Photo By Seaman Dominic Delahunt | Cmdr. Matthew Miller, Supply Officer of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS...... read more read more
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The Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8) recently welcomed V2X to provide an industry demonstration in moving forward to modern-day supply handling with new 5G private networks, and the addition of smart warehouse inventory facility tracking (SWIFT), Jan. 27, 2025.
Cmdr. Matthew Miller, Makin Island’s Supply Officer, Lt. Jacob Chivers, Makin Island’s Aviation Support Officer, and supporting industry technicians, gave demonstrations on the implementation of SWIFT, using its radio frequency identification (RFID) to quickly label, track, and locate equipment, and other mission needed resources.
“The ability to sustain operations at sea is key to the Navy’s success,” said Miller. “Sustained operations at sea are dependent to the parts onboard. Shipboard automated asset visibility inventory enhances readiness and thus lethality.”
Prior to and during Makin Island’s 2022-2023 deployment, the ship had over 1,300 depot level repairable transactions with a value of over $77 million. These materials are commonly placed into the hangar bay.
Once these materials are in the hangar bay the man hours needed to move them across the hangar bay or flight deck, and finally begin repairs after replacing everything, can be multiple days of valuable mission availability time. With the assistance of SWIFT, these manning hours are drastically reduced down to a few minutes or hours.
These systems implement a privatized network utilizing a Starshield Satellite disk creating a privatized and safe Wi-Fi network solely for the optimization of inventory management in a large environment.
Entering a storage room in only a few minutes SWIFT is able to log over 250 RFID tags after a simple sweep with a scanner from vendor provided RFID labels.
“It’s all about redundancy. Having the ability to use speed to locate, acquire, replace, and repair anything that may be needed,” said Chivers. “The Navy has been a pen and paper system for far too long, and we have new Sailors who are centered towards this type of technology having to downgrade for us. When utilizing this new equipment, turnaround time will be faster and more reliable in the long run.”
The future of this system, starting at the Makin Island, leading into forward deployments, then Amphibious Ready groups, will ultimately culminate into quick reacting and fast understanding supply chains across the fleet.
“With this new system on Makin Island, we will be bringing modernization to the modern Sailor,” said Miller.
Makin Island is currently in a selective restricted availability for maintenance while homeported in San Diego.
| Date Taken: | 02.07.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.06.2025 14:49 |
| Story ID: | 490282 |
| Location: | SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 81 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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