Pack it Up!

Written by Peter Buxbaum

MLF 2011 Volume: 5 Issue: 4 (May)

Container shipping has transformed international trade in the last couple of generations, by streamlining everything from the collection of freight to its loading, tracking and distribution. The same is true of the transport of military supplies and materiel.

The United States Army alone has invested in a fleet of over 200,000 owned and leased shipping containers. The Department of Defense has acquired technologies to track these assets and has established relationships with ocean carriers to transport military cargo globally, including, of course, to the areas of current activity in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Army’s Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) is DoD’s container management focal point. Within the SDDC, the Army Intermodal and Distribution Platform Management Office (AIDPMO) is in charge of the 230,000 containers owned or leased by the Army. Each of the armed services has its own component manager tasked with managing each branch’s container fleet.

“The Army requires the use of Army owned or leased containers for unit deployments if they are available,” said Sandy Gorba, the AIDPMO chief, who is based at the Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania. The Army’s container fleet, she added, is sufficient to handle these needs at the present time. Containers are stationed strategically in locations around the continental United States to make sure the assets are available when needed.

For sustainment or other types of cargo, the Army is allowed to use, and often does use, containers provided by commercial carriers such as APL and Maersk Line Limited, two large, U.S.-flag carriers that transport government cargo.

“SDCC has a global role in the management of all containers in the defense transportation system, whether they are government owned or commercial assets,” said Rick Bagby, head of the SDDC’s container management operations at Scott Air Force Base, Ill. “We track containers of all the services in our system.”

Army owned containers used for unit deployment are booked through the installation transportation office in coordination with the SDDC booking office, related Gorba. “We coordinate with the installation to have government assets available,” she added. “For sustainment cargo, commercial containers are booked through the SDDC.”

Units looking to book a commercial container transmit an Electronic Export Traffic Release message to SDDC. “They identify how much cargo is going to be shipped and whether they will need a commercial container,” said Bagby. “The commercial container will then be spotted at their location. Once the container is stuffed, the carrier picks it up and transports it to the nearest port, where it is loaded onboard a ship and transported and delivered to the port of destination.”

Commercial carriers like APL, which transports cargo on behalf of the U.S. military, have their own fleets of containers that are put at the disposal of their customers. “APL has a fleet of over 600,000 containers, with a combination of dry, refrigerated, flatrack and other types of equipment,” said Jack Carbone, APL’s director of equipment operations. “Like most ocean carriers, APL’s fleet is composed of a mix of owned and leased equipment.”

The APL fleet is managed globally by a corporate headquarters group in Singapore, with tactical management being provided by regional offices in the Americas, Europe and in Asia. “Local APL staff around the world work closely with military personnel and suppliers to meet the ongoing and ever changing needs of the military personnel,” said Carbone. “It is at this local and regional level that staffs work to develop forecasts of cargo volumes in order to ensure that sufficient equipment and sufficient network capacity is in place to meet the ongoing demand.”

The local military contractors and personnel play a key role in communicating needs of the military to the local APL staff and in assisting to manage the equipment. “In many locations APL maintains equipment inventories at locations which provide a steady flow of supplies to be shipped to support troops at a variety of locations,” said Carbone. “The local staffs will coordinate so that equipment is used efficiently and to manage the inventories at these locations as the demand fluctuates over time. This often involves working with local truckers and local APL equipment staff in order to monitor equipment dwell times and cargo projections and to maximize efficiencies to each party’s benefit.”

The military uses standard international ocean containers which measure 20 or 40 feet in length. Forty-five-foot containers are also in use, noted Carbone, but are rarely used for military cargoes. The military also ships its own tricons and quadcons, smaller containers that can be assembled together to form a standard 20-foot or 40-foot container. Three 6-foot tricons can be joined to form one 20-foot unit that can be lifted as one and then separated in the field.

“There are also steady flows of produce and foodstuffs, as well as other cargo requiring controlled temperatures, that move in 20- and 40-foot refrigerated containers,” said Carbone. “Some of these products require atmosphere control during shipment in order to ensure freshness upon arrival at destination.”

Shipments of military equipment such as armored personnel carriers, water storage tanks, HMMWVs and other infrastructure equipment, are also transported by ocean. “These tend to move on flatracks so that they can be transported easily to field locations from the discharge port,” said Carbone.

APL has six dedicated U.S. flag services that run to key military destinations. Its PS5 service is a five ship rotation calling on Japan, including Okinawa, and Korea with feeder connections throughout all of Asia. The Suez service with nine U.S.-flag ships runs from the U.S. East Coast to Port Said, Jebel Ali and Karachi, Pakistan with onward port calls to Singapore and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

“The Jebel Ali connection is a key relay point for connections to Kuwait, Umm Qasr, Bahrain and Mesaieed, Qatar,” said Carbone. “Although we are known for our ocean services, we have also been providing inland truck service in Afghanistan since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom and now serve multiple forward operating bases. APL has also been instrumental in engineering new routes and was the first to establish regular service utilizing the Turkey gateway for the northern distribution network into Afghanistan. Since 2008 APL has moved over 290,000 containers on behalf of the U.S. military.”

