Maintaining the Mission Track

Written by Christian Bourge

DoD has used AIT technologies for over 25 years, but David Dias, the chief of U.S. Transportation Command’s Asset Visibility Division, said DoD interest and use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging and the IRRIS Web portal to track the best available logistics data on materials shipments has increased a tremendous amount in the wake of the continuing fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Commanders in the field continue to have a strong interest in visibility of all their shipments coming into the theater of operations as we continue to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Dias. “Also the technology has come a long way. RFID is sort of the victim of its success because it has been so successful. There is a lot of interest in it, and we continue to press forward.” The services are using RFID in a myriad of ways, including managing the shipment of some of their mission-critical items and spare parts, for high-priority shipments and for storage.

Dias, who functions as the lead proponent for AIT technologies at the command, pointed to supplies stocked up in Operation Desert Shield in the early 1990s, so-called “iron mountains,” and the limited understanding of where items were as a thing of the past. They are not seen in the current Middle Eastern and central Asian theaters, which shows how such technologies have been of a major benefit to military logistics and planning. RFID has therefore functionally reduced the need for safety backup storage and inventories, saving DoD money in the long run.

“Not only do we now have heightened visibility of what is in the field, but we don’t have to go inside the container to know what is inside the box,” said Dias. “As we continue to explore the technology, we’ve made a concerted effort to identify specific AIT and RFID at each layer of consolidation in the supply chain.”

“The major players in the DoD RFID arena—including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Unisys—all also see a major expansion in the use of AIT technologies in the coming years because of their demonstrated ability to shorten delivery times and ensure the best available data is easily tracked and produced.

DoD already has an extensive RFID infrastructure, arguably the largest in the world. Coupled with the Web network, the use of active RFID technologies is fairly mature, while passive technologies less so. But the passive technology is also arguably not too far into maturity in terms of military use and has great potential for expansion.

Lou Kratz, VP of logistics and sustainment for Lockheed Martin said that the increased emphasis is vital to the movement and control of DoD supply chains, particularly for deployed operations. “The DoD from a global asset management and visibility point of view is ahead of the commercial market,” said Kratz.

However, it should be noted that much of the technological development has been driven by commercial sector development. RFID tracking in the chemical and hazmat sector is particularly robust in relation to latest generation technologies.

Lockheed Martin, which is the top solution provider to DoD for active RFID solutions, counts Savi technology as a wholly owned subsidiary. The firm was awarding the component RFID 2 contracts last year and was recently selected as an RFID 3 provider and has equipment installed at seven international locations for DoD.

Kratz pointed specifically to their contract helping track DoD moving materials in containers with active tags on a supply route through Pakistan into the Afghanistan theater. CENTCOM issued guidance in 2001 requiring active tags on all material flowing into Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes all parts, food stock, special deliveries and personal items, which are shipped in containers or pallets. “They have complete visibility of all material moving into Afghanistan,” said Kratz.

William Borgelt, vice president and manager of the program and logistics management division of SAIC, said that the benefits from further implementation for DoD come at many levels, including giving supply managers and soldiers on the ground the “tremendous” ability to make more informed decisions.

Among the solutions SAIC provides DoD is a universal data capture system used by the Navy that filters the exponential levels of logistic data to provide targeted information. The firm is involved with tagging materials being moved back and forth from Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of materials transported in and out of those theaters, SAIC has implemented passive tagging of critical war fighting items for maintenance. It allows for critical items to get into maintenance depots faster and with quicker maintenance.

“They have had a dramatic increase in return of inventory with a decrease in turnaround time,” said Borgelt. “All of that is very positive for the services.”

USTRANSCOM was designated the lead proponent for AIT and RFIDrelated AIT in September 2006 and worked very closely with all of the services since then, putting together a strategic vision for use of RFID in the military in conjunction with DoD supply and distribution communities.

The positive benefit of the technology for providing greater transparency in the supply chain was clearly on the mind when a plan was developed and released last year for the use of a combination of passive and active RFID as well as related technologies running through 2015. The concept of operations identified the AIT for assets by consolidation layer, running from the item in question through its individual package, up to ways to combine them for shipping to the means of moving the materials.

With DoD going from not having transparency to having a great deal of visibility of the supply chain, the intent is clear: better and quicker data by implementing the best technologies for the best uses. Sam McClintock, head of Northrop Grumman’s AIT Center in Williamsburg, Va., said that the emphasis with AIT technology has always been on the forward edge and continues to be particularly so for DoD. “This started with bar coding way back,” said McClintock. “This is of huge interest to them with, of course, the Holy Grail being trying to get down to the last tactical mile of where the material is. They are always looking for new technology.”

Dias agreed, noting that the RFID in the supply chain has much greater potential to make things even more visible.

