U.S. military gets “smart” on warehouses

The Defense Department’s multimillion-dollar bets on smart depots are bearing fruit — but still resemble what you would have found at an Amazon shipping center of yore.

Why it matters: Getting the right supplies to the right people at the right time can mean the difference between blowing something up and getting blown up.

Driving the news: The U.S. Marine Corps is looking to expand its footprint of smart hubs following success in Albany, Georgia, where 5G networking served as a backbone.

Tech has cut processing times at some facilities from hours to minutes. Audits no longer take months. And inventories are more accurately being tracked.

Another smart warehouse, in California, was designed to improve ship-to-shore logistics. It boasted zippy data-transfer speeds and virtual- and augmented-reality experiments.