ARLINGTON, Virginia — The Army has tasked a Pennsylvania-based contractor to experiment with advanced manufacturing processes that could reduce the weight of combat vehicles and improve their overall survivability.

Weapons upgrades over recent years have led to increasing combat vehicle weight, which is a problem in the field. Heavier vehicles require more fuel and therefore a more robust fuel supply chain, which puts more warfighters at risk, Army officials have said.

Concurrent Technologies Corp. announced recently it had received a $13 million contract to use machine learning to develop and apply advanced materials and manufacturing processes along with more lightweight materials for better vehicle performance and mission capability.

“The U.S. DoD combat vehicles are state of the art — there’s no doubt about that — and they achieve that by swapping out systems, upgrading them throughout the life of the vehicle to keep the capabilities very high,” Michael Pollock, senior director of advanced engineering and manufacturing at Concurrent, said in an interview. “But in doing that, there’s always weight creep.”

The awarded funds come during phase two of a three-phase plan that will end with a demonstration of new lighter-weight vehicles; the two currently in the works are the Marine Corps Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle and the Army XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle.

The first phase centered around data collection to evaluate the feasibility of applying machine learning to the friction stir welding process, in which two solids are joined using frictional heat.

Phase two will continue to produce and analyze datasets while using machine learning algorithms to begin designing an advanced friction stir welding machine “with the degrees of motion freedom to support a combat vehicle and with control software that’s flexible enough that we can integrate advancements in controls and machine learning [and] artificial intelligence in the future,” Pollock said.

Phase three is when the welding machine will be built, installed and ready to demonstrate on the next iteration of combat vehicles.

“It’s been 20-plus years demonstrating the capabilities [of friction stir welding and advanced aluminums], and frankly, they are very promising demonstrations,” Pollock said. “Now it’s time with the next generation of combat vehicles to take advantage of that.” ND