 Alright, there goes the bion out, there should be a say in the board. Armor is good protection against an enemy. Well, that's a lot of dust. But what if the enemy is so small that it takes you down from the inside? That's what sand can do to a helicopter engine. And it's also why the Department of Defense is united in its hunt for a technology solution to protect aviators from this dangerous enemy. You can see the sand on that. At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, scientists and engineers experiment with coatings in high-temperature environments with a goal of creating something, anything that will cause sand to slide off the inside of a turbine engine the way an egg slides off a nonstick skillet. We are going through a very methodical process to understand the science and then use the science to predict the material solution, what we call the engineered or tailored materials and that will lead to the right solution. Gauchal leads the Army's efforts to develop what he calls sandphobic coatings. Our goal is to have the particulars strike the blades or the wings and flake off. When we started looking into this problem, we found that in order to look at a very basic research level, we want to actually understand the physicochemical behavior. Once we can do that, then our idea is to take that model and then predict the type of material that would enable us to develop this sandphobic coating. Engineers have filtration systems which attempt to filter out larger particles, but Gauchal said micron-sized particles go through the turbine's combustor and adhere to the blades. This chokes the airflow and can lead to engine loss. We have a unique rig here, the hot particulate ingestion rig, actually allows us to put sand into the hot gas flow to rapidly prototype new coating materials and it allows us to do a world first, actually using high-speed imagery, we can actually confirm the molten state of the sand particles impacting on these thermal barrier coatings. There is a close collaboration going on within the community to solve this problem. The research community includes academia, industry and other government agencies, all working together toward a common goal, safeguarding against the danger of sand. I strongly believe in next three to five years we will have not maybe one but several solutions depending on the type of environment. It will definitely save a lot of soldiers' lives in the long run. Our solutions will make our soldiers' lives safer and will make our army strong.