A small U.S. Air Force agency—responsible for hand-picking
technologies that have potential for military use—believes
that small investments can pay off in big ways.
At a time when the demand for cargo aircraft and air crews is growing,
technologies that save weight on transport planes, as well as time
and labor on the flight line, are particularly coveted, said Air
Force Master Sgt. Tim Lewis, a technology advisor at the Air Expeditionary
Battle Lab, in Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.
About three years ago, the chief of staff of the Air Force set
up the lab because “he needed something that would bring innovation
quickly,” said Lewis in an interview. Much of the work at
the battle lab today focuses on the need to ease the workload and
increase safety on the flight line, and to reduce the amount of
cargo troops must load on transport aircraft when they deploy overseas,
he explained. “We don’t go out and produce technology.
We look for mature technologies.”
One way to shrink the demand for airlift, for example, would be
to eliminate pieces of equipment that airmen must use on the job.
A case in point is power generators. “When we deploy, we take
17 to 21 different types of generators,” Lewis said. That
means each generator comes with different belts and hoses, whistles
and motors. This equipment has been singled out in “post-deployment
hot washes [reviews] as the number-one airlift-intensive requirement
for air expeditionary force deployments,” said a battle lab
document.
The battle lab currently is testing 10-kilowatt and 20-kilowatt
fuel cells that, officials believe, could eliminate the need to
transport so many generators. The fuel cell, Lewis explained, is
a “common source of power to run everything from the coffee
maker, out to the flight line that powers the jet. ... I can plug
in the modules based on the power needs.”
Fuel cells are electrochemical devices that convert a fuel’s
energy directly to electrical energy. They operate much like continuous
batteries, when supplied with fuel to the anode (negative electrode)
and oxidant (such as air) to the cathode (positive electrode). Fuel
cells chemically combine the molecules of a fuel and oxidizer without
burning, thus eliminating the pollution generated in traditional
combustion. The only byproducts are water and heat.
The fuel cells that the battle lab tested are fueled by hydrogen.
But the goal is to be able to use jet fuel, called JP8, to power
the fuel cell, said Lewis. “We have to reform the JP8, which
means pull the hydrogen out of it.”
Many people still balk at the suggestion that hydrogen would be
used in the flight line, said Kevin D. Stump, chief enlisted manager
of the battle lab. “A lot of the problem today is the perception
that hydrogen is unsafe. ... Everybody thinks of the Hindenberg
[blimp] disaster.” That explosion, he said, was not a direct
result of the use of hydrogen. “Hydrogen added to the fire,
but did not cause the fire, which was caused by static electricity
and rust.”
Air Force Capt. Nicole Slominski, who is the spokeswoman for the
battle lab, predicted that if the fuel cell project is successful,
it will allow the Air Force to replace 15 types of engines with
one type of fuel cell.
Pallet System
Battle lab officials believe they also could help alleviate the
demand for airlift by making cargo loading more efficient. Under
a project called “bi-level airlift loading system,”
the goal is to develop a pallet that can load two different levels
of equipment. At Mountain Home, said Lewis, the airlift demand dropped
by 25 percent through the use of bi-level pallets. The system essentially
would take advantage of currently unused vertical space in cargo
aircraft.
In the cargo bays in C-17s or C-5s heavy-lift strategic transport
aircraft, said Lewis, “about half the airplane is only loaded
48 inches high. You could go as high as 108 or 109 inches. So why
can’t we go to two-levels and stack the pallets?”
A design for the bi-level pallet became a project for the University
of Texas senior engineering class. “We are working with the
Air Mobility Command on this,” said Lewis.
“Currently we carry about 30 percent of the load carrying
capability of the aircraft,” said Stump. “We think we
can take that to 69 percent. There are some things that you can’t
put on a bi-level pallet. But a lot of things that you can.”
Another battle lab project that goes “hand in hand”
with the bi-level pallet is the so-called “vacuum-aided mobility
bag packing system,” Lewis said.
“When we deploy, we run out of airlift. A lot of that is
the baggage,” he noted. A deploying force must take between
one and five “mobility bags,” that contain special gear
for different types of weather, chemical-biological protection,
and other uses. These bags fill large amounts of space because they
carry a lot of air, he explained. The “mobags,” as they
are known, “have a large, inefficient airlift footprint.”
“One of our guys was watching an infomercial, where someone
was vacuum packing groceries,” Stump said. He wondered why
the same could not be done with mobility bags. Vacuum packing, he
said, will allow mobags to be stored in smaller spaces, and fill
less space on cargo planes. The wrapping consists of a 2-millimeter
plastic film that takes the air out of the bag.
The battle lab currently is studying how vacuum packing would affect
the crews’ workload and how it would fit in the deployment
process. “We know it’s going to save footprint. We don’t
know how much yet,” said Lewis. “There are bases that
already are vacuum packing their mobility equipment.”
Most of the cargo hauled by the Air Force today is palletized,
for ease of loading and offloading, explained Senior Master Sgt.
Steve Hondel, a C-17 command load master at the Air Mobility Command.
Hondel has never heard of bi-level pallets or vacuum packing, he
said in an interview. Before any equipment can be hauled by an Air
Force transport plane, he explained, it must be certified by the
Air Systems Command, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
Combined Equipment
Under a program called CAGE, for combined aerospace ground equipment,
the battle lab is testing the use of a single device that can accommodate
on one cart both a generator and an air-conditioning system. These
items are needed to fix and maintain airplanes. “Someone at
the battle lab questioned why we have both [on separate] chassis,”
said Lewis. “Shouldn’t technology allow me to put the
air conditioning unit on top of the generator?” For the lab,
the CAGE effort was an obvious success, because the Air Force now
is buying a single unit that does both jobs.
James I. Baginski, a retired Air Force major general who managed
airlift operations, said that combining the power generation cart
with the air conditioning cart “reduces the number of pallet
positions on the airplane.”
In an interview, Baginski explained that the Air Force, in the
past, had looked at some of the same technology that the battle
lab now is evaluating. The use of bi-level pallets, he said, presents
potential problems with vertical and horizontal restraint inside
the cargo bay. Food rations, for example, could be packed on a bi-level
pallet, he said, “but you have to tie those down with straps
and chains in order to get the vertical restraint.
“A bi-level pallet is not an effective way to increase capacity,
because you’d have to do the vertical and fore and aft restraint
on those pallets that are sitting on top of the other cargo load,”
Baginski noted.
To run a single project, the battle lab typically spends anywhere
between $10,000 to $1.5 million, Stump said. Those expenditures,
he stressed, could end up saving the Air Force many millions of
dollars. If a project fails because it does not meet the expectations,
“that is OK,” said Stump, because it prevented the Air
Force from buying something that would not work.
Lab officials have reported their findings to a top-level panel
called the Air Force Requirements Oversight Council.