The Persian Gulf War was a logistics success, but it taught us many lessons about the need to improve rapid deployment and support for the warfighter. One of the most important lessons was that while the volume and flow of supplies to the Southwest Asia theater were adequate, the identification and expeditious routing of supplies within the theater were woefully inadequate. In fact, the Army had to open 22,000 of 40,000 containers at various supply and transportation points in Saudi Arabia just to determine their contents and intended recipients. We saw, once again, that the Army needed a system to accurately track and rapidly identify critical items as they flow "from the factory to the foxhole."
Prepo Ships Support Rapid Deployment
The experience of the Marine Corps in the Gulf War demonstrated that pre-positioned (prepo) ships were one method the Army could use to better support its rapid deployment forces. The Marines offloaded prepo ships early in the conflict to give their fighting forces an immediate armor and sustainment capability. The Army, by contrast, had a rapid deployment force, the XVIII Airborne Corps, but no rapid sustainment capability. All initial sustainment supplies shipped by air had to compete with the deploying troops for space on the limited number of aircraft available. In the first months of Operation Desert Shield, battlefield commanders had to choose between feeding and sustaining their small force or rapidly deploying more combat troops to better deter further Iraqi aggression.
To capitalize on the Marine Corps' prepo experiences, the Army in March 1995 began loading two prepo ships in Charleston, South Carolina, with war stocks to support future rapid deployments. As part of this mission, Army and Defense Logistics Agency supply depots stuffed 3,000 containers with support items such as food, medicine, lubricants, barrier materials, common user repair parts, and a 100-bed hospital. These containers were loaded aboard the prepo ships SP5 Eric G. Gibson and LTC Calvin P. Titus, which will remain at sea prepared for rapid deployment to future war zones anywhere in the world.
Although prepo ships provide an improved sustainment capability, they cannot by themselves provide the battlefield commander or intheater logistician with a truly effective sustainment capability. As the Gulf War showed, getting required supplies to a destination quickly is only part of the solution. Once all 3,000 intermodal shipping containers from the Titus and Gibson arrive at a contingency area, the receipt process must be able to identify quickly which container has the right "stuff." Providing this ultimate total asset and intransit visibility capability will ensure rapid and effective sustainment of our fighting forces.
Cargo Tracking Success in Haiti
At the time of the Gulf War, no military or commercial activity had the ability to locate remotely a specific commodity item in a specific container sitting in a container yard. To find a specific item, individuals had to open containers at random until they found the required item-a process that frequently took several days. Locating an intermodal shipping container holding a specific commodity item was an exercise in frustration.
During Operation Uphold Democracy in Haiti, radio frequency (RF) tags and fixed and handheld interrogators were used successfully to identify assets rapidly. The Army deployed fixed interrogators at critical chokepoints between continental United States supply depots and Haiti, including depot dispatch offices, airports, and transportation points.
At the depots, specialists affixed 8-kilobyte RF tags to air pallets destined for Haiti. Each tag was loaded with 80 bytes of transportation information that the fixed interrogators at each chokepoint could "read." The interrogators passed the data on the tags by telephone lines or satellite to a central computer data base. Commanders and logisticians then accessed this data base, called INTRANSIT, which was located at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Logisticians used the data base to monitor and identify the time and location of each shipment. The technology was rated a great success and provided a powerful new tool for the Army and Department of Defense (DOD) to use in gaining total asset visibility over their distribution systems.
While preparing final plans for loading its prepo ships in late 1994, the Army decided that radio frequency/identification (RF/ID) tag technology like that used in Haiti would aid in rapidly identifying the contents of containers deployed aboard the ships. After a series of feasibility meetings, the Army decided that soldiers could use handheld interrogators and RF tags affixed to shipping containers to locate quickly items packed in the thousands of containers arriving for a contingency. Handheld interrogators and RF tags manufactured by Savi Technology were selected for this task. Remarkably, this automatic identification technology could work even in an austere environment without computers or external power sources-exactly the conditions often found during the initial offloading of prepo container ships in an oversea theater.
Which Shipping Container Has the Bandages?
During RF/ID feasibility meetings held in early 1995 to prepare for loading the Army's first prepo ships, action officers analyzed the potential of new product lines that track individual containers and identify their contents. Since the Haiti operation, new commercial products offered enhanced capabilities. For example, Savi Technology had introduced a new 128-kilobyte RF tag with significantly more data storage capability. At the same time, DOD action officers were meeting to standardize supply and transportation data elements for RF tag use within the military.
These advances will enable operators to use handheld interrogators and RF communications to conduct ad hoc queries of multiple data files located on RF tags. Within minutes, an operator will be able to locate a specific commodity item in a specific container in a storage or transit yard containing hundreds of containers. By combining the Savi tag enhancements with DOD's data standardization for RF tags, the user will gain access to a wealth of information.
For example, a contingency force medical officer may have an immediate need for bandages. After the prepo ship's containers are offloaded in a war zone, the bandages will be in one of the many containers located in a container yard. The RF tag on each container will have a detailed listing of all enclosed commodity items. The operator, besides being able to read each RF tag data file with a handheld interrogator, will be able to interrogate multiple RF tag files by a specific commodity item data base field, such as nomenclature, document number, or stock number.
After conducting this data base interrogation of the RF tags to locate bandages, the handheld interrogator will receive an "answer" back from the RF tags on any containers holding bandages. This will all be done using the RF communications capability of the handheld interrogator. No electric power or computer will be needed. The operator then will use the handheld interrogator to locate physically the specific container. He will most likely do this by activating the container's RF tag beeper. If the RF tag on the container is out of the beeper's audio range, the operator will be able to use the interrogator's RF tag range finder to move nearer to the container until the RF tag beeper can be heard. This location process will accomplish in minutes what was practically impossible to do before the advent of current RF tag technology.
