Jane Edwards
The Department of Defense’s innovation arm has selected five companies to build prototypes of commercial lithium batteries to address power requirements in fighter jets and helicopters.
NanoGraf, Bren-Tronics, Xentris Wireless division EXO Charge, Enersys and Teledyne Technologies will develop prototypes under the Defense Innovation Unit’s Family of Advanced Standard Batteries project, DIU said Thursday.
FAStBat is a joint project of DIU with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the U.S. Army and the Department of the Navy and seeks to drive the adoption of lithium battery technologies for applications across aviation, soldier-portable systems and ground vehicle domains.
DIU initially made 10 awards under the FAStBat project to build battery prototypes for deployed warfighters and selected another batch of companies to develop prototypes of a lithium version of the 6T battery used to power up to 90 percent of ground vehicles.
The agency expects the project to support full production of 18650 cells for a family of military batteries by 2027.
