Marine Corps lab eyes unmanned aircraft for battlefield re-supply.

• Author: Wagner, Breanne
• Position: Marine Corps

BALTIMORE -- With Marines scattered around dozens of outposts in Iraq and Afghanistan, delivering essential supplies and equipment in a timely fashion has stressed the capacity of the service's logistics and transportation systems.

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As a result, scientists are pondering new ways to employ robotics technology to extend the reach of supply delivery networks.

In recent months, researchers at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va., have experimented with unmanned aircraft that can deliver equipment and supplies to the battlefield without human assistance.

The goal is to find more cost-efficient methods to transport packages to smaller units that are dispersed throughout large areas, officials said.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, where units are far apart from each other, delivering supplies quickly across long distances requires new ways of thinking about logistics, said Brig. Gen. Thomas Murray, commander of the laboratory.

Sending smaller quantities of supplies to multiple locations with conventional transport aircraft such as the V-22 Osprey and the CH-53K Super Stallion has turned out to be wasteful and costly, Murray told the National Defense Industrial Association's Marine Corps Systems Command conference for industry.

It is not unusual for aircraft that have a 3,000-pound cargo capacity to fly on re-supply mission that only requires 500 pounds of cargo. That is an inefficient way of doing business, he said. "We're looking at ways to narrow that down to the size load that we need."

Commanders not only want to find more efficient ways to transport supplies, they also want to take those manned delivery aircraft out of harm's way, said Murray.

"Why send in this huge heat signature with a crew of four, six, or eight on board ... and risk detection and failure of...