Welcome to the December Issue of Advanced Ceramics Insights | | |
It’s been an especially active 2025, and we’re geared up to keep the momentum going.
“Our members are accelerating America’s edge in advanced ceramics, and by engaging more members, amplifying our voice, and advocating where it matters, USACA can help extend that lead even further,” said Executive Director Ken Wetzel. “This was a big year for USACA, and I’m looking forward to increasing our impact even more in 2026.”
Some highlights: We’ve expanded our membership, including welcoming CVD Equipment Corporation, Hybrid Plastics, Tethon 3D, Weber State University’s Miller Advanced Research and Solutions Center, Canopy Aerospace, Centorr Vacuum Industries, and most recently, 3M. We took our Fall Technical Meeting on the road to Colorado, visiting some of our leading members.
We also re-energized our direct engagements with Congress, including advocacy efforts for USACA’s Nuclear Materials and Workforce Development Working Groups.
“It was great to bring technical and policy subject matter experts together to talk about pressing issues for our industry,” said Ken. “I was encouraged by the high level of interest and enthusiasm for advanced ceramics and look forward to continuing this important dialogue in 2026.”
Marking another turning point, USACA this year brought on a new technical director, Dr. Aisha Haynes. Fresh from her role overseeing advanced materials and technology development at the Department of War, she has quickly gotten to work.
Dr. Haynes has rebooted our working groups, drafted new charters, and updated roadmaps to help us more effectively achieve our policy and investment aims and marshal the best and brightest ideas from across the industry.
“Our Working Groups efforts to deliver state-of-the-art roadmaps and partnerships will turn strategy into impact,” said Ken. “Together, we will transform these priorities into measurable results, thereby strengthening America’s ceramics leadership and delivering lasting value for members, our industry, and our nation.”
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Dr. Haynes is also reshaping the broader conversation in government, co-authoring a new commentary in National Defense Magazine, titled “To Win the Future, U.S. Must Win Materials Race.”
‘Now is the time’: "Innovative research in materials and manufacturing is accelerating in the United States, and now is the time to capitalize on opportunities to move discoveries from the laboratories into scaled production to deliver warfighting capabilities that close materiel eadiness gaps and drive modernization," she wrote with Dr. Richard Vaia chief scientist for the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate at Air Force Research Laboratory, and Dr. Adam Rawlett, senior research scientist at U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory.
In particular, they called for a paradigm shift in the development of hypersonic weapons, which is "currently throttled by the immense challenge of finding materials that can perform at the extreme temperatures and pressures of sustained flight above Mach 5."
"Without breakthroughs in thermal protection systems, high-temperature composites and survivable electronics for targeting, these game-changing offensive capabilities will remain limited in number and effectiveness," the authors wrote.
Meanwhile, advances in technologies such as ultra-low-power tactical edge computing and hardened fire control systems that are critical for future warfighting concepts like autonomous drone swarms "will remain decades away without advanced materials development."
‘The path forward’: The commentary urges the United States Department of War leaders to transform the department’s advanced materials and manufacturing innovation enterprise, including:
▪️ "a focused initiative" to modernize materials and manufacturing infrastructure, with AI, high-performance computing, and other advanced technologies and manufacturing processes.
▪️ institutionalize pathways to accelerate the transition of new materials "from the lab shelf to the warfighter."
▪️ make greater investments in the "discovery, scale-up and rapid utilization" of new materials.
▪️ empower the military labs and "their unique ability to connect world-class scientists and engineers, unique testing facilities and emerging science and technology with the industrial base."
"The path forward requires a paradigm shift where U.S. materials research and development fully embraces the digital revolution by integrating artificial intelligence, big data, automation, and advanced manufacturing," they concluded.
Getting down to business: At USACA’s general meeting earlier this month, the membership voted to confirm our leadership.
