America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) have unveiled two new project calls totaling $14.5 million, both backed by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Manufacturing Technology Office (OSD ManTech). The funding targets a persistent bottleneck in defense additive manufacturing: qualification, the rigorous, often slow process of certifying that 3D printed parts meet military standards before they can enter active use.
Delta Qual 2.0: Rethinking How Parts Get Certified
The larger of the two initiatives, Delta Qual 2.0, carries $9 million in funding and attacks qualification inefficiencies across the Defense Industrial Base. Its three technical areas are tightly scoped: improving machine calibration and installation standards for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) systems, establishing flexible process boundaries that allow parameter variation without triggering full requalification, and forming an independent “Red Team” of industry, academic, and government experts to review the findings and advise the teams from Topics 1 and 2, and support their transition from research into operational industry use.
“Modernizing qualification for advanced manufacturing is essential to maintaining our defense readiness,” said John Martin, Additive Manufacturing Research Director at America Makes. “This project lays the groundwork for a more agile, trusted, and scalable manufacturing ecosystem, ensuring we can deliver mission-critical parts faster and with greater confidence for decades to come.”
GOTHAAM: Building the Material Foundation for Aluminum AM
The second initiative, Generation Of Technical-data for High-strength Aluminum Alloy Material (GOTHAAM) contributes $5.5 million toward qualifying a high-strength, 7075-T73-equivalent aluminum alloy across small, medium, and large-format LPBF systems. The alloy’s combination of corrosion resistance and aerospace-grade strength makes it broadly applicable across both defense and commercial platforms, but its use in additive manufacturing has been held back by incomplete material property data.
The project unfolds in two phases. Phase 0 establishes baseline feedstock, process, and material requirements. Phase 1 then generates MMPDS-compliant material allowables, the standardized structural data that aircraft and defense programs require, confirming that performance holds consistently across machine sizes and configurations. Characterizing fatigue, corrosion behavior, and stress-crack resistance are among the key targets.
“Qualifying advanced AM materials like this alloy directly strengthens the Defense Industrial Base,” said Martin. “By delivering validated data and maturing LPBF capability, we’re giving U.S. manufacturers what they need to produce reliable components for critical defense systems.”
Both project calls launched on March 31, with kickoff webinars held on April 1, Delta Qual 2.0 at 2 p.m. ET and GOTHAAM at 3 p.m. ET. Submissions for both are due no later than 5 p.m. ET on June 2. Proposers are advised to consult the full RFP documents for Delta Qual 2.0 and GOTHAAM for complete details and submission guidelines.
The Qualification Bottleneck: Defense AM’s Most Stubborn Problem
Both Delta Qual 2.0 and GOTHAAM build on earlier America Makes programs, including JMADD and GAMAT, and reflect a clear strategic signal: expanding printing capacity means little if the parts produced cannot be certified for operational use. With the DoD’s FY 2026 budget allocating $3.3 billion to additive manufacturing programs, the qualification gap has become one of the most consequential obstacles between investment and deployment.
The Defense Logistics Agency’s FY 2026 budget funds two dedicated initiatives specifically targeting this problem: the Joint Additive Manufacturing Acceptability program, which spans phases I through IV and targets unified qualification standards, and the Joint Additive Manufacturing Model Exchange, a centralized repository of certified 3D models accessible across DoD branches.
On the academic and research side, the University of Oklahoma received $8.8 million and is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to build a data-driven qualification framework that tracks the entire manufacturing process as a single continuous workflow, rather than certifying each variable in isolation, with the longer-term goal of establishing a unified qualification standard applicable across the Air Force Sustainment Center and its broader supply networks.
The thread running through every initiative is the same: printing is no longer the problem. Qualifying what gets printed is. Until standards, data infrastructure, and institutional frameworks advance in step with hardware capability, the Pentagon’s $3.3 billion additive manufacturing investment will remain unrealized on the production floor.
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.
To stay up to date with the latest 3D printing news, don’t forget to subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
Explore the full Future of 3D Printing and Executive Survey series from 3D Printing Industry, featuring perspectives from CEOs, engineers, and industry leaders on the industrialization of additive manufacturing, 3D printing industry trends 2026, qualification, supply chains, and additive manufacturing industry analysis.
Featured image shows The America Makes logo. Image via America Makes.
