THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 14, 1995 TAG: 9508140091
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD
STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
If the experience of the Army's 25th Infantry Division is a guide, that infamous military directive, ``Hurry up and wait,'' may soon be in jeopardy. And a little plastic card with a computer chip inside will deserve much of the credit.
In January, the so-called smart cards helped speed 3,500 soldiers of the Army division from Hawaii to Haiti as part of the military's Operation Uphold Democracy.
It was the first major real-life test of the cards under a two-year pilot program involving all military services in Hawaii.
A Williamsburg-area company, 3-G International Inc., is the main subcontractor in the card test.
The cards dramatically improved how troops prepare for mobilization, said Mike Noll, who coordinates the test for the Pentagon.
Traditionally, he noted, when a division is about to be moved overseas, soldiers report to a large place like a gym or an aircraft hangar. They're expected to bring with them the documents they need to prove they're ready to go: shot records, an updated will, next-of-kin addresses and phone numbers, for instance. It's a long process of standing in one line after another until all forms are in order.
Processing an entire division can take days.
Enter smart cards. Armed with a two-kilobyte memory, the computer chip on each infantry member's card carried the information required for mobilization - in some cases, just a checkoff indicating whether or not forms are complete.
By plugging a soldier's card into a special reader, processing personnel were able to quickly narrow in on the loose ends that stood in the way of his or her deployment.
Noll said based on the first exercise, leaders of the 25th Infantry think eventually they can cut as many as three days from the time needed to prepare for deployment.
The most dramatic time savings came when the division prepared to board aircraft for Haiti. ``The manual method that they use with a clipboard and a roster in order to build a manifest typically takes up to 4 1/2 hours,'' Noll said. ``Inserting a fully loaded ... card with information about the individual on it into a reader as he gets on the plane cut the time to 40 minutes.''
That reduced the number of people needed by division leaders for manifesting ``administrivia,'' Noll said. ``They can go over and do warfighter functions.''
The cards used by the military in Hawaii are officially known as Multi-Technology Automated Reader Cards: MARC, for short. They are multi-technology because, besides computer chips, they also contain bar codes and magnetic stripes, which the services have widely implemented for personal identification. Noll believes that eventually those will be superseded by chip-based technologies.
If the $10 million test works out, Noll said all 1.6 million active-duty military personnel and millions more reserves and National Guard personnel could be carrying smart cards by 1999. In that case, they'd make individual cards for such things as medical insurance, meals and weapons, and perhaps even military ID cards, obsolete.
Plummeting costs for cards, Noll said, will only help their adoption. An 8K smart card now runs about $3, he noted, $1.50 less than a card several times less powerful only a year ago.
There has been little resistance from soldiers to carrying the cards, Noll said. ``For the most part, we're dealing with Generation X here who has been brought up with Gameboys, with video games, with home PCs, and is very familiar with technology,'' he explained. ``If anything, I'm more afraid they're going to try to hack it, that they're going to say, `Let's see what we can do with this chip when I take it home to my computer.' ''
3-G hopes to get a slice of the military's future smart-card action, said L. Kit Letchworth, director of the Williamsburg operation. He says 3-G will triple its 10-person work force by the end of next year to keep up with growing demand for its skills in assembling computer networks built around the cards. MEMO: [For a related story, see page 10 of THE BUSINESS WEEKLY for this
date.]
ILLUSTRATION: Mulit-Technology Automated Reader Cards (MARC).
KEYWORDS: SMART CARDS by CNB