Because the strength, toughness and other key engineering properties of heterogeneous materials are strong dependent on their grain size and density, the quest to achieve simultaneously dense and fine, ultrafine, nano, and nanostructured grain size materials has been one of the most important and difficult challenges in materials science and engineering. In this research we explore novel approaches for producing dense and fine, ultrafine, nano, and nanostructured heterogeneous materials. Typical approaches consist of reaction synthesis, sonochemistry, combustion synthesis, and shock wave synthesis followed by dynamic and static consolidation and densification pre and post reaction synthesis. Typical heterogeneous materials covered in this research consist of tungsten heavy alloys, coated graphite powders, metal silicides, aluminides and multiphase, multi microstructural constituent ceramic armor materials. The synthesized and densified materials are fully characterized by OM. SEM, TEM, STEM, EDX analysis, quantitative image analysis, X-Ray diffraction and mechanical testing. This paper focuses and discusses the mechanisms of reaction synthesis in binary metallic systems and the effect of reaction and processing parameters on the microstructure and densification of typical materials under intense shock loading.