How can the military use living bricks that multiply?

Concrete erodes. Time and stress and the mere passive forces of being outside pull apart and chip away at stone. In remote or vulnerable environments, where supplies are hard to come by but rocket or mortar attacks are possible, stone structures that protect people may be under more strain. All of this led DARPA to ask the question: What if concrete could heal itself?

That’s the premise behind “Engineered Living Materials” (ELM), a program that seeks a revolution in military logistics “by developing living biomaterials that combine the structural properties of traditional building materials with attributes of living systems, including the ability to rapidly grow in situ, self-repair and adapt to the environment.”

It seeks, in other words, the utility, strength and rigidity of concrete with the healing properties of plants and the ability to self-replicate structures, like coral colonies stuck on fast-forward, in the middle of a disaster zone. If the military could grow bricks, it could build a workable shelter with a minimum of material. If the military could paint a rigid-yet-living runway onto a remote stretch, it could turn rough rural landings into a reliable air-supply route.

In “Biomineralization and Successive Regeneration of Engineered Living Building Materials,” published Jan. 15 in the journal Matter, a research team led by Wil Srubar of the University of Colorado, Boulder, created a brick of living material. The research was sponsored by DARPA.

The bricks start with a specific type of cyanobacteria, which absorb carbon dioxide and exude calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is a significant part of limestone, regularly used in cement, and its origins, too, are organic, with its formation dating back to the fossilization of ancient corals and shells. This bacteria, when combined with a sand-and-gelatin scaffolding, holds it together into a brick form.

Researchers split the first brick in half and combined the halves with the same scaffolding. Those bricks regrew into two bricks, and then the researchers did it twice more, creating a total of eight bricks from one initial construct.

While the research is still early, and the conditions of a lab are a far cry from the isolated areas where such material might be most in demand, the ability to grow a self-healing building material from bacteria and sand could have huge implications for the logistics loads. In already sand-rich environments, the living material could lighten the burden of initial supply and difficult resupply. In the rubble after a disaster, humans could use living bricks and existing material to rebuild shelter.

As if that is not ambitious enough, DARPA wants the living materials to “have the ability to respond to their environment in designed ways,” including detection of hazardous compounds. A sensing, self-healing, minimal supply base feels like something out of an alien army in science fiction.

But the future of the forward operating base is very much alive.

More In Battlefield Tech

Opinion

Congress should address recurring cases of cyber espionage at home

It should be focusing on improving the cybersecurity practices of the domestic actors who repeatedly allow this foreign hacking to occur.

All the US assets that helped repel Iran’s attack on Israel

Multiple Navy warships, Air Force fighter jets and a missile defense battery helped take out Iran's attack on Israel.

Marines pick three companies for loitering munitions program

The weapon would give squads and platoons air firepower at their fingertips.

Here’s the air-defense system that protected Israel from Iran’s drones

The system shot down the vast majority of about 350 drones and missiles Iran launched over the weekend.

Air Force to get F-15E jet with fresh electronic warfare tech in summer

EPAWSS, an advanced electronic warfare system, will allow F-15EX and some F-15E jets to monitor, jam and deceive threats in highly contested environments.