Congrats to Wetzel, Executive Committee Chair Kaia David of Boeing, Vice Chair John Mastrogiacomo of Kyocera International; Secretary Dan Wilson at CoorsTek; and Treasurer Dr. Shay Harrison of Free Form Fibers.
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‘GREATEST IMPACT’: The Department of War published a revised list of critical technology areas. The six areas, down from 14 in 2022, "represent the priorities that will deliver the greatest impact, the fastest results and the most decisive advantage on the battlefield," said Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael.
The focus areas include applied artificial intelligence; biomanufacturing; contested logistics technologies; quantum and battlefield information dominance; scaled directed energy; and scaled hypersonics.
What it means: “The only truly new one is contested logistics,” according to Aisha. “The focus here is on sustaining the force under operational stress.”
She said that this new focus reframes the challenge. “Supply chain resilience, feedstock availability, and manufacturability remain persistent technical challenges, and they are already recognized as gaps that our strategies and roadmaps must address,” she explained. “Contested logistics essentially brings these topics under a single umbrella, emphasizing the need to ensure materials, components, and manufacturing capacity can be delivered reliably in degraded or denied environments.”
Hear directly from Secretary Michael on the pared down tech priorities.
‘NATIONAL MOBILIZATION’: The Trump administration also issued a new National Security Strategy.
It calls for “expanding American access to critical minerals and materials” and “a national mobilization to innovate powerful defenses at low cost, to produce the most capable and modern systems and munitions at scale, and to re-shore our defense industrial supply chains.”
“The United States must at the same time invest in research to preserve and advance our advantage in cutting-edge military and dual-use technology, with emphasis on the domains where U.S. advantages are strongest,” the strategy states. “These include undersea, space, and nuclear, as well as others that will decide the future of military power, such as AI, quantum computing, and autonomous systems, plus the energy necessary to fuel these domains.”
Mixed reviews: Two Cheers for the National Security Strategy
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POLICY PROGRESS: The gears of legislating are moving again on Capitol Hill, beginning with bipartisan passage in the House and Senate of the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets policy for the Department of War. President Trump has vowed to sign it.
Get up to speed with this fact sheet.
Go deeper: $900 Billion NDAA: What Is In, What Was Left Out of Major Defense Spending Bill
Plus: Here are key acquisition reforms dropped from the 2026 NDAA
‘Consistent and reliable’: Unfortunately, the NDAA did not include a provision to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs that expired at the end of September. And the lapse is already squeezing technology priorities across the executive branch.
“USACA strongly supports reauthorization of the SBIR/STTR programs, which were not included in the FY26 NDAA and remain essential to sustaining innovation across the advanced ceramics community,” said Dr. Haynes. “Without consistent and reliable SBIR/STTR investment, the U.S. risks slowing critical progress in hypersonics, nuclear power, turbines, next-generation sensors, space systems, and microelectronics that depend on advanced ceramic technologies.”
More: Space Force officials fear program delays from small business fund fight
NOT SO FAST: Next comes the actual money, in the form of annual appropriations bills.
House and Senate negotiators are still trying to reach an agreement on the top line for the fiscal year that began October 1.
But we expect Congress to move bills on defense spending, to fund the Department of Energy, and other annual appropriations before January 30, when a continuing resolution that is keeping the government open lapses. That could come in the form of a multi-bill "minibus” package but negotiations have bogged down in the Senate.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking.
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NEW MOSAIC: USACA is tracking several new investment opportunities of interest to the USACA membership.
One is the newly announced Microelectronics Operations, Sustainment, Acquisition, and Infrastructure Capabilities Modernization, or MOSAIC, program at the Department of War.
It is billed as a “new prototype project opportunity focused on modernizing microelectronics of fielded weapon systems through the digitalization of acquisition and sustainment.”
MOSAIC, according to the announcement, “will leverage digital engineering tools, commercial best practices, and a scalable, cloud-based environment to enable co-design, data reuse, and lifecycle collaboration across programs. MOSAIC aims to accelerate the delivery of faster and affordable replacements for critical systems while strengthening long-term sustainment infrastructure.
