OVERVIEW

There is a revolution going on within military groups throughout the world, especially among the United States and its allies, focused on improving what happens in any theater of operation. At the center of the revolution are the intentions to avoid mistakes of the past and to take advantage of best commercial practices, so the military forces in action can be better enabled to dominate an adversary. Crucial to this vision is the need to take what amounts to a network-centric view of warfare, sustained by enhanced supply chain systems that are far superior to those of the enemy, no matter how extended the linkages. This latter requirement demands that the military force, including all important allies, have visibility into its supply chain and can access and deploy goods through a wireless communication environment.

Modern warfare involves global coalitions. Across these extended military enterprises, constrained operations, lack of essential supplies, and missing components must be banished. In their place, there must be agile logistics systems with clear visibility into what is in storage by exact location, what is in transit and in use, and what can be accessed at times of emergency. Like any commercial supply chain network, such a system is only as good as the weakest link, so there must be accurate and efficient collaboration across the end-to-end processing.

This chapter dissects what is behind the mandates by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the military services to adopt unique identification (UID) and eventually RFID technology...