U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), the Defense Department’s supply chain overseer, in July began using container security devices (CSDs) supplied by an industry team in order add a layer of security to military shipments in the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) theater of operations.
Use of the CommerceGuard CSDs is ongoing and so far has been successful, Dave Dias, chief of the Asset Visibility Division at USTRANSCOM, tells TR2. He says about 120 of the devices are deployed and were used to track just under 800 container shipments in the initial use. Moving forward, Dias said he would like for the CommerceGuard or a similar technology to be standard operating procedure.
“CommerceGuard is another tool in the toolbox,” Dias says.
There have been no false alarms and no incidents of any containers equipped with CommerceGuard being pilfered, Dias says. However, he’s not attributing the use of the device to the reason there haven’t been any thefts associated with those particular containers. The CSD is just one measure being used as part of a multilayered security effort in keeping watch over military shipments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Dias says.
The CommerceGuard solution is provided by General Electric [GE], Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp., Korea’s Samsung, and Siemens Building Technologies, a unit of Germany’s Siemens [SI]. The device essentially lets users know if a container’s doors have had unauthorized openings and if so, when.
For the USTRANSCOM container security operations, information about door openings is communicated to handheld readers at strategic checkpoints along the container’s journey. The readings are then relayed via a cellular communications infrastructure to a communications system managed by GE, which packages the information on a secure web site that can be accessed by USTRANSCOM and U.S. Central Command USCENTCOM, which is responsible for military operations in the OEF Area of Operations.
USCENTCOM, which is one of USTRANSCOM’s customers, was very interested in having the CSD technology used, Dias says.
Dias says his division does use other technologies to track container shipments, including active radio frequency identification tags, and for shipments in the OEF operational area, satellite tracking through a commercial provider. He hopes that ultimately the satellite tracking capability is incorporated into intrusion detection devices like CommerceGuard.
CommerceGuard does provide basically a time and date stamp which does help with asset visibility.