US Air Force Steps Up Blockchain Use: What Else Is the Pentagon Up To?

This week saw twin reports from smart contract startup Simba Chain and blockchain data management firm Constellation, both of whom announced contracts with the United States Air Force.

New utility in USAF. Judging by these developments, the U.S. Air Force is looking seriously at new tech to shore up supply chains and rearrange data.

Simba Chain has reportedly been tasked with prototyping a blockchain approach for the registration and tracking of additive manufacturing - also known as 3D printing - components throughout their lifecycles.

According to Constellation, the Air Force expects the company to facilitate the various fleets - drones, planes, satellites - that the branch is responsible for.

The Air Force is not alone in delving deeper into blockchain technologies.

The DoD's recent four-year plan did not explicitly mention the breadth of supply chain applications that companies like Simba Chain may be working on for the Air Force, but cybersecurity needs are evolving.

In a report from 2017 on blockchain tech, Washington-based think tank the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies focused on the need to preserve the "National Security Industrial Base," illustrating the emergence of a:. "National security challenge related to the globalization of manufacturing supply chains is the phenomenon of attacks in which substandard, counterfeit, or maliciously-modified electronic components are introduced into the hardware on which the national security industrial base operates."

Among Booz Allen's recommendations for the DoD was distributing 3D printers to deployed units and then putting 3D plans for various hardware and parts onto the blockchain to save on the expense of manufacturing those parts in the U.S. and then shipping them - much like what Simba Chain is proposing to do for the Air Force.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in 2018, the Air Force spent $71.3 billion on contractors within the DoD's overall $358.3 billion contractor budget.

It is conceivable that blockchain in the military - in the form of Simba's recently launched smart contract-as-a-service platform or something similar - may end up having the greatest ramifications in the least exciting of applications - the office rather than the battlefield.