In order to achieve the revolutionary new defense capabilities offered by materials science and engineering, innovative management to reduce the risks associated with translating research results will be needed along with the R&D. While payoff is expected to be high from the promising areas of materials research, many of the benefits are likely to be evolutionary. Nevertheless, failure to invest in more speculative areas of research could lead to undesired technological surprises. Basic research in physics, chemistry, biology, and materials science will provide the seeds for potentially revolutionary technologies later in the 21st century.

Progress in research in structure of materials, mechanical, and physical properties, solid state physics, and materials chemistry, including chemical structure, high temperature and surface chemistry, is reported. (FS).

Separate abstracts were prepared for the individual sections of this report.