New Ammunition-Delivery Devices Sought for Rapid-Response Brigades.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The Army's new medium brigades, designed so they can deploy overseas and be ready to fight within 96 hours, currently would need 300 hours just to have their ammunition transported by air and delivered to the combat zone.

The reason that it takes 300 hours is not because of the flying time, but rather the cumbersome process of unloading ammunition pallets from airplanes and moving them to areas where Army logistics trucks can pick them up and get them to the front lines.

The Army now believes it can cut the 300 hours down to less than 100. That would be accomplished through the use of special pallets, three versions of which currently are in development. These pallets would be customized to fit inside Air Force aircraft cargo compartments and also would be sized to hold the Army's standardized ammunition cargo beds, called flat-racks or CROPs (containerized roll-in/out platforms). The CROP fits inside a 20-foot ISO container.

There are three pallet designs competing for a contract award, explained Douglas M. Chesnulovitch, project engineer for ammunition logistics at the Army's Armaments Research Development and Engineering Center.

The $1 million project was funded jointly by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, the Army Materiel Command and by the contractors competing for the award.

One design, called the "shoe," is made by a Michigan-based firm, AAR Cadillac Manufacturing. Another concept, developed by the Boeing Company, is called the "slipper". The third system is a roller platform for air delivery (RPAD), also made by AAR Cadillac and by a British firm called Joloda International.

Unlike the shoe and the slipper, the RPAD goes on top of the CROP, explained Chesnulovitch in an interview. It is used to transfer 463L standard Air Force pallets from the back of an Army PLS truck to an Air Force cargo-loading vehicle.

The PLS is the palletized loading system truck, used by the Army to haul ammunition containers.

The RPAD and the shoe complement each other, he said. The Army sometimes transports supplies on a CROP and other times on 463L pallets. The shoe, the slipper and the RPAD are compatible with both, said Chesnulovitch.

All three technologies were tested in early to mid-December at Pope Air Force Base, N.C. "Based on those trials, the Army will decide whether to acquire these items," he said. "It's my belief that the prototypes offered by the contractors offer us great capability. It will be up to the program manager to decide."

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