With the Army still thinking about a DROPS replacement, wondering what to do with the EPLS UOR after Afghanistan and my ongoing fetish for containers I thought a post on handling systems would be fun. The demographic and cost pressure will mean that all the armed forces are going to have to do with less people so those that remain are going to need to be much more efficient. one means of increasing efficiency is automation and a general reduction of manual handling in the supply chain.
Look at almost every picture of the armed forces in action on the logistics and you will see lots and lots of personnel intensive manual handling, breaking down loads from one container to another for example. With less people we need to give much more thought to automated or assisted logistics all the way through the supply chain, eliminating manual handling and break bulk wherever possible.
Logistics has to do more with less.
The military supply chain has many aspects that are completely different to a civilian one which relies on many constants the military does not have the luxury of but that is not to say that the civilian market cannot offer the armed forces a selection of innovative technologies and systems that will go some way to achieving efficiency in all things logistic.
This also applies across the services.
Most of the detail will come in the forthcoming ‘future of the Army’ series of posts so here is a random collection of videos on the subject would provide a good lead in.
Container Handling
Demountable Systems
Returning the Empties
Think Defence 
……… I’m going for a lie down. This is way too racy and exciting for me.
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whay hey everybody, TD’s back from his dark place!!
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TD
I am very interrested in this, the old ‘amaters talk tactics pros talk logistics’ has never been truer than today.
Your points about manning etc are well made.
However can’t help worrying that Containers are becoming a fetish. Do you have hard core technical trade manuels under the bed, or just little light transport technology.
Time to start worrying is when you start shouting
‘Twenty Foot Equivilent Unit’ at the point of orgasm.
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Us pro’s use the TLA, or TEU to those in the know!
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Twenty foot
Equivelent
Unit
Hence TEU
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Come on TD you and I both know they will simply ask the poor bastards that are left to work even harder !!
Automation my arse
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Fair point Phil but those options of ‘throw a few lads on that’ might not actually be a realistic option, as force levels shrink, demographic and welfare driven personnel costs rise, we are not going to have much of an alternative
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Off topic, saw Tecore Systems’s ruggedised UMTS in a box at Mobile World Congress. Also Vodafone’s drop box, solar powered, microwave backhaul demo. Nowt that wasn’t in vendor demos a couple of years ago, but it clearly all works.
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