- The Department of Defense is continuing to roll out RFID based systems including an inventory management solution developed by the Marine Corps Logistics Command.
- The department is issuing comments related to the value of the technology to the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC) as the FCC considers a petition that would inhibit the use of RFID in the lower MHz band.
As the FCC is taking comments and reviewing a petition that could inhibit use of UHF RFID in the U.S, the U.S. Department of Defense is expanding use of passive UHF RFID technology to manage the thousands of assets under the authority of the DLA and each of the military agencies.
A solution—MCPIC—first developed by the Marine Corps Logistics Command (MARCORLOGCOM) is proving to bring greater inventory accuracy for equipment that is stored, and managed, in sites in the U.S. and around the globe.
This year, the MCPIC solution—deployed to track inventory of the Marine Corps’ assets—has enabled the agency to pass its annual audit at the Marine Corps for the first time since audits were mandated in 1990. The audit’s success was at least partially the result of the RFID’s system’s automated digital data capture, for more accurate information about the mission critical equipment, said Scott Prouse, LOGCOM Command Data Analytics Office (CDAO) supervisor.
The system has in fact, brought an internal inventory counting process (that required months of labor), to about four hours, with RFID tags on assets, and a combination of handheld and fixed RFID readers, said Prouse.
RFID Military Importance
The increased use of RFID by the Marines comes as the FCC is considering a petition that could grant allocation of the RF band used by the UHF RFID technology to NextNav for 3D geolocation systems including emergency responder communication and 5G. The FCC is accepting comments until Sept. 5 regarding the petition. That includes comments from the military agencies that use the technology.
According to a DoD spokesperson, the agency cannot comment on issues before FCC, only confirming that the “DoD will submit its comments via the IRAC [Internal Review and Audit Compliance office].”
Bringing Automation to Challenging Environments
The MCPIC solution aims to help ensure that warfighters are connected to the combat-ready equipment and supplies they need at all times. The DoD comes with highly complex environments for asset storage and provision, with rotating inventory that traditionally was tracked manually.
Historically, tracking was done with paper, pen and spreadsheets. As a result, it’s been hard to have real-time accurate inventory counts. And inaccurate counts, or mis-shipment of assets, can lead to serious repercussions in military defense.
Already, MARCORLOGCOM has been implementing MCPIC at designated Consolidated Storage Program (CSP) sites to automatically update equipment and container location data within their warehouses, said Prouse. This has been accomplished through an interface with Defense Property Accountability Service – Warehouse Module (DPAS-WM) under the leadership of Joe Stossel.
MARCORLOGCOM supports the thousands of pieces of equipment employed by the Marine Corps. In the past, the agency had little concrete evidence that its inventory numbers were correct, and this negatively impacted operational readiness, Prouse said. In 1990 the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring an audit of inventory by each military agency annually. Until this year, each of those audits has failed due to low accuracy in inventory counts.
That changed in FY2024 however, when the Marine Corps became the first service to pass audit. The passive “pRFID” system for automated inventory tracking (MCPIC) has now caught the attention of other agencies and its use is now being advocated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).
Passive RFID
“The use of passive RFID to speed the count and location [of assets] in support of audits is gaining strength across all of the DOD,” said Prouse.
DoD agencies all have the same problem: large amounts of equipment with antiquated systems that do not provide more nimble ways to locate and account for it. The USMC’s success with pRFID and MCPIC to solve those problems is garnering a great deal of interest across DoD and other federal agencies, according to Prouse. He predicts the solution’s name of MCPIC will be changed to reflect the many agencies that are, or will be, using the technology.
In fact, the pRFID system serves as an end-to-end solution that can be deployed and integrated with any of the military agencies’ own management software.
Building Out With Other Agencies
Most recently, logistics department MARCORLOGCOM has built a link between the RFID data being captured, and the DoD’s property management system to make inventory management more seamless. MARCORLOGCOM is completing an interface that links the agency’s own Defense Property, Accountability Service Warehouse Module (known as DPAS-WM) and the RFID application.
