Todays dismounted infantry soldier carries a back-breaking load, usually 100-140 pounds, and still has insufficient ballistic protection, little defense against chemical and biological weapons, and too many pieces of equipment that don’t work well together. The ISNs challenge is to transform today’s cotton/nylon fatigues and bulky equipment belts to a sleek, lightweight battlesuit that provides everything from responsive armor to medical monitoring to communications and more, in one integrated system.

Nanotechnology fits into this vision in two important ways. First, it offers the potential for miniaturization, a key part of reducing weight. Todays hefty radio worn on a harness might be reduced to a button-sized tab on the collar. And a waterproof poncho could be replaced by a permanent nano-thin coating applied to everything the soldier carries. Secondly, because nanotechnology operates at length scales where classical macroscopic physics breaks down, it offers engineers the potential for creating unprecedented new materials properties and devices. Nanotechnology can solve problems that scientists have been struggling with for decades.