Low-cost, low-altitude aerial resupply: an Army project to resupply units by airdrop developed from a concept to a valued combat operational capability in the hands of our Soldiers in just 16 months

Army Logistician, March-April, 2008 by Nicholas C. Zello, Daniel L. Labin

Picture your dismounted patrol or small unit navigating an extremely difficult stretch of harsh, mountainous terrain in Afghanistan. Your location cannot be reached by ground transportation, and no airfields or landing strips can be found for miles. It has been 3 days since you were last resupplied, and you are eagerly awaiting an airdrop of needed cargo at a very small clearing near your position so you can continue your mission.

You arrive at the grid coordinates that were provided the night before by your commander: Just over the horizon, you see air aircraft approaching the small clearing to airdrop cargo from an altitude of about 150 feet. Four bundles containing configured loads of ammunition, rations, water; and medical supplies are dropped from the aircraft on one pass and land within 25 meters of your coveted and concealed position. Without the use of materials-handling equipment (MHE), you and your dismounted patrol quickly and easily recover the cargo bundles from the small drop zone (DZ) and move out to your designated assembly area in a matter of minutes, without leaving a single trace of your existence at the DZ. After securing the assembly area, you and your team break open the bundles and find that all of the cargo has survived the airdrop. Of special significance, mail for you and your team is included with the other critical supplies.

Precise as clockwork and right on time and on target, you and your Soldiers have been resupplied without a hitch and your mail has been delivered to you some 200 miles from the nearest forward operating base. At this point, you smile and wonder why you didn't have such a low-cost, low-altitude aerial supply capability before. But you and your Soldiers are very thankful that you have it now.

Based on feedback from our forces in the field, the Army determined that a clear and growing need existed for a "one-time use," or disposable, parachute system to be used for conducting low-altitude aerial resupply operations. This need was particularly great for sustaining small units in operational environments like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The routine experiences of our combatant commanders and forces demonstrated that the Army required a much simpler and far-less-costly aerial resupply capability than that offered by expensive and complex precision high-altitude airdrop systems like the Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS). What was needed was a system that can reliably provide rapid, precise, low-cost delivery of supplies when resupply by ground transportation was not possible or desirable.

In response, the Department of the Army G-4's Logistics Innovation Agency and the Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center initiated the low-cost, low-altitude (LCLA) aerial resupply project in November 2005. Other project team members and stakeholders that supported and contributed to the successful completion of the project included the Product Manager for Force Sustainment Systems (PM FSS); the Army Combined Arms Support Command (CASCOM); the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC); the Integrated Logistics Support Center (ILSC) at the Army Soldier Systems Center; the 4th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 82d Airborne Division, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; the Army Forces Command; the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana; and the Oklahoma Army National Guard.

This article describes the LCLA project and summarizes the significant progress made to date.

The Growing Operational Requirement for LCLA

Although other parachute systems meet some requirements in certain scenarios, the LCLA project team identified a clear "capability gap" that needed to be filled to better support expanding operational needs in the new and challenging operational environments of the 21st century. In short, to meet pressing and growing operational requirements for conducting very low-altitude operations and to accomplish their combat missions in theater, our commanders required LCLA to fill a capability gap that JPADS and other airdrop systems are simply not designed to fill.

As the acronym "LCLA" indicates, the goal of the project was focused specifically on developing very low-cost parachutes for airdropping supplies at altitudes from 500 feet down to 150 feet above ground level (AGL). Such parachutes can support forces that are operating--

* Substantial distances from forward operating bases (FOBs).

* In remote, austere locations that are hard to reach by ground transportation.

* With limited or no MHE to conduct recovery or retrograde operations.

* In locations with no usable airfields or airstrips to conduct air-land operations.

LCLA is one of several key integrated logistics aerial resupply delivery systems that the Army and joint communities are developing in synchronization with surface distribution operations to provide the combatant commander with the aerial resupply capabilities and enablers needed to meet the requirements of full-spectrum operations.

The primary objective of the LCLA capability is to improve tactical logistics support by enabling rapid and precise delivery and distribution of small, tailored support packages of configured loads to small units, with no operational pauses and with a much smaller logistics footprint.