“We are running the interface at two production sites, and at one location last month we had over 15,000 system generated moves with 99 percent accuracy rate,” Prouse explained. “And the one percent of generated errors were due to incorrect operations in the warehouse.”
Naval Autonomous Data Collection System (NADACS) and NAS, Jacksonville, FL, are conducting a Proof of Principle using the technology, while another project is underway with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The Department of Homeland Security is preparing to run a proof of principal project as well.
Drone Use for Overhead Reading
This year, the DLA has been investigating the use of drones to accomplish RFID tag reads across a wide, tightly-packed outdoor storage area.
DLA oversees storage and management of thousands of tanks, self-propelled guns and armored fighting vehicles at their facility in Anniston, AL. DLA could potentially identify each asset and its specific location by capturing tag reads with GPS location, as well as MPEG imagery. To do so, the agency is testing drone-based tag reads as an alternative to sending a worker with a handheld RFID reader to try to walk between each asset and scan individual tags.
Instead, a drone with a mounted, light-weight RFID reader could fly over storage yards and read passive RFID tags on the tops vehicles. Numerous other tagged parts would be linked to that vehicle in the system software to create an inventory of specific items contained in the vehicles.
The system not only provides inventory data for external audits but enables officials to locate a specific item that may be required, like a vehicle that is being shipped out for use or a part that may be needed for a rebuild or repair service.
“If you need a part, [with the technology] you know which vehicles have it and you know where the vehicle is, so you can go get it,” Prouse said.
Ruggedized Tagging for Heat, Cold and Wind
The MARCORLOGCOM has designed a custom tag, produced by HID Global’s Omni ID, that features ruggedization that ensures the tags cannot be destroyed or removed.
That includes a special adhesive to secure the tag to all equipment. That specialized tag design has been critical for the success of the system, Prouse said.
“There’s a misnomer out there that a passive RFID tag is a passive RFID tag,” he said, however the agency has learned through experience that not all tags can survive the conditions they may be exposed to in the military environment.
In fact, before the latest ruggedized tags were in use, nature put more standard tags and adhesives to the test as a tornado passed through the Marine Corps Logistics Base (MCLBs) in Albany, GA. While the vehicles and other assets were largely undamaged, the wind stripped the RFID tags from the machines. An RFID reader found the tags scattered far and wide around the area.
Limited Security, Privacy Risk
The use of RFID comes with innate security, based on the way the technology works and the way data is stored, Prouse added.
RFID tags on equipment used by war fighters offer little risk from bad actors who may try to read the tags, he pointed out. The 96-bit code encoded on each RFID tag is meaningless to readers that don’t have access to the database managing those codes. Additionally, RFID readers need to be within relatively short range to interrogate the tags: about ten to 30 feet.
If an individual with an RFID reader is close enough to read the tag, Prouse said, “you already know [the asset] is right there, you’d already be on top of it.”
Passing the First Audit
The MCLBs in Albany and Barstow, CA, which hold 20 percent of inventory for the Marine Corps, gained some positive attention after passing their audits, with accurate views of where each asset was located, and what was onsite, and what had been moved.
The system uses both handheld and fixed RFID readers to capture the inventory data.
“We could not have passed the audit without MCPIC,” Prouse said, while adding that the technology was not the only factor that helped provide that inventory accuracy. The fact that the sites passed the audit after deploying the RFID solution, he said, proves the value the technology can provide for asset and equipment management.
Meeting the Challenges of Today
“Everybody’s looking for the same [solutions], you’ve got all these inventory managers across DoD that are holding enormous amounts of equipment — they have a requirement to inventory their stuff every year and right now most of the accountable property systems of records … are manual,” such as a clipboard and pencil, walking, and counting, stated Prouse.
That kind of solution isn’t enough anymore, he pointed out. “The inventories are too large, they’re too sophisticated, there’s too many variables, you’re just getting too many mistakes and spending vast amounts of time and labor.”
The last manual inventory of military equipment over $100,000 in value— before MCPIC was implemented at MARCORLOGCOM— required fourteen months of counting to complete he said. “We can do that same inventory in about four hours now with infinitely greater accuracy.”