The US Air Force Research Laboratory has unveiled its new advanced munitions technology complex (AMTC).
The $165-million state-of-the-art complex at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida provides “unparalleled test capability and modernizes the 1960s high explosive infrastructure.”
The new defense facility is designed to empower scientists and engineers to collaborate in various areas of research, particularly new explosive materials.
“We’ll be able to enhance our science and our technology even further. Things that we did not have the capacity to do before; we will have the capacity to do now. And capacity is the key. Capacity allows you to go further, capacity allows you to accelerate, capacity allows you to change,” Deputy Director Segrid Harris said.
The AMTC is also designed to provide an avenue for explosives development, processing, characterization, detonation, and assembly in one location.
‘Deliver the Right Effects On the Right Targets’
The AMTC is among the US Air Force’s largest recent military construction projects.
According to Ordnance Division Interim Chief Tim Tobik, the new facility will ensure “those bombs do burst in air and that they deliver the right effects on the right targets at the right time, so that we all can enjoy the freedoms that we do.”
US Air Force Research Laboratory Technical Adviser Michael Lindsay expects all six branches of the US military to benefit from the new defense facility.
“We are all moving in the Department of Defense to digital engineering to be able to decide and understand how systems age at the level of sophistication that previously were limited to nuclear weapons. We’re now applying that to our advanced conventional technologies,” he said.