The University of Oklahoma has secured $8.8 million to advance a joint research initiative with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Air Force Sustainment Center, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex. The program’s central goal is to find a better way to keep aging military aircraft flying.
Warplanes that remain in active service for six decades or more increasingly rely on components that are no longer available through conventional supply chains, making the ability to manufacture replacement parts on demand a matter of national readiness rather than mere convenience.
“This partnership is indicative of the strength of OU’s additive and advanced manufacturing, which is an important component of our national security and supports the continued growth of the aerospace and defense industry in Oklahoma,” said Matthew Hulver, Vice President for Research and Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma. “The aim of this project to streamline the airworthiness processes for our nation’s fleet is well representative of our impact-focused research growth in national security.”
Rethinking How 3D Printed Parts Get Approved
At the heart of Phase II is a fundamental rethink of how additively manufactured components earn airworthiness certification. Under the current framework, materials, geometries, and machinery are each evaluated independently, a fragmented process that is both slow and expensive.
The new approach replaces that with end-to-end digital tracking of the entire production process, allowing parts to be manufactured across different machines and facilities while still satisfying strict military safety standards.
Phase I concentrated on producing replacement parts through laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). Phase II expands that scope to include component repair, with AI and real-time in-process monitoring added to the quality assurance framework.
Building an Ecosystem, Not Just a Process
The initiative extends well beyond certification reform. Through OU’s Sooner Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, the partnership is laying the groundwork for a regional hub of advanced manufacturing expertise that connects academic research directly to Air Force’s operational needs. The longer-term goal is to establish a single, unified qualification standard that can be applied consistently across the Air Force Sustainment Center, the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, and their broader supply networks, reducing duplication and accelerating adoption across the enterprise.
“Standardizing additive manufacturing qualification is a pervasive issue in the aerospace industry,” added Mark Benedict, senior scientist for convergent manufacturing at AFRL, “and the work that the OU-ORNL partnership is accomplishing accelerates the technology’s adoption for our sustainment enterprise.”
The Qualification Gap Holding Military 3D Printing Back
Getting a 3D printed part approved for flight has proven far harder than printing it. The certification bottleneck is widely recognized across the defense establishment as slow, expensive, and difficult to scale.
The defense establishment has been working to fix that. The Defense Logistics Agency’s FY2026 budget funds two dedicated initiatives: the Joint Additive Manufacturing Acceptability program, spanning phases I through IV, which targets unified qualification standards for 3D printed parts, and the Joint Additive Manufacturing Model Exchange, a centralized repository of certified 3D models accessible across DoD branches.
America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining have similarly launched a $1.7 million funding call to expand the pool of DoD-qualified AM suppliers by introducing a single set of process control requirements, replacing the current part-by-part, machine-by-machine approach that slows supplier onboarding and strains the Defense Industrial Base.
The OU-ORNL program operates within that same push, but takes it further by building a data-driven qualification framework that tracks the entire manufacturing process as a single continuous workflow, rather than certifying each variable in isolation.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
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Featured image shows U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Rogelio Lopez uses 3D printing to manufacture aircraft replacement parts. Photo via U.S. Air Force.
