DC Velocity - October 2015

s p ec i a lr ep o rt D EF EN S E LO GI S TI C S

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ferry cargo ships of today.

b The Internet. The Internet is now so ubiquitous, so essential to business operations, that it’s easy to forget how recent a development it is. It grew out of work carried out at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with funding from the Department of Defense. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972, oversaw the effort.

The first Internet message was sent
over the wires from UCLA to SRI on Oct.

29, 1969. By the mid-1990s, the original
network was decommissioned. By that
time, there was no further need for DOD
involvement. Commercial Internet ser-
vice providers (ISPs) were off and run-
ning, and the rest is history.
b Automated freight payment. In 1998,
the Department of Defense evaluated the benefit of re-en-
gineering the freight payment process and abandoning the
use of military manifests and government-defined bills of
lading. That same year, DOD went all in with a commercial
off-the-shelf solution from U.S. Bank called Power Track.

Not only did this support an emerging commercial capability with millions of dollars a year of DOD funds, but it also helped legitimize the overall market for automated freight payment systems. Even if you don’t work with U.S. Bank, if you use an automated system, you have DOD to thank. A rising tide lifts all boats.

WHAT’S NEXT?

These are but a few examples. We could also mention the
military’s groundbreaking work with radio-frequency iden-
tification (RFID) technology, global positioning systems
(GPS), and even the Internet of Things.

As for what’s next, innovations in military logistics will keep on coming, and commercial applications are sure to follow. Delivery drones are already in use at the Marine Corps. Driverless cargo trucks are being tested by the Army. Field-deployable 3-D printing capabilities went forward in Afghanistan.

More innovations—some still on the military drawing board, some in development—are now taking shape. The Army is rolling out leading-edge virtual reality combat simulators to train people in battlefield conditions without an actual battlefield. Perhaps someday we’ll train truck drivers the same way.

What the military has learned over the years is that creativity by itself is insufficient, that better is sometimes not good enough. The drive for different—innovating an entirely new approach—may be what’s required to win the battle, or even the war.

containerization are not the only transportation innovation
we owe to the World War II-era military.
In the fall of 1946, the Atlantic Steam Navigation Co.’s

Empire Baltic—a seagoing roll on/roll off (Ro/Ro) cargo ship with a built-in ramp—sailed from Tilbury in the United Kingdom to Rotterdam loaded with 64 vehicles for the Dutch government. Thus began the first commercial Ro/Ro service, which relied on a fleet of three ships: the Empire Baltic, the Empire Cedric, and the Empire Celtic.

The Atlantic Steam Navigation Co.
didn’t own the ships, though.

The Ro/Ros were leased from the UK’s Royal Navy, which used the specialized cargo ships during the Normandy landings in 1944. Known as LSTs, short for “Landing Ship, Tank,” the vessels were the first purpose-built seagoing ships enabling road vehicles, like trucks, jeeps, and tanks, to roll directly on and off. For the D-Day invasion, many of the LSTs were loaded in the United States and unloaded on the beaches of France.