosystem of scientific exploration and technological innovation. DEVCOM expertise spans eight major competency areas to provide integrated research, development, analysis and engineering support to the Army and DOD. From rockets to robots, drones to dozers, and aviation to artillery, DEVCOM innovation is at the core of the combat capabilities American Warfighters need to win on the battlefield of the future. For more information, visit devcom.army.mil.
The DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center is the primary DOD technical organization for non-medical chemical and biological defense. The DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center fosters research, development, testing and application of technologies for protecting our military from chemical and biological warfare agents. The Center possesses an unrivaled chemical biological defense research and development infrastructure staffed by a highly-trained, multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, technicians and specialists located at four different sites in the United States: Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland; Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas; Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois; and Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.
| Date Taken: | 06.17.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 06.17.2025 15:30 |
| Story ID: | 500880 |
| Location: | ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 26 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Making Prototypes next to the Battlefield with DEVCOM CBC’s ExLab, by Parker Martin, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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