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

"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 developers will 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 tags, smart cards and biometric systems. The technologies would be linked to the transportation, distribution and acquisition of parts needed to repair equipment or enable a mission to proceed, Gabriel said.

"It's an IT network that uses technology in [those] three areas," Gabriel said. Integrating these pieces through a secure Web portal "will enable the Navy to do the mission better" by making an aircraft available at a lower cost, he said.