In Operation Iraqi Freedom -- and in Operation Desert Storm, for that matter -- logistics did not cause battlefield deaths. But your ability to operate and your ability to move about the battlefield are constrained by your ability to support the logistics, and RFID is a tool that will enable us to better support that force in a dynamic environment.
How, exactly, are Wal-Mart and the Defense Department working together on this?
Well, we're having discussions on how we're using the technology and the application of the technology, so we can learn from each other. We're discussing what works with Wal-Mart versus what's working with us in our pilot phases, and we're working together on standards.
What is the Pentagon learning from Wal-Mart?
I think it's a shared learning. Essentially, we have the same game plan -- track material into key supply points and track material out of those supply points.
We've heard a lot of hype around this technology. Is there anything that could derail the vision of passive RFID or at least snag its progress?
Frankly, I do not think so. I mean, there are issues to be worked through. There are some flaws -- a more accurate word might be "glitches" -- in the technology. It doesn't work well around metals; there are ways to overcome that. It doesn't work well around liquids; again, there are ways to overcome that. So, you've got to work through those issues, which is why we are doing some pilots. We need to do some standards work now with the electronic product code, part of the Uniform Code Council series of standards. So, those are the two biggest issues.
Are there any others?
There's the fact that you do have to put some dollars up and invest in order to reap your return on investment. And you won't see that return on investment tomorrow; it'll be over the course of time. There will be some immediate returns, however, and you just have to put up the dollars today to reap some of those near-term gains, but the bulk is in the long term.
These investments must be made not just by the Defense Department but by your suppliers. They have to make an investment, too, right?
Oh, absolutely.
How many suppliers are we talking about?
I have 46,000 suppliers in the Defense Department. This policy touches all of them.
How long will it take them, then, to realise a full return on investment in this technology?
I think that you can probably do that within five years.
How much is the Department of Defense spending on RFID technology?
We are working the numbers on what it's going to cost us to implement passive RFID, as we speak. So, I cannot give you that number. But I will tell you that logistics in the Defense Department is a $95bn-a-year business.
What about active RFID?
We've probably spent $100m over the last 10 years on active RFID implementation.
What about data security? Security for the military -- even more so than for the commercial sector -- must be a big concern.
I don't believe that is going to be an issue, quite frankly. On the passive side, the reader reads best at about 30 feet. The interface must comply with Defense Department security requirements. On the active side, it is already reading at 300 yards, and we have not had any data security issues with that, either. Frankly, if someone is inside -- that close, with a reader -- we have other security issues. But we are certainly running this through our data security infrastructure folks, and again, not running into any problems.
Talkback
Here is my suggestion to US DoD: attach RFID to every smart bomb or cluster bomb to make it easy to find blind shells. There are too many those things in Afghanistan, Iraq and the like.