The Future

Soldiers Can Look Forward to 3-D Printing All of Their Meals in War Zones

All this is going away.
All this is going away. Photo: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The Army’s in-house food technologists have put lots of money toward perfecting 3-D printers that crank out custom, nutrient-rich rations for soldiers using advanced technology called “ultrasonic agglomeration.” Instead of squirting food paste layer by layer from tubes, the new technique involves ultrasonic waves that sort of melt everything down into the desired form. Right now, they’ve mastered small snacks and are almost there with pasta, but down the line researcher Lauren Oleksyk says the goal is “a process or a compact printer that would allow soldiers to print food on demand using ingredients that are provided to them, or even that they could forage for.” Apparently, the first MRE pizza debuted only in the last year, and soldiers promptly heralded it as the “Holy Grail,” so we may in fact have peace in our time, courtesy of some impromptu pepperoni pies. [Motherboard, Army Technology]

Soldiers Can Look Forward to 3-D Printing All of Their Meals in War Zones