The Digital Age is Transforming Military Logistics.

• Author: Gambhir, Gulu
• Position: Industry Perspective

Many people don't recognize how vital technology is to logistics and mission readiness.

Imagine being an astronaut almost 200,000 miles from Earth on the way to the moon, and there is a noise--and not a good noise. Something has gone wrong and both the mission and lives are at risk. This happened on Apollo 13 in 1970 and was the subject of a movie. It has been 40 years since the event and 23 years since the film was released, so there is little risk of a spoiler--the astronauts return safely to Earth.

Successful resolution of the mishap involved logistics. It is a gripping case study of operational sustainment under difficult and evolving mission conditions and one of the early examples of digital twin technology--i.e., the ground simulator.

In the movie, physical and digital models were used by Gary Sinise--as astronaut Ken Mattingly--to determine the right boot sequence for the command module, drawing power from the Grumman-built lunar module that had been serving as the crew's lifeboat. In this case, the digital twin was a physical near-clone of the actual flight system and its use allowed the astronauts to return safely. More on digital twins later, but the story serves as some context for the role that technology plays in logistics and readiness.

Looking to the future--on both the platforms that Northrop Grumman develops and on those developed by other aerospace contractors--there is a continued focus on technology driven breakthroughs that we can bring to customers.

There are four big technology-driven trends that are impacting the logistics mission.

The first is sensors and analytics. At the heart of future trends in logistics, especially with sophisticated platforms like Global Hawk, is data. The military has been exploiting ubiquitous data to move up the value chain pyramid from data to information and ultimately knowledge and wisdom, that can be used to make decisions that drive outcomes.

Sensors are undoubtedly an enabler for this purpose because they are fundamentally changing how sustainment is viewed. Maintenance, for example, has been largely driven by schedule, like changing the oil in a car every 3,000 miles. Taking advantage of the internet-of-things era, there is greater use of instrumentation sensors for condition-based maintenance (CBM). With CBM, rather than changing engine oil on a set schedule, the maintenance interval is based on driving style, the oil's viscosity and particulate level.

Data analytics research and...