Power of ERDC

George Blaisdell’s career is one for the record books. His contributions to engineering in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments are legendary, but for a man with more than 30 trips to Antarctica, the work is far from over. Today’s guest is Blaisdell, a research civil engineer with ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. We discuss the importance of a constant engineer...

Dr. Gaurav Savant, Senior Scientific Technical Manager at the ERDC Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, discusses how ERDC is transforming military and civil operations through advanced modeling, AI and autonomous systems. From ensuring safe wet gap crossings for Warfighters to revolutionizing water resource management, these innovations are reshaping the future of defense and engineering. Topics in...

Forests cover nearly a third of the Earth’s land surface and present multiple challenges to military forces. Dense trees restrict mobility, limit surveillance, impede air support and degrade communication. But not all forests are the same. To best counter these difficulties, leaders need detailed information about vegetation attributes, such as canopy cover, stem diameter and stem spacing. However...

Roughly the distance from New York to Miami – or 1,806 miles. That’s how far a vehicle, developed in part by ERDC, drove on one tank of hydrogen fuel to not only set a mark honored by the Guinness Book of World Records, but also to advance new and existing hydrogen-powered technologies. In this episode, we discuss the development, testing and performance of the H2Rescue vehicle with Nick Josefik,...

When the New York Air National Guard’s 109 th  Airlift Wing needed to find a suitable location to land its massive LC-130 Hercules cargo plane during an Arctic exercise in March 2025, it turned to ERDC for help. Although the nearby sea ice was not thick enough to support the maneuver, ERDC devised a plan to land the plane on a nearby freshwater lake, a novel approach that required less ice. L...

For several sweltering weeks along the North Carolina coastline, an ERDC team pushed a quadruped robot with a suite of advanced sensors to its limit to test its ability to conduct critical beach landscape surveys. The research – known as the SandHound Project – is working to validate whether the quadruped can operate at all levels of the coastal landscape and collect critical data that one day can...

ERDCWERX and ERDC’s Office of Research and Technology Transfer (ORTT) are accelerating innovation for the Warfighter and the nation. Through its collaboration with ERDCWERX, ERDC is expanding the Army’s ability to quickly adopt, adapt and deliver technologies that enhance readiness, strengthen protection, and provide dual-use solutions for both military and civilian applications. We explore how ER...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manages hundreds of locks and dams, which are critical components of a complex navigation system that is central to our nation’s economy and security. Inspecting this aging aquatic infrastructure often requires costly and dangerous processes, such as deploying divers or dewatering structures, halting the flow of goods and materials. To help USACE districts...

ERDC and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) collaborated in 2016 to develop a transportable ramp system that could be used to rapidly restore a damaged pier. The components from the Pier Over-Decking System (PODS) were later redeveloped into the Rapidly Available Interface for trans-Loading (RAIL) system, which can be used to load/unload armo...

We would like to announce some exciting changes that are coming soon to the Power of ERDC podcast. Beginning in October, we will relaunch the Power of ERDC podcast as a combined video and audio product that will be available each week. Episodes will continue to feature in-depth interviews with ERDC researchers about the many ways they are solving the toughest challenges facing the nation and the W...

A low-cost unmanned ground vehicle capable of producing 3D maps, the Muddy robot has solved a variety of mapping challenges since 2017. Developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Muddy is often used to test more expansive robotic platforms and to enable other projects. Its combination of autonomous navigation, affordability and flexibility makes it an ideal system...

The nation’s levees and dams depend upon relief wells to alleviate underground pressure when water levels are high. However, microorganisms and natural chemicals in the water gradually leave a residue that clogs the wells’ porous screen walls, reducing their practical value and increasing the risk of dam or levee failure. Existing maintenance methods are costly, dangerous and labor intensive. To i...

The environmental and economic toll of large-scale oil spills, such as the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon incidents, can linger for decades. That’s why research into better techniques and technologies for rapidly responding to these disasters is critical. One aspect of oil spill response that requires particular attention is the effect of ice and frigid temperatures, which can change oil prope...

The ships calling upon U.S. ports have grown larger, and navigation channels must be dredged to greater depths to handle them. However, dredging is expensive, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) needs more data-driven tools to prioritize limited resources more efficiently. Responding to this need, ERDC developed Underkeel Clearance. Applying newly available ship location data and combinin...

As America’s civil works infrastructure facilities age beyond their initial design lives, so do the thousands of individual components that keep them functioning. These original components were often fabricated using vintage material and manufacturing methods, making them costly, burdensome and time-consuming to replicate. However, if one of these parts were to suddenly break, that failure could s...

Despite modern transportation advancements, rail remains a superior method for moving heavy military equipment over vast inland distances. However, transporting tanks by train requires railyard facilities with specialized equipment capable of moving the armored vehicles onto and off of the rail cars. In response, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) developed the Rapidly A...

When river levels rise, so does the threat of sand boils, which occur when water bubbles out of the ground near the base of a levee, surrounded by a mound of displaced soil. Caused by increased pressure, sand boils are a visible sign of erosion within a levee. And unless they are treated immediately, these sand boils will grow and more sediment will be displaced, escalating the risk of a catastrop...

Monitoring large and constantly changing coastlines can be expensive, time consuming and dangerous. Traditional surveying methods are also limited because they only provide a single snapshot in time and don’t capture the full picture. As a result, coastal managers don’t always have the information they need to understand dynamic coastal conditions and plan projects that preserve our nation’s coast...

We talk with Dr. Ben Parsons, chief technology officer with the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), about how the program enables the Department of Defense (DOD) to solve its most critical mission challenges. Managed by ERDC, the HPCMP delivers world-class high-performance computing and expertise to DOD engineers and scientists. Its five DOD Supercomputing Resource Centers ar...

We talk with Dr. Orian Welling and Mr. Michael Parker from ERDC’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory about how ERDC’s cold weather mobility expertise will directly help the U.S. military better protect and defend the Arctic. As the Arctic grows in strategic importance to the United States, the region also presents unique challenges to military mobility. Heavy duty tires designed for...

We talk with Jeremy Herring and Kelly Ervin from ERDC’s Information Technology Laboratory about how ERDC is enabling next-generation engineering by applying augmented reality and virtual reality capabilities. These disruptive technologies can help solve a diverse range of current and future problems by immersing users in virtual scenes. As uses continue to grow, ERDC established the Dynamic Immers...

Soldiers are often forced to operate using outdated geospatial data that may not accurately represent current ground conditions. This creates challenges when trying to find the best possible routes for troop maneuvers or when selecting helicopter landing zones. The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) is developing a series of tools to solve this problem. These tools enable Ar...

Military operations require large amounts of energy to train, move and sustain forces, as well as to power weapons platforms – and this is known as operational energy. Given the high human toll and financial cost of supplying this energy to frontline forces, new strategies are seeking to electrify the battlefield and reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Developm...

Managing a reservoir is a delicate balancing act. If you keep too much water, there may not be enough storage capacity when heavy rains hit, increasing the risk for catastrophic flooding. If you release too much water, there won’t be enough to supply nearby residents who depend upon the reservoir for their survival. For decades, this process has been guided by water control manuals that dictate wh...

Knowing the size of sand grains on the nation’s beaches is important to many coastal management efforts. However, getting that information is labor intensive, and no nationwide database of sand grain size currently exists. To fill this void, ERDC has launched SandSnap, a collaborative effort to engage citizen scientists in a project that will build that database and directly make our coastlines mo...