Emerging opportunities to convert innovations into future D o D markets

Abstract

AN ATTEMPT will not be made to outline in detail where solidstate technology is headed, rather to explore some trends and formulate some questions. These questions, whose answers are deeply rooted in technology, could, in my opinion, become the national security issues of the 1980’s. Solid-state technology will play a major role in answering these questions as they relate to the implications of technological breakthroughs in space, under the sea, and on the battlefield. The common denominator of such questions in the seemingly diverse areas as space-based high energy lasers, infrared satellite reconnaissance, anti-submarine warfare, really smart weapons, and command and control can be found in two areas to which the solid-state device community has made major contributions: infrared detection and computational plenty.