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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 22, 2004

SCHUMER, CLINTON SECURE $1 MILLION FOR BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY

Funding part of the FY2005 Omnibus Appropriations Bill

US Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced that Congress passed the FY2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill which includes $1 million for Binghamton University's Small Scale Systems Packaging Center to provide Reliability Enhancement for DOD Micro-System Fuze/Safe and Arm Devices. The funding is in addition to the $1 million secured under the Defense Appropriations Bill earlier this year and was included in the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development section of the bill. The bill must now be sent to the President for his signature.

"With so many of our sons and daughters serving in uniform today, this funding is good news both at home in the Binghamton area and abroad," Senator Schumer said. "This money will help give our troops the most technologically advanced equipment possible. These projects made in the Southern Tier will allow our armed forces to be as effective as they can possibly be. We will continue to work to guide these projects through the remaining rounds of the budget process."

“As a Senator, and especially since joining the Senate Armed Services Committee, I have been very impressed by the research, technologies and skills that the Southern Tier has to offer to our national defense. Funding for these projects means that we are supporting New York's cutting-edge knowledge and expertise, that in turn will support our men and women in uniform,” Senator Clinton said. “I am so pleased that we were able to secure these federal dollars to help Binghamton University develop and run its Reliability Enhancement Program. We must support projects that modernize and strengthen the tools used by our armed forces and Binghamton University's cutting-edge research that will do just that.”

U.S. Fuze/Safe and Arm technology investments continue to erode, thereby hampering the DoD’s capability to field highly reliable, safe and high performance weapon systems. As evidenced in recent U.S. conflicts, weapon requirements have outpaced Fuze/Safe and Arm Devices (F/S&A) technologies advancements. A crucial requirement for next generation DoD weapons is to dramatically increase the reliability of F/S&A’s through the use of micro-system technologies. The reliability of F/S&A can be enhanced through the investment of advanced micro-system life testing, characterization, modeling and design. One of the keys to next generation Fuze/Safe and ARM technology systems is to build new sensory platforms that are able to perform under harsh conditions, and are able to collect multiple data from several sources and make decisions locally.

Funding under for this project will provide support for the development of technical infrastructure in areas such as small-scale analysis, manipulation of small structures, testing and failure analysis, material properties determination and overall product functionality and reliability models for such platforms. All of these areas are crucial for the understanding of the behavior of sensors such as inertial beam sensors or chemical sensors that would be designed to withstand very harsh mechanical, chemical and thermal environments. In addition, the requested funding will enable the design and fabrication of prototype sensors, as well the measurement of their performance under different harsh conditions.

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