As U.S.-led coalition forces move closer to Baghdad, the huge logistics involved in keeping troops supplied has become a critical factor in the outcome. And, as with the rest of this war, technology is playing a vital role in those resupply efforts.
AS COALITION troops march through Iraq, the supply lines supporting those troops now stretch hundreds of desert miles, from Kuwait City all the way to the outskirts of Baghdad. And they are stretched to their limits. Despite Pentagon denials, some embedded reporters have witnessed shortages.
“Supply lines are reallystretched,” said Luke Baker, a reporters with Reuters who is travelling with the 317th Engineers Battalion south of Kerbala. “There’s been problems getting food and water this far to the troops. Some water rationing at this stage and in some units food rationing as well.”
But far from Iraq, a tiny Silicon Valley company is helping the military manage that supply chain. At Savi Technology, in Sunnyvale, Calif., engineers have created a clever technology that combines the technology of global positioning devices, retail anti-theft devices and overnight shipping.
Here’s how it works: each cargo container is equipped with a tiny little circuit board. Radio antennas monitor all the cargo containers in a given area. The contents are instantly beamed to handheld devices and into a database, accessible worldwide.
And if one of those tags is tampered with, a warning is sent instantly across the Internet. A click on a Web browser shows you where the problem is. Another click shows you where the cargo is at that port. The cargo tag becomes smart tag
“The smart tag can tell you where the container is, what’s in the container, who packed the container; it can tell you if something needs to be done with the container because its in the wrong place,” said Blair LaCorte, Savi’s head of marketing and business development. “So what we like to say is it becomes a smart container.”
This technology, already deployed, should help avoid problems that plagued the Desert Storm conflict.
“It was very difficult to find out what was in those containers,” said Michael Finley, a retired U.S. Navy real admiral. “We didn’t have the automated technology we have today. So in large part, it was a manual operation.”
Of course, there are tremendous peace time benefits to this technology as well.
“It would be a great help to know where the parts are, and approximately when they’re going to arrive,” said David Nelson, vice president of global purchasing for auto parts maker Delphi Corp.
In the automotive industry, getting parts just in time can mean millions. And in a time of war, it can mean life or death.