September 5, 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Adam Stone
With incredible volumes of material on the move – think: arms and munitions, supplies, vehicles – the military quite simply needs a better way to track its stuff.
“We hear a lot of concerns about getting in-transit visibility in the last tactical mile, from the supply point to the end user,” said Jim Alexander, product lead for automated movement and identification solutions in PEO EIS – Enterprise Information Systems. “We are working with our partners and with transportation command to gather up the requirements for the next generation of in-transit visibility for DoD.”
At the heart of transit tracking today is radio-frequency identification (RFID), which allows logisticians to tag and track goods on the move. But RFID has its limitations: It's infrastructure intensive and not globally available. Military planners are looking to do better.
Falling short
RFID technology took a big step forward about 20 years ago with the widespread adoption of “active RFID.” Rather than scan individual items by hand, active RFID uses a fixed scanner to monitor entire lots. You'll see this equipment at airports and at the gates of military installations.
But active RFID isn't an ideal solution.
“It consists of a dome-shaped reader on a pole, connected to power and ethernet. So you are running power lines and communication lines, and if the reader goes down someone has to go out and physically service it,” said Rosemary Johnston, senior vice president of government at solutions provider Savi. The company is sole provider for the DoD's RFID-IV contract, which has a $102 million ceiling.
“Each reader costs a couple of thousand dollars, plus the cost of hooking it up, running wires via trenches. It becomes a major construction investment project,” said Johnston, a former chief master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force.
In addition, active RFID equipment isn't necessarily well-suited to today's highly agile expeditionary fighting style. “The military doesn't know where the next fight is going to be, so they use portable deployment kits rather than do this massive construction, but even those are heavy ― the lightest weighs 25 pounds ― and they require good satellite coverage. It becomes very resource constrained,” she said.
With the next-gen RFID contract, the military envisions a better way of doing business.
A cellular solution
Satellite-readable RFID tags offer some relief, as they expand the military's reach without requiring extensive additional overhead. But satellite time is costly. Savi's emerging solution would leverage widely available cellular signals as a new means to capture and communicate RFID information.
Johnston describes early trials of cellular RFID in Africa, where materials tracking has been a perennial problem. U.S. and European forces have just six fixed RFID readers on the entire continent, making supplemental coverage an urgent need, she said.
“We have used cellular technology in Africa with a commercial company very successfully for the past three or four years. The networks we would use on the military side would be very similar to what this commercial customer uses, so we believe that represents a great opportunity for Africa Command,” she said.
The switch to cellular isn't technically complicated: military planners would need to add a cellular module to the existing RFID tag. That module could then be programmed to automatically report location status to the military's in-transit visibility server.
High-value cargo might report hourly, whereas more mundane supplies could be set to check in daily or every couple of days, in order to conserve battery life in the RFID tag.
At PEO-EIS, Alexander said he sees strong potential in the technology. With a cellular system, “you could get a much more granular look, a more detailed look at where my stuff is,” as compared to relying on fixed checkpoints, he said. “If you have sensitive cargo you can know where it is every hour on the hour, as opposed to waiting for that cargo to pass by a fixed site.”
Some technical details still need to be worked out in order to implement a commercial-grade cellular solution within the military. For example, “you don't want to have anything in the device that would trigger a static charge if you are working around ammunition,” Johnston noted. “We are working through that process right now.”
June 17, 2022 | International, Other Defence
Among the envisioned equipment investments are hybrid armored vehicles, with a Griffon-centric program serving as the prototype for future trucks.
May 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The air forces of Germany, France and Spain have agreed on a set of performance benchmarks to help their governments guide the development of a next-generation fighter jet set to fly in 2040, the German military announced Tuesday in a statement. The document, approved earlier this month, is meant to help officials identify what features from a collection of 10 possible system architectures are worth keeping when the time comes to settle on a path forward for the Next-Generation Weapon System, or NGWS. That system, with the manned next-gen fighter at its heart, is slated to become the central element of the Future Combat Air System, or FCAS, the most ambitious and expensive weapons program in mainland Europe. As envisioned, a small fleet of attack and surveillance drones, or “remote carriers,” would accompany each jet, and all elements would be interlinked by an artificial intelligence-powered “combat cloud,” according to a project description. The 10 different system architectures for NGWS currently in the mix lean in different directions — for example, when it comes to armaments, maneuverability and range of the main jet and its companion drones, the German Bundeswehr statement explained. The three air force top officials — Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz of Germany, Gen. Philippe Lavigne of France and Javier Fernandez of Spain — also agreed on a “Common Understanding Connectivity,” a guide for connecting national systems into the future FCAS scenario. The document will enable the program's partner nations to “synchronize” their respective development programs, according to the German statement. The industry leads for the Future Combat Air System program, Airbus of Germany and Dassault of France, unveiled a mock-up of the future fighter jet at the Paris Air Show last year. The plan is to begin testing a prototype in 2026. Earlier this year, France and Germany formally kicked off the next phase of the overall program, with each government contributing $85 million toward the development of technology demonstrators. German lawmakers, who fear an overtly strong French industry influence in the FCAS program, have linked the project to progress on the Main Ground Combat System, another highly visible bilateral program aimed at building a common battle tank. France has the lead on the next-generation fighter, while Germany leads the tank project. The German parliament's strategy of keeping a close watch on the aerial program by approving only relatively small tranches of money has Dassault CEO Eric Trappier worried about the ability to hit deadlines, French newspaper La Tribune reported last week. Speaking before a French Senate committee in mid-May, Trappier proposed a Franco-German programming law to ensure a more rapid development pace, according to the newspaper. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/05/26/three-european-air-forces-approve-performance-benchmarks-for-next-gen-fighter-jet/
February 1, 2021 | International, Aerospace
Dassault Aviation a signé, le 29 janvier, avec Florence Parly, ministre des Armées, un contrat pour la vente de 12 Rafale, lesquels remplaceront les 12 Rafale de l'armée de l'Air et de l'Espace française vendus à l'armée de l'Air grecque. La signature a eu lieu lors d'une visite de la ministre des Armées à l'usine d'Argonay, en Haute-Savoie, où sont produits les systèmes de commandes de vol de tous les avions Dassault depuis 1963. « Ce contrat de 12 avions neufs permet à notre armée de l'Air et de l'Espace de poursuivre sa montée en puissance Rafale en attendant la cinquième tranche, dont les livraisons sont prévues entre 2027 et 2030, a déclaré le PDG de Dassault Aviation et président du GIFAS, Eric Trappier. C'est une grande satisfaction pour Dassault Aviation, Thales, Safran et les 500 entreprises françaises associées au programme, dans le contexte particulièrement difficile que traverse notre secteur aéronautique avec la crise de la Covid-19 ». Ensemble de la presse du 29 janvier 2021