ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers will brief industry next month on an upcoming project to develop new ways of manufacturing thermal-protection materials for future hypersonic missiles while maintaining quality, minimizing set-up time, and controlling cost.
Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., will sponsor proposers day briefings from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday 3 Feb. 2026 for the Carbon Crunch program. Briefings will be at Amentum, 4121 Wilson Blvd., Suite 200, in Arlington, Va. Briefings will be at the controlled unclassified information (CUI) level.
Carbon Crunch seeks to achieve high and reliable production throughput for hypersonic aeroshell geometries. An aeroshell protects a hypersonic missile and its electronic components from extreme heat, pressure, and acceleration forces. Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds in excess of five times the speed of sound, and are subject to intense heat from air friction at those speeds.
Carbon composites are considered the best material to protect hypersonic munitions that move faster than Mach 7 -- or 4,660 knots -- from extreme heat and forces of acceleration. Yet manufacturing this material is slow, arduous, and not readily scalable. Carbon Crunch seeks overcome these limitations by developing carbon composite manufacturing that is faster and requires less manual labor.
Accelerating production
The primary step limiting scalability of carbon composites today is carbonization and densification, and Carbon Crunch seeks to develop production methods that radically accelerate this step without sacrificing quality.
The program's first phase will conduct small-scale manufacturing runs to speed-up hypersonic production, and the second phase will scale-up successful processes to a hypersonic aeroshell design that could move to a military program of record.
Those who would like to attend should register online at https://creative.spa.com/darpa/tto/cc/pd/2026/winter/ no later than 28 Jan. 2026. Attendance will be limited to the first 130 registrants, and no more than two representatives per organization. Briefings will include information that is International Traffic in Arms (ITAR) restricted. Briefings will cover programmatic details; questions and answers; and one-on-one sessions.
Attendees who would like to request individual meetings with Carbon Crunch Program Manager Michael Mulqueen should do so by email at [email protected]. More information is online at https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/389cfc6e13fa47c2a3d2f0d9a7bad77d/view.