“We can make improvements in inventory management, visibility in interoperability of what we are doing with our coalition partners,” said Dias. “There is a tremendous amount of synchronization that can take place. We are all working under the same common vision, and we’ve done a lot in terms of harmonizing our efforts and continue to bring increased visibility into the supply chain. We are trying to make it better for soldiers in the field, and I think we are really starting to prove ourselves.”

Meeting those challenges is the driving force behind the efforts of the various players in the market, the number of which continues to expand. Borgelt noted that five years ago probably a dozen companies were in the space, and now that number is probably 400 to 500. “It is an area that is confusing because there are so many different types of technologies and so many companies that have rushed to market,” said Borgelt. “It is something whose time has come.”

Tom Frock, testing manager with Unisys RFID, pointed to the federal government’s foresight to put its muscle behind government standards for RFID 3 for driving competition in the industry.

“Now we have semiconductor manufacturers, tag manufacturers and all these folks who are capable and on contract to be part of RFID 3 for the federal government and sell these things to the federal government,” said Frock. “From our perspective we get to leverage what we provide with Savi products to leverage our own vendors and tie into the network and provide much more expanded service than before.”

As an example of the technologies capabilities, he pointed to a tanker truck monitoring system UNISYS has on the market. The multi-sensor system can tell if a tanker has been opened, how much fuel has been removed from the tank, whether it has stopped, and even if it has broken down.

“It is far and beyond what we have ever had before,” said Frock. “For us, it literally broadened out effectiveness to DoD. And there are a great deal of solutions out now that can help the federal government come up with solutions they may have never thought of before.

But the technology’s application and usefulness can be much more mundane. For instance, UNISYS has a tag married to cables used to tie down equipment on trucks that can provide instant notification on whether the equipment has been compromised. Nevertheless, Dias said that active RFID uses could be the new wave of the future for DoD, and he sees the armed forces using the technology even more.

“It took active [RFID] quite a bit of time to take hold, but I think we are starting to see the potential,” he said.

For the technology providers, bridging the gap between the two systems and legacy systems remains a major challenge, even with the RFID 3 standard reducing integration concerns.

“Most of the problem we find is not in deployment but making sure RFID can work with legacy systems,” said McClintock.

One way this is addressed is linking passive tags with bar coding. If there are reading problems with the tags, then the old bar codes can be used as a fall back.

For technology partners, another potential boon for the growth of DoD use is the precipitously falling prices, although more tech-heavy applications like satellite tracking still remain a cost solution.

Borgelt says that DoD technology providers have two distinct challenges. One is having an approach to RFID that makes the most of limited budgets. He also noted that because of the unique needs of the varied missions each branch of the military can undertake, the military business processes demand varied approaches to AIT implementation. For instance, he noted that the Army is generally more into an active RFID approach while the Navy has examined the use of active technologies but currently has a great interest in the use of passive RFID.

“It is a very challenging time for the Department of Defense as their budget shrinks,” said Borgelt in reference to the expected goals of the new Obama administration and impact of the state of the economy on the federal budget. “Where they make innovation they have to make investments so they are continuing to try to find the best solutions for the dollar spent.”

For Lockheed Martin, Kratz said the firm is looking to marry their RFID technologies and asset management solutions to their big-ticket items such as C-130s and F-22 Raptors as well as the related supplies and parts.

The Holy Grail of RFID technology remains real-time monitoring. “It has not been really explored to the level it should have been,” said Frock. “Based on this standard, there are people that do have real-time location systems that will come into play with honest-to-goodness real time.”

Frock argued the costs associated with such efforts do not have to be astronomical, as such a system can report to a single network that the data can be broadened out from, saving considerable money in terms of integration costs.

He added that several existing technologies can help address the last mile problem including cellular and satellite tracking technologies, but that implementation is based on how much money the military is willing to spend.

“In DoD’s case it is a question of investment versus other problems,” he said. “Everyone is always looking for better ways to track.” McClintock agreed that much emphasis is reducing the time delay still inherent to use of the collected data.

“It used to be a 60-day black hole and 90-day black hole on the logistics challenge, now we are seeing a 30-day,” said McClintock. “It is getting smaller and smaller. You will not find a hotter item on the logistics personnel’s desk. It is a matter of willingness.”

Kratz pointed to DoD’s effort to move forward with the development and application of unique identifiers for high value equipment as the next vanguard in U.S. military deployment of RFID and related technologies.

“This offers a real opportunity to matter active RFID, passive RFID and the unique identifier on the item, whether that is prime mission equipment on an individual part,” said Kratz.

Kratz added such efforts will allow DoD to look down at where all their assets, be they people, equipment, parts and supplies, even ammunition. ♦

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