The Industry of Military Things — Rethinking Power at the Edge
We’re not defense contractors. We don’t build missiles or radar systems. But we know what it means to design for the edge — where there’s no power socket, no second chance, and failure means a whole lot more than just inconvenience.
And that’s why we’re paying attention to the Internet of Military Things (IoMT).
A Quiet Shift in the Field
IoMT isn’t about flashy drones or sci-fi weaponry. It’s about infrastructure. Layers of small, silent devices — sensors, wearables, nodes — gathering data at the edges of operational environments and quietly pushing it back to decision-makers.
The goal isn’t novelty. It’s awareness — real-time information that makes missions safer, faster, and more precise.
But that awareness comes at a cost: power.
The Battery Tax
Every device you deploy is a device you have to account for. Charge. Replace. Recharge. Keep track of. And in high-risk, high-complexity environments, battery logistics become their own shadow mission.
That’s not news to anyone in defense. Entire ops structures exist just to support power.
So when we talk about batteryless sensing, we’re not pitching magic. We’re asking: What happens if the smallest, least critical devices didn’t need batteries at all?
What We Bring to the Table
ONiO.zero isn’t a mil-spec platform. It’s not hardened for frontline combat. But it’s been designed, from silicon upward, to operate with almost no power.
It cold-starts from <1μW. It runs without firmware. It harvests energy from RF, light, heat, or motion. And it’s already being used in consumer and industrial applications where battery swaps simply aren’t an option.
We’re not here to replace your radios. We’re here to ask: Could your most disposable, hard-to-access, or risk-sensitive sensing nodes run on their own — quietly and indefinitely?
Think in Terms of Roles
A drone may need batteries.
A soldier’s HUD may need batteries.
But a vibration sensor zip-tied under a convoy axle? That could be energy-autonomous.
A node buried in snow, checking environmental drift? That could run on harvested energy.
A passive contact sensor embedded in a box that might never open? Same.
It’s Not About Going Batteryless Everywhere
It’s about going batteryless where it makes sense.
In defense, where deployment costs are high and maintenance can be risky, even small reductions in battery dependency can mean real strategic gain.
Fewer site visits. Fewer logistical dependencies. Lower thermal signatures. Less risk.
We're Not Pretending to Know It All
We’re not writing this as experts in military doctrine. We’re writing as engineers who think in constraints. And when we look at the way military sensing is scaling, we see an obvious constraint that’s still being accepted as default: the battery.
It won’t go away. But we’re building hardware that makes it less necessary.
If you’re thinking about the future of sensing in defense — particularly the quiet, cheap, critical-but-not-complex parts — we’d love to show you what ONiO.zero can do.
Because sometimes, the smartest thing a device can do… is need nothing at all.
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About the author
Abishek Swaminathen
Senior Content Manager
Abishek is ONiO’s senior content manager. A medical doctor by profession, he stumbled onto a writing career almost by accident, as it were. Words have enthralled Abishek since the day he first held a book and at ONiO, he channels his inner wordsmith towards providing our subscribers with regular doses of fun and informative content.