The project, which is funded through the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program, “will inform future production decisions and long-term strategies for microelectronics modernization and sustainment.”
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UNPRECEDENTED DEMAND: Meanwhile, the Department of Energy released a request for information from “entities with experience in the manufacture of gas turbines” as the agency seeks to bolster manufacturers and material suppliers and to learn where there are shortages or lack of access to raw materials, limitations in the manufacturing process or “trained workforce gaps.”
“The United States faces unprecedented electricity demand over the next decade, straining supply chains for equipment,” the announcement states. “As turbines provide the majority of electricity in the United States, their availability is critical to ensure the growing demand for electricity does not impact reliability.”
The department is also seeking “technologies that could improve manufacturing throughput” or lead to the “reduction of the amount of material or energy needed.”
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‘ACCELERATE DISCOVERY’: DOE also announced it will invest $320 million in advancing its Genesis Mission, intended to leverage automation and AI, supercomputers, robotics, and experimental facilities “to double the productivity and impact of American research and innovation within a decade.” The initiative’s goal is “to accelerate discovery science, strengthen national security, and drive energy innovation.”
In launching the initiative in late November by executive order, the White House highlighted priority areas as advanced manufacturing; biotechnology; critical materials; nuclear fission and fusion energy; quantum information science; and semiconductors and microelectronics.
The new funding initiative aligns with a September memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget laying out the research and development budget priorities for Fiscal 2027.
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FROM LAB TO LAUNCH: Ken will be playing a leading role supporting the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering in hosting an industry day in Washington on January 22, 2026, to unveil new opportunities to partner with military laboratories to commercialize cutting-edge technology.
"From Lab to Launch: Accelerating Invention Transition to the Warfighter" will kick off a pilot program that will provide no-fee commercial evaluation licenses (CEL) for select DoW patents.
A CEL is a special agreement allowing the licensee to assess the technical, market, and business potential of a patent, along with associated scale-up challenges.
This "patent holiday" offers a unique pathway for DoW to accelerate the commercialization of crucial technologies for the warfighter by providing industry partners with unprecedented access to government intellectual property.
Undersecretary of War Emil Michael and other leaders will be on hand to outline the value of IP commercialization and how companies can help achieve it. The agenda will also include briefings from the Office of Technology Transfer, Transition and Commercial Partnerships, a panel of industry leaders, and a showcase of laboratory IP and partnership opportunities.
Please register at this link to attend in person or virtually by January 16, 2026.
THE BIG EASY: Also coming up is the Composites, Materials and Structures (CMS) Conference to be held in New Orleans, January 25-29, 2026.
USACA will once again be co-sponsor and host the student luncheon as part of our efforts to bolster the pipeline of skilled talent for the advanced ceramics industry.
A snapshot: The CMS program will cover thermal protection materials, ceramic matrix composites, carbon-carbon materials, ballistic technologies, hypersonics, and gas turbine engines.
Engine manufacturers, missile and aircraft manufacturers, commercial space companies, and material and component suppliers will confer with officials from the Department of Energy, Navy, Air Force, Army, Missile Defense Agency, NASA, DARPA, and the FAA, according to the organizers.
USACA is proud to co-sponsor this signature industry gathering, along with GE Aerospace, Kratos, Ultramet, Textech, and Centorr Vacuum Industries.
SPRING FLING: And don’t forget to plan for USACA’s Spring Technical Meeting, which will be held in Washington, D.C. on March 10 and 11, 2026.
USACA will also host a high-temperature materials workshop with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to kick off the gathering on March 9 at no cost for USACA members.
The workshop will bring together government, industry, and academic stakeholders to identify priorities and develop new roadmaps for harsh-environment materials and manufacturing. The goal is to align technical needs with national security, economic security, and industrial resilience.
Keep an eye out for more details.
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