The Pentagon is on a futuristic quest to develop alternative proteins, with goals that include eventually giving troops on the front lines the ability make their own food using a biomanufacturing process.
The work is potentially crucial given that modern combat can mean hunkering down for days without a way to sneak conventional food shipments past swarms of enemy attack drones or precision-guided long-range missiles.
The Army, which is leading the effort, recently put out a call for proposals for ways to make alternative proteins.
"We need to change how we do battle, and the science is there, and we want to know what the best options are out there," said Nicole Favreau Farhadi, a research chemist for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center, the lab that put out the proteins proposal.
A more sustainable protein
She said a core problem with the current military rations is that they rely greatly on conventional animal proteins.
"Animal proteins are heavy, they're expensive, they have a finite shelf life, and they all originate from the centralized supply chain chain that can stretch really thousands of miles to the point of consumption," she said.
The near-term goal, she said, is to reduce the heavy loads troops carry by making the MRE — the "Meal, Ready to Eat" — lighter and more nutrient-dense.
"Right now, the war fighters carry anywhere from 60 to 100 pounds of gear, depending on the mission, and every pound that we can remove … translates directly to speed, endurance, reduced injury rates, sustained cognitive performance under stress," she said.
It's well-known among troops that they can reduce the weight they carry by "field stripping" their MREs — opening the plastic package and tossing out some components.
"Which means that they're not getting the nutrition that was intended," Farhadi said. "So, if we can build a better protein, it's just going to be beneficial to the warfighter as a whole."
That's the immediate aim. The medium-term goal for alternative proteins, meanwhile, is making the food supply chain more resilient and harder for enemies to attack with missiles or drones.
Essentially, Farhadi said, every calorie that has to travel from the continental United States to the point of consumption in a combat zone will be targeted.
"It could be delayed, it could be destroyed, and so the goal is for better protein that travels better," she said. "The supply chain would still exist, but it would be far more resilient than what we have now."
Eventually, the long-term goal is what's known as "forward biomanufacturing" or "point of need nutrition."
"This would be where the protein is actually produced near the forward edge, using compact manufacturing systems and locally available feedstocks," she said. "So basically we would be able to produce food where and when it's needed. It would be nutrient dense, and no military in the history has ever had that capability."
What laboratories are cooking up
Scientists say potential ingredients for making food on the front lines include some that could literally be pulled from the air, for example the carbon from CO2. After all, it wouldn't make much sense to transport 100 pounds of raw material into the field to make, say, 30 pounds of food.
One potential solution may be the kind of equipment found in a couple of labs at N.C. State University.
Rohan Shirwaiker is the director of the university's Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein, which researches alternative proteins. The center isn't yet working with the Army on its protein goals, but is interested, Shirwaiker said.
On a recent day, he stood outside a glass-walled lab, gesturing inside at several gleaming stainless steel fermentation tanks about as tall as a person. They look like smaller versions of the tanks you might see at a brew pub, but are surrounded by a lot more pipes, valves, and wires.
"The whole environment inside is such that it is very favorable to these microbes to either grow themselves to create that biomass to go in food, or generate those proteins or enzymes or those other ingredients that we would then use in making food products," said Shirwaiker.
Fermentation is one of the key approaches the military thinks will help it reach its goals with alternative proteins.
Microbes grown in such tanks, Shirwaiker said, can be engineered for attributes like high levels of protein and other nutrients, and for taste, or programmed to act like tiny factories, producing molecules of useful substances like proteins and oils.
The Army also wants alternative proteins to provide new options for meatless and plant-based field rations, things that troops have increasingly asked for.
And, Farhadi said, they will have to pass the taste test for troops.
"Because if they don't eat it, then it's not nutrition," she said. "So it has to be nutrient dense, palatable, and offer some type of supply chain resiliency.
While the idea of mass-producing nutritious, good-tasting food in tanks may sound unlikely, it isn't far off from what is already being done commercially.
Examples include some of the meat substitutes you can find in supermarkets like "Quorn," which is made from a microfungus usually found in soil.
Insulin, the diabetes drug, also has long been made by fermentation, as has rennet, a key ingredient in cheese.
"The technology is ready, the infrastructure is small but growing, to actually be able to provide these ingredients," said Adam Lehman, a scientist who specializes in fermentation with the Good Food Institute, a think tank focused on accelerating the use of plant-based and cultivated proteins.
"So I think the time is now to start imagining what we could do to actually integrate them into MREs, and then begin doing that, and then I think the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, that these will demonstrate that they're good sources of protein for folks, that they can meet the military specs, and that they can be used widely."
As for the idea of making food on the front lines, he says the Pentagon's research agency, DARPA, has been working on making the equipment smaller for uses such as deployments.
"So it's a work in progress, I would say, and right now, you could get pretty close to having something that would look like a skid that would go on the back of a truck, but looking to downsize that further is one of the objectives," Lehman said.
His group cites a number of advantages to alternative protein sources over traditional animal production, including less environmental impact, much lower greenhouse gas emissions, health advantages, and stronger security for the food supply because the production is more controlled and isn't vulnerable to livestock disease or contamination.
The military's interest in alternative proteins also is in line with its long-stated emphasis in biomanufacturing. That was one of 14 items on the Defense Department's Biden-era list of what it regards as critical technologies that it prioritizes for research and development funding. The Trump Administration trimmed that list to six areas last fall, but left biomanfacturing on it.
All of this doesn't mean the end of the likes of the beef ravioli MRE, though. Farhadi, the Army researcher, said troops will still be able to get meat, and any new approaches will augment the kinds of rations already being used.
"We are absolutely not removing traditional meat products by any means," Farhadi said. "We could do some hybrids, we're looking at ways of adding protein, the vegan menus, but there's still going to be meat in field feeding."
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
