US airforce taps SIMBA chain for budgeting and accounting system

DiBaT aims to tokenise all money inside the USAF supply chain budget and trace fund flow throughout billing centres, purchasing teams, and suppliers

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Shutterstock

Blockchain startup SIMBA announced an SBIR contract (Small Business Innovation Research) with the USAF (US Airforce). This is their seventh contract and comprises tokenising the USAF supply chain budget to track the transfer of monies between departments and vendors while also keeping an eye on potential supply concerns.

In the project, called Digital Blockchain Budgeting Accountability and Tracking (DiBaT), each dollar in the US Air Force's supply chain budget is tokenised and the flow of funds between billing centres, purchasing divisions, and suppliers is tracked. The objective is to speed up the process of comparing budgeted plans to the actual expenditure by adding blockchain.

DiBaT will use SIMBA blocks to track and audit cash in a secure, zero-trust, tamper-proof blockchain, allowing USAF management to see where money is being used and where it is currently positioned within the allocation and payment system.

Joel Neidig, co-founder and president of SIMBA, while in conversation with Cointelegraph talked about how both the organisation and the USAF believe that the project will improve transparency and efficiency while also assisting them in calculating the return on investment from things they routinely procure.

He said, "We have been working with the Air Force for the past 4 years on various implementations, we are excited to move out of the pilot and proof of concept phases to more production environments. The Air Force is definitely the leader in blockchain adoption for DoD."

Jeff Curtis, Director of Defense and Supply Chain of SIMBA, also issued a statement regarding the contract stating, "DOD's budgeting process can create mismatched incentives for military departments and their field commands, leading to the less efficient execution of strategic goals" He also added that "DiBaT will bring greater transparency to actual expenditure of resources, identifying execution vs intent mismatches. Even better, it will not alter any current budget flexibility."

The company's first SBIR contract with the USAF started in 2019, and it has also worked with other DOD divisions, including a $9.5 million contract with the Navy in 2020.

These other contracts included the use of blockchain for part traceability. That suggests a substantial level of integration between SIMBA and other systems, which is a significant component of the effort in a project like this.

The writer is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash

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