The U.S. Navy will be teaming up with a tech company to explore the usage of blockchain technology in order to help keep track of aviation parts throughout their life-cycle.
Adoption Continues
According to a press release dated September 20th, The Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) is exploring the usage of blockchain technology in order to keep track of aviation parts throughout their life-cycle.
Purportedly, blockchain integration will allow for lower operational costs and reduce resource consumption. The release states:
Knowing the origin and history of flight-critical aircraft parts is a resource-consuming process that drives up the cost to operate military aircraft. The Navy hopes to change the way it tracks the lineage of parts.
NAVAIR is teaming up with Indiana Technology and Manufacturing Companies (ITAMCO) – the developers of a product which uses blockchain to track secure messages. Speaking on the matter, Logistics Management Specialist George Blackwood from ISSC North Island Fleet Support Team said:
The Navy is very excited to work with ITAMCO on this cutting-edge technology to improve visibility, anti-tampering, traceability and data transparency in the NAVAIR supply chain.
Permissioned Blockchain
It’s worth noting that the Navy already has a trusted network. This means that the new blockchain would just merely resemble public blockchains which rely on computation power as per the “proof-of-work” consensus.
In turn, the Navy’s model will be a permissioned blockchain which takes advantage of a consensus algorithm that requires far less computing power. According to the press release, the ability to manage life events and to provide custody on a distributed ledger will be very useful not only for the Navy but for the Department of Defense (DoD) as well, not to mention other industry partners too.
The main goal of the newly formed partnership is to provide a conceptual architecture for what a visible and entirely connected supply chain could actually look like.
What do you think of the U.S. Navy tapping into blockchain to solve existing issues? Let us know in the comments below!
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