The military has installed a number of different technologies to manage and track container assets. AIDPMO operates a web-based container asset management system that tracks the utilization of the assets throughout their life cycles. “The system supports the reset of army assets utilized at installations and the unit level,” said Gorba. “Headquarters can use the system to identify where containers are and their readiness status.”

The SDDC is connected with the commercial carriers by way of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and receives industry-standard EDI messages with regard to vessel movements and the status of containers. Containers are also equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which transmit location and data that is pulled into the U.S. Transportation Command’s in-transit visibility (ITV) system. ITV allows logistics personnel to locate assets and supplies as they are being transported form one place to another.

APL has a global equipment management system that provides near real-time tracking updates and global visibility to its entire fleet. “Our systems contain a variety of decision support tools to help manage equipment repositioning and balancing, in order to make equipment available where and when it is needed for our customers,” said Carbone.

Commercial containers are returned to the carrier once they are delivered and unloaded. Government owned containers generally remain with their units and return with them when they are redeployed.

“Typically the empty container which is provided by APL is simply returned to the carrier at the port of discharge or at the destination location and the military’s role is complete,” said Carbone. “There are times when the containers are reloaded by government personnel with return cargo and tendered back to the carrier for export. For those containers that are not used for cargo out of the theater, the carrier will assume the responsibility and cost to repatriate that equipment to its next point of need. There are local equipment tracing processes to ensure the equipment does not sit idle in the military possession needlessly.”

Government boxes are often used for storage by units in theater. “When units get back to their home stations, we work with them to reset the containers so that they can be used again,” said Gorba.

Packed within the standard ocean containers the military uses for overseas transport will often be specialized cases that were designed to carry and protect specialized equipment, including weapons systems, communications equipment, and computer and networking systems.

Zarges Inc. is the largest supplier of fabricated aluminum transit and rackmount cases in the world, according to the company’s sales manager Tracy Johnson. “Rackmount cases are used to house mounted electronics such as servers, power supplies, satellite transmitters and the like,” he said. “Transit cases are used for a variety of needs and typically include a custom foam insert to friction fit around the contents.” Military applications make up about 80 percent of Zarges’ business.

“Our engineers are constantly upgrading our products to deliver additional rigidity at less weight,” said Johnson. “We recently enhanced our popular K470 case line to be IP65,” a measure of “ingress protection,” or how well the unit is sealed against the elements.

Cases2Go manufactures its own line of products specially designed for military and cargo and distributes cases on behalf of other manufacturers as well. “We procure empty cases from manufacturers and customize them for whatever our military customers want,” said David Root, the company’s president.

The company’s rackmount, aluminum and plastic injection molded cases are most often used to transport communications equipment, including satellite and ground radio networking components, according to Root.

ECS Case has revamped its Loadmaster line of rackmount in recent years, integrating new technology that allows for the modular stacking of cases. “This allows different case sizes to interlock and be stacked,” said Jason Fletcher, the company’s sales manager.

The innovations to the line also include the easy replacement of components such as latches in the field. Electronic gear such as servers and networking components are most often shipped in ECS’s rackmount cases.

“Another aspect of the product is the material used for the cases,” said Fletcher. “We use fiberglass and carbon reinforced polypropylenes and fiber reinforced polyester which adds strength and rigidity, reduces weight, and provides superior performance.”

Case manufacturers endeavor to build lighter products and, Zagres’ Johnson adds, “at a lower price.”

“We are always battling to make our products as light as possible,” said Fletcher.

Cases2Go will soon be introducing a line of carbon fiber reinforced plastic that will reduce the weight of cases by 20 to 50 percent. “In the tactical world we are constrained by the two-man lift of 164 pounds,” said Root. “Lightening the case provides the opportunity to pack another piece of equipment in one case and not having to have an additional case. When you translate that to thousands of cases transported around the world, it can have a large impact on cost reduction.”

DoD plans future improvements in the tracking and deployment of containers. “We are working toward the self-reporting container,” said Gorba. “Today’s RFID tags mainly track cargo versus the asset itself. Once the cargo is removed, so is the tag. We are looking to come up with a common device that will stay with the container for life. This will allow us to reduce the amount of human intervention in the tracking of containers and to apply technologies such as satellite communications and GPS tracking.”

The Army is also planning to revamp its container deployment capabilities. “We are looking at lessons learned from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Gorba. “We will also be planning for future requirements and contingencies. The idea is make sure we have assets available for the first 180 days of the contingency. Containers will be staged at strategic locations so that they can be effectively deployed on time to meet objectives.”

Carbone foresees the increased use of technologies such as RFID or other sensing devices for high-value cargo. There will also be advances in container construction design and in temperature and atmosphere control.

“There is likely an opportunity to improve in the information flow between the military and the carriers, and this could help generate some efficiencies and reduce management time on both sides,” he said. “This would start with the forecasting and booking processes and include the documentation process, as well as having the ability to share information on equipment and cargo tracking.

“There are also sometimes divergent needs between the carrier and the military and sometimes between the different divisions of the military,” Carbone added. “There may be an opportunity for better coordination between divisions that might lead to a better use of equipment assets and therefore to reduce costs.” ♦

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