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Pentagon event spotlights 70 years of DoW ManTech investment

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September 14, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

The Department of Defense’s Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program marked 70 years of continuous investment in U.S. defense manufacturing this week with a Pentagon exhibition highlighting the role of public-private partnerships. Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, Emil Michael, reaffirmed the value of Manufacturing Innovation Institutes (MIIs) in accelerating the development of defense technologies, noting their ability to address manufacturing challenges “at speed and scale.” AIM Photonics was among the nine MIIs exhibiting technologies developed using its unique capabilities at the Albany NanoTech Complex, demonstrating a commitment to a core ManTech principle: “If we don’t make it, the warfighter can’t have it.” The institute showcased innovations ranging from real-time bioprocess monitoring to portable blood testing platforms.

DoW ManTech Program’s 70-Year History of Defense Manufacturing Investment

ManTech’s long-term strategy involves collaboration between military research and development, industry, and academic institutions to fortify the U.S. defense industrial base through continuous investment. The program’s approach extends beyond simply funding research; it focuses on translating promising concepts into tangible, producible solutions. The Pentagon exhibition showcased technologies resulting from this collaborative model, emphasizing the program’s dedication to building domestic manufacturing capacity. AIM Photonics, as a DoW Manufacturing Innovation Institute, exemplifies this commitment within the field of integrated photonics.

The institute provides access to advanced infrastructure, technologies, and manufacturing capabilities that are important for transforming research into deployable systems. AIM Photonics’ Albany fab and Rochester packaging facility offer quantum photonics groups and commercial customers access to a silicon photonics process design kit, wafer runs, and testing services.

This infrastructure supports over 120 members, and in 2026, AIM Photonics awarded $19 million in research programs under DARPA’s LUMOS effort, focusing on-chip optical gain with Analog Photonics implementing designs in the Albany fab. By fostering this ecosystem, ManTech and its MII partners aim to bolster both national defense and U.S. technological competitiveness.

By providing access to advanced infrastructure, technologies and manufacturing capabilities, the MIIs help turn promising ideas into manufacturable solutions while building the domestic capability needed to support national defense and U.S. technological competitiveness.

AIM Photonics Demonstrates Integrated Photonics for Diverse Military Applications

Real-time bioprocess monitoring, enabled by silicon photonic sensor arrays fabricated at AIM Photonics’ Albany NanoTech Complex, was among the technologies exhibited at the Pentagon’s recent Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program anniversary event. This system supports applications ranging from biopharmaceutical manufacturing to medical countermeasure production, offering continuous monitoring and closed-loop biological control, a capability previously limited by slower, less precise methods. The demonstration highlighted how the institute translates research into tangible tools for critical industries, extending beyond basic research to address practical manufacturing challenges.

MIT’s Photonics and Electronics Research Group presented integrated photonics-based augmented-reality displays, featuring a transparent chip projecting visible-light 3D holograms directly onto the retina. This approach aims to resolve size and weight issues inherent in conventional head-mounted displays, potentially impacting defense, medicine, and engineering applications. The technology’s development used AIM Photonics’ fabrication facilities, showcasing the institute’s role in facilitating innovation across diverse fields.

A representative from MIT stated during the exhibition that SiPhox Health’s SiPhox One blood-testing platform, utilizing silicon photonic biosensor chips developed with AIM Photonics technologies, brings laboratory-quality diagnostics closer to the point of care. This advancement promises faster and more accessible testing, potentially revolutionizing healthcare delivery in both military and civilian settings.

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Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

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