The goal of the 12-month project is to get repairable military equipment back into battle as soon as possible.

"It's a technical demonstration to improve the maintenance and readiness of a very important aircraft, the F/A-18 Navy fighter jet," said Kenneth Gabriel, senior research scholar at the University of Maryland Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise. Gabriel is the engineer and policy expert serving as principal investigator on the project.

The idea is to integrate several technologies to demonstrate that the aircraft can be maintained more efficiently by using wireless communications, predictive algorithms, or prognostics, and automatic identification technologies such as radio frequency identification tags, smart cards and biometrics. The technologies would be linked to the transportation, distribution and acquisition of parts needed to repair equipment or enable a mission to take place, Gabriel said.

"So it's an IT network that uses technology in [those] three areas," Gabriel said. "And the integration of these pieces [through a secure Web portal] will enable the Navy to do the mission better, and that means to have more availability of the aircraft ... at reduced costs."

Pulling all these technologies together in a military context can add efficiency, flexibility and maneuverability to U.S. forces, said Jacques Gansler, who was undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics during the Clinton administration. Gansler now directs the Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise.