(a.k.a. "Life Imitates Command and Conquer") The U.S. Army has been experimenting with a mini factory that ships in containers, and can build spare parts near the battlefield:
bq. "MPH is a 30,000-plus pound manufacturing center capable of producing more than 150 parts on the battlefield, including plastics, rubbers, metals and ceramics.... Officials expect to build a variety of machine and metallic elements for military vehicles, ranging from humvees and Bradley tanks to generator sets and trailers."
Trent Telenko has seen stuff in the trade papers about spares for Abrams tanks & Bradley IFV(Infantry Fighting Vehicles) in particular being a headache in Iraq. He thinks the "Mobile Parts Hospital" being sent to Kuwait will be useful. I'm also curious to see what the troops will come up with as a result of having such manufacturing facilities so close. That's usually a good catalyst for unauthorized customizations, most of which will be worth learning from.
The whole MPH concept is very American on many levels. To really see the longer-term significance, however, you have to put this together with concepts like ship-based seabasing, pre-fab offshore bases derived from oil platform technologies, etc. Each piece becomes part of a greater whole that gives the USA more and more expeditionary flexibility to go where it wants, when it wants, and to bring what it needs along. For its own citizen-soldiers... or for others.
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* Flit comments, noting that the uses for this technology extend beyond the military.
* Weekend Pundit comments in "Rise of the Machines."
Since this technology is CNC based it will be capable of making a lot more than 150 different parts.
The advantage of a system like this is that instead of 30,000 parts in inventory which requires logistics and clerks to keep track of you have maybe 50 types of raw materials and send home for just the CNC files and make what you need on the spot. The CNC files of course can be delivered by radio (or as us old timers like to say - wireless).
This reduces logistic requirements considerably.
It also can significantly increase the tooth to tail ratio which in the US ground forces is something like 1:10.
The Navy has been doing this sort of thing for a very long time with repair ships, submarine tenders, and the like. The Army wasn't capable of doing this in the field until minaturization of electronics made the units small enough to be road mobile. The other thing that helps greatly is the CNC aspect which reduces the skill required for the machinists. You no longer need 5 to 7 years of training and experience to become a skilled machinist. The skill is now encapsulated in thte CNC program. The main skill required is set up. Holding the material rigidly while the CNC does the machining.
The mix of personel on the battle field changes. Instead of supply clerks you have CNC trained machinists.
Something like this means you can have many more parts in "inventory" than other wise and you reduce the need for special flights to deliver critical parts.
Costs are reduced because you no longer need to put capital into inventory that needs to be managed.
BTW should any one out there need help with this sort of thing I am skilled in electronic/machine interfaces and machine control software. Serial communications and custom networks. CAN bus. Contact me. I can also help with writing manuals.
This is a registration required link, but it is in the same vein of American power projection capability development:
US Aiming for Global Strike Capability
With countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey reluctant to serve as launch pads for US military actions, perhaps technology can help the US lessen its reliance on overseas bases. This seems to be the logic behind a solicitation announced in June by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force for a Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that, within two hours of launching from the continental US (CONUS), could strike anywhere in the world with a payload of 12,000 pounds. "The current and future international political environment severely constrains this country's ability to conduct long-range strike missions on high-value, time-critical targets from outside CONUS," according to the June 17 initial draft of the solicitation for the FALCON program, as it is called. "This restriction coupled with the subsonic cruise speed limitations of the current bomber fleet translates to greatly extended mission times."
DARPA said the goal is to create by 2025 an autonomous aircraft that could travel 9,000 nautical miles in two hours, carrying Common Aero Vehicles (CAVs), cruise missiles, small-diameter bombs, or other munitions. CAVs are unpowered, hypersonic glide vehicles that can carry around 1,000 pounds in payload. Eventually, the goal of the HCV program would be to develop the ability to deliver CAVs to multiple targets.
The FALCON program will consist of three phases, beginning with a six-month period of system design by multiple companies or teams of companies competing for the contract; a three-year design-and-development phase by up to two teams or individual companies; and, finally, demonstration of weapons systems by a single company or team that will last approximately 30 months. As JED went to press, DARPA had not yet announced the start date for Phase I.
Teal Group vice president of analysis Richard Aboulafia said the drive to develop the HCV represents something of a waning of the influence of the US Air Force's "pilot mafia," which has traditionally favored development of tactical aircraft over bombers. Along with the use of forward-deployed bases or aircraft carriers as staging grounds for attacks, this new kind of long-range bomber could offer an additional means of conducting fast, efficient external strikes. Existing bombers are about as developed as they can be, so improving on their capabilities will require harnessing entirely new technologies, probably some that have not yet been invented, Aboulafia said.
Jack Spencer, a military analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said that the US military increasingly recognizes that reliance on forward bases is a weakness. "The world is changing, and either adversaries or politics dictate that the US may not have access to forward-deployed bases, and that should be driving military technology," Spencer said. - Ted McKenna
Also, if these things end up appearing around the middle east, the indigenous people may see first hand the mystical and foreign concept of MAKING THINGS. This could be a catalyst for bringing these cultures somewhat closer to living in the present.
There've been several SciFi stories that mention this concept, and it always seemed like a good idea. Glad to see reality catching up to the imagination. Now the trick will be to make it possible to use local 'raw materials' as much as practical instead of having to ship source quantities.
Ted,
The problem with local raw materials is quality.
The kind of manufacturing being done requires that the materials be consistient from batch to batch so that doing a "test" piece is not required. if you have to make two to get one efficiency declines.
Voids, variable density, variable hardness, etc. would make such a system hard to field.
Such a system is about a lot more than just the machine tools. There is a whole civilization behind it. The situation is kind of like what we have with American weapons. Just having the American weapons will not make a force with American capability. There is a whole culture behind it.
OTOH the requirements of such a system may force the locals to upgrade their raw materials processing capability to every ones benefit. It will not be done immediately.
Please carefully note what M. Simon said here:
The mix of personel on the battle field changes. Instead of supply clerks you have CNC trained machinists.
Something like this means you can have many more parts in "inventory" than other wise and you reduce the need for special flights to deliver critical parts.
Costs are reduced because you no longer need to put capital into inventory that needs to be managed.
You are seeing a continuation of the American economic trend of substituting information and capital for real goods.
According to the Federal Reserve, the sum total of the manufacture and service products has not physically increased in size in 30 years. The value of those goods has gone up tremendously because of the information content.
In this case the weight and mass of the spares inventory and the transportation and support slice to maintain it has been displaced by CNC software and machine tools.
You are also seeing fewer and more highly skilled CNC machinists displacing all the supply clerks that were needed to maintain and control the much larger inventory of parts.
And remember that the US Military is only just starting to climb this particular improvement curve. No one else has even started to think about it.
I commented on my own blog on this but thought I'd do it here too.
Two words:
Home Depot.
Imagine putting such a facility in every Home Depot in the US. Add in the ability to send in an order for a custom part via the Internet and you've got yourself an incredibly disruptive technology.
Stop drooling, Dishman.
I'm really happy to see this being developed. I see a lot of good expertise coming out of this program.
The gravy comes when we can boost its successor to the most expensive place we've ever put a boot.
TM Lutas,
Well, it sure muddies the classic "make or buy" decision when you have the desktop manufacturing equivalent of a "Mr. Fusion" power pack a'la BACK TO THE FUTURE.
I suggest you look hard at the Walmart efforts to incorporate radio frequency identification devices (RFID) into their supply chain.
The combination is going to completely remake the manufacturing sector.
RFID tags will remake much more than that. That's one technology that deserves clear assessment of both its potential AND its dangers.