Ad Hoc Query Capability
The plans for loading the Army prepo ships called for RF tags to be attached to each container. The Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM), at Fort Lee, Virginia, assembled a small team to affix the tags to prepo containers for loading aboard the Titus and Gibson.
As these preparations continued, the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, in conjunction with the Strategic Logistics Agency (SLA [now the Logistics Integration Agency]), determined that the RF tags used in the prepo missions would require a data base format, rather than the more commonly used flat text file. A flat text file format would not make full use of Savi's RF technology because the unit receiving the containers would not be able to use the new handheld interrogators to conduct ad hoc queries of the data files located on the containers' RF tags. Instead, the unit would only be able to read each container's RF tag, one at a time.
By reformatting depot commodity data into a special Savi data base format, the receiving unit would be able to take full advantage of the data base and RF tag technology. But by this time the CASCOM team had already installed many of the RF tags on the shipping containers in Charleston, and loading operations were about to begin.
SLA solved the problem by tasking a defense contractor involved in Army systems integration work, the Unisys Corporation, to design and install a write (or "burn") data base. The new data base was then used to format the files that would be used with the RF tags on the prepo containers. Working with the 7th Transportation Group, CASCOM, and other contractors, the Unisys team modified its prototype application-the total asset visibility operational prototype (TAVOP) intransit processing station (TIPS) software-to add files to the tags on the containers by means of shortwave RF communications. Rigid quality control and precise operational procedures ensured that the right data, in the right data base format, were installed on the correct tags and containers.
The challenge of loading the data onto RF tags affixed to containers already stacked in the storage yard in Charleston was met by mounting an RF fixed interrogator on a pole in the back of a pickup truck. This procedure created an interrogator range of about 100 feet and provided the mobility needed to move among the nearly 2,000 containers in the 1/2-square-mile storage yard. The team operated the TIPS software from the cab of the truck with a Windows-based 486 notebook computer powered through the truck's cigarette lighter.
A four-step process was used to write data base files onto RF tags rapidly using the TIPS prototype application. First, the integration team processed flat text files from the supply depots using a visual basic application prepared by Unisys and preformatted those files into a Microsoft Access™ data base on the TIPS computer. The approved data element format followed the DOD military standard requisitioning and issue procedures (MILSTRIP) standard for materiel release orders.
Once the data were loaded in the TIPS data base, container numbers were retrieved or written to RF tags using RF communications. These tags identified the correct container for which the data were written. It took less than a minute for the TIPS application to identify the 300 or more containers that were in range of the fixed interrogator at any one time.
In the third step, the TIPS application correlated the depot data file in the data base with the appropriate RF tag on the container, using the specific container number. In the final step, the TIPS application rapidly wrote the data base files to the appropriate RF tags using the TIPS automated burn process. This step took from 1 to 30 minutes, depending on the number of tags burned and the amount of data placed on each tag.
The TIPS system engineer monitored the application and RF communications operations during these steps. The automatic burn process was repeated several times to ensure that all tags within RF range had received the appropriate data base file. The TIPS software recorded the specific tags it already had loaded and provided reports that were used later to validate which tags had been loaded with which data base file.
From identification of the initial requirement on 28 February 1995 until completion of ship loadout on 24 May, the SLA and CASCOM team supported the prepo mission at Charleston and then in Oakland, California. Because of the extremely compressed schedules dictated by shiploading and sailing deadlines, the project was characterized by rapid planning; continually evolving functional requirements, data formats, and interfaces; and rapid application, development, and implementation of new technology. The result was a unique blend of functional requirements and state-of-the-art technology that came together to resolve a long-standing mission need.
Even with numerous functional, technical, and operational difficulties, the SLA and CASCOM teaming effort met all the challenges of the prepo mission in a timely and professional manner. Ultimately the team, working with 7th Transportation Group soldiers, burned over 2,800 RF tags using the new data base format. The operation was conducted at both Charleston and Oakland without disrupting normal Military Traffic Management Command port operations.
Future Applications of RF Technology
The Army's prepo mission was the first DOD effort to provide an ad hoc query capability using RF tags and handheld interrogators. Building on the success of this operation, the Army can apply RF tag technology to solving problems in other areas of DOD logistics. For example, permanent interrogator networks could be established at ports and other transportation hubs to gain real-time visibility over logistics operations, providing a true intransit visibility capability. This would permit logisticians at various echelons to connect remotely to interrogator networks and determine the real-time location and status of their cargo in a given distribution system. Furthermore, by exploiting the increased storage capacity of the advanced RF tags, units could put a wide assortment of data on tags affixed to principal end items; the tags could include maintenance, operational, and operator data.
There are numerous other RF tag applications under study and being tested. These include the use of RF technology in unit moves; at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California; in Europe and Korea; for other classes of supply (ammunition and medical); and in support of humanitarian assistance missions.
The Army prepo mission clearly demonstrates that RF technology not only has a productive place in the military environment but is here to stay. RF tag technology and its many applications provide the Army logistician with several new high-technology capabilities and tools needed to meet the future challenges of supporting a modern force-projection Army in the 21st century. ALOG
Randall McClure is a project manager for System Resources Corporation in Fayetteville, North Carolina. During the prepo mission, Mr. McClure, as a subcontractor to Unisys Corporation, led the team that completed rapid software application development and integration of Savi Technology RF tags.
Thomas J. Kershaw is a logistics management specialist in the Logistics Systems Division, Logistics Integration Agency, Alexandria, Virginia. During the prepo mission, he provided project oversight for the contractors developing the RF burn station software.