Northrop Grumman has released an iPhone app intended to support defense logistics by quickly calculating transportation requirements for large quantities of operational rations.
The company released the app for supply chain planners and defense logisticians to help determine the number of containers, pallets and other transports required for user-specified ration amounts.
“The basic logistical problem is not procuring MREs, it’s moving them and quickly estimating what you need to move them,” said David Hammond, technology manager of Northrop Grumman Information Systems, in the release.
Nineteen ration types, including bottled water, meals and humanitarian rations, can be entered into the app, which then calculates the load’s weight and also suggests options for the airframes, ground vehicles and helicopters required to move the load.
Hammond said the app works to “rapidly estimate transportation needs to move an ad hoc requirement, say, 50,000 cases of MREs to support a surge or rations and bottled water for a humanitarian or disaster relief effort.”