Why Military Supply Chains Still Lose Equipment in Transit

A defense contractor ships 200 hydraulic actuators from their facility in Ohio to a forward operating base in the Pacific. Commercial tracking shows the pallet reaching Travis Air Force Base on schedule. The Defense Transportation System confirms receipt at the aerial port. Then silence. Six weeks later, an urgent request comes from the end unit: where are the actuators? The grounded aircraft waiting for them has been deadlined for a month.

The investigation takes longer than the original shipment should have. The pallet reached Travis. It was consolidated with other cargo. It moved through Hickam. At some point, it was broken down for distribution to multiple installations. Somewhere between the aerial port and the flightline maintenance shop, 200 actuators became a line item in a discrepancy report.

This scenario will surprise no one who works in defense logistics. Equipment vanishes in transit with a regularity that would bankrupt a commercial supply chain. The standard explanations (outdated technology, insufficient funding, human error) miss the deeper problem. Military logistics tracking doesn’t fail because of any single weakness. It fails because of systemic fragmentation baked into how the defense supply chain evolved over decades.

Where Visibility Dies: The Handoff Problem

Follow a shipment’s journey and you’ll find the problem isn’t tracking. It’s tracking consistently.

A contractor ships parts using commercial carriers with real-time GPS visibility. The shipment reaches a Defense Logistics Agency depot, where it enters DLA’s Distribution Standard System. From there, it moves to a service-specific installation, transitioning to GCSS-Army, Navy ERP, or another service system. Finally, it travels the last mile from the installation’s receiving point to the end user, often tracked by nothing more sophisticated than a clipboard and a signature.

Each transition means switching systems. Data doesn’t flow automatically between them. A part’s location in the commercial network doesn’t populate DLA’s system. DLA’s data doesn’t automatically appear in the service’s inventory platform. The last-mile movement might not be systematically tracked at all.

Contractors often have better visibility into the commercial leg of the shipment than the Department of Defense has into its own internal movements. A contractor can tell you exactly where a pallet is while it’s on a FedEx truck. Once it crosses onto a military installation, that pallet enters a visibility black hole.

The handoff points (contractor to carrier, carrier to depot, depot to installation, installation to end user) are where items disappear. Not physically, usually. They’re sitting in a warehouse or staging area somewhere. But systematically, they’ve vanished. The tracking data didn’t make the jump.

Legacy Systems Weren’t Built for This Reality

The major logistics systems in use today, including GCSS-Army, Navy ERP, and DLA’s DSS, are significant technological achievements. They manage billions of dollars in inventory across thousands of locations worldwide. But they were designed primarily for inventory management, not transit visibility.

The distinction matters. Inventory management answers: what do we have and where is it stored? Transit visibility answers: where is this specific item right now, as it moves? These systems excel at the first question. They struggle with the second.

Most military logistics tracking still relies on barcode scanning. Barcodes require line-of-sight scanning at each checkpoint. If a warehouse worker is rushed, if a scanning station is down, if a pallet gets consolidated without re-scanning each item, the chain breaks. The item doesn’t cease to exist. It simply ceases to exist in the system until someone scans it again. In the meantime, it’s effectively lost.

These systems were also built around scheduled resupply patterns: predictable shipments moving through established channels. Modern military logistics increasingly requires expedited movements, just-in-time delivery, and rapid rerouting. The infrastructure wasn’t designed for that tempo.

The procurement reality compounds everything. The “modern” systems in use today were specified years before they deployed. GCSS-Army’s requirements were defined in the mid-2000s. The systems reflect the assumptions and technology of that era. By the time they’re fully fielded, they’re already a generation behind commercial capabilities.

The Accountability Vacuum No One Wants to Own

Ask a simple question: who is responsible for tracking a shipment at any given moment? The answer is rarely clear.

Contractors are responsible until delivery. But “delivery” has multiple definitions. Delivery to the installation gate? To the central receiving point? To the requesting unit’s supply room? Different contracts define it differently. Different installations interpret it differently.

Once a shipment enters DoD custody, responsibility fragments further. The transportation command owns the movement. The receiving depot owns check-in. The installation’s logistics office owns internal distribution. The end unit owns final receipt. At each boundary, accountability blurs.

When equipment goes missing, investigations often stall at these jurisdictional lines. The depot says it shipped the item. The installation says it never arrived. Transportation records show movement but not confirmation. Each organization’s records are internally consistent, yet the item is gone.

The financial consequences don’t fragment. They concentrate, usually on the contractor. Proving that a loss occurred in DoD custody requires documentation that the DoD’s own systems may not capture. Contractors find themselves liable for equipment that left their control months earlier, with no means to demonstrate where the failure actually occurred.

Without clear ownership at every point in the journey, tracking becomes everyone’s job. When something is everyone’s job, it becomes no one’s priority. The system incentivizes moving items to the next handoff point, not ensuring they’re tracked through to final receipt.

Why Billions in Modernization Haven’t Fixed This

The Department of Defense has spent billions on logistics modernization. Audit after audit, GAO report after GAO report, documents the same problems persisting. The investment hasn’t solved the tracking problem because most of it has targeted the wrong layer.

Logistics modernization funding has flowed primarily to enterprise resource planning systems, the platforms that manage inventory, procurement, and financial accountability. These systems needed upgrading. They got it. But transit visibility, the actual tracking of items in motion, remained a secondary concern. The assumption was that better inventory systems would naturally improve visibility. That assumption proved wrong.

Interoperability efforts between services have shown promise in demonstrations but struggle to scale. Each service has valid reasons for its system architectures. Joint initiatives must navigate those reasons without authority to override them. The result is pilot programs that work in controlled environments and stall when they encounter the full complexity of service-specific requirements.

Cultural resistance plays a role too. Personnel trained on existing processes don’t always see value in new tracking procedures, especially when those procedures add steps without obvious immediate benefit. “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t laziness. It’s rational behavior when new approaches seem to add work without solving the problems personnel experience daily.

The technology to track items in transit exists. Passive tracking technologies that don’t require line-of-sight scanning, including Bluetooth Low Energy beacons that work within existing infrastructure, have matured significantly. But procurement cycles, integration challenges, and the sheer scale of defense logistics make deployment a multi-year proposition under the best circumstances.

Building the Case for Change

The equipment that goes missing in military supply chains isn’t lost to thieves or negligence, in most cases. It’s lost to fragmentation: the accumulated result of separate systems, unclear handoffs, and accountability structures that evolved independently over decades.

This reframing matters because it changes the conversation. The problem isn’t that people aren’t doing their jobs. The system makes visibility structurally difficult even when everyone does their job correctly.

For contractors navigating this reality, the immediate implications are practical. Document everything at every handoff, even when the receiving party doesn’t require it. Build your own tracking capabilities for as long into the journey as possible. Accept that visibility will degrade once shipments enter DoD systems, and plan accordingly.

For logistics professionals working within these systems, the path forward requires solutions that layer onto existing infrastructure rather than demanding wholesale replacement. Technologies that can track items passively, without requiring manual scanning at every checkpoint, address the failure mode that causes most visibility gaps. The challenge is deploying them at scale within DoD’s procurement constraints.

The stakes extend beyond lost equipment and contract disputes. Readiness depends on parts being where they’re needed when they’re needed. Every actuator that sits in a warehouse while aircraft are grounded represents a systemic failure with operational consequences.

The problem is solvable. The technology exists. The requirements are understood. What’s needed is deployment approaches that work within the realities of defense logistics, not around them.

Hubble’s satellite-connected Bluetooth tracking works passively through existing infrastructure—no line-of-sight or manual scans required. See how it works →