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Combat Feeding Directorate

Thursday, January 4, 2018

What is it?

The DOD Combat Feeding Directorate (CFD) provides the DOD with a joint-service program responsible for research, development, testing, and integration and engineering for combat rations, food service equipment technology and combat feeding systems.

As one of the five directorates under U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, CFD actively leverages leading-edge technologies to ensure the warfighter has the decisive edge in all aspects of combat feeding.

The CFD researches food processing and packaging technology to develop combat rations for all U.S. warfighters to optimize human performance through nutrition.

What is the Army doing?

The CFD executes a joint-service program, which takes maximum advantage of the scientific and technological capacity of industry, academia, and other federal government agencies.

The scientists, researchers and engineers develop and evaluate combat rations, food packaging, quality, safety, performance nutrition, Class I logistics optimization, and field food service equipment.

Examples of few recent efforts providing material solutions and knowledge products are as follows:

What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?

The program will continue to be driven by warfighter recommendations and feedback, a continuous product improvement program as well as stated requirements and service-level strategic guidance.

CFD leverages strong partnerships with the commercial sector, other government agencies, and academia to enable rapid capability delivery with maximum impact. Future capabilities include nutritional interventions to improve warfighter performance and recovery, operationally-tailored expeditionary rations with reduced logistics burden, and efficient field feeding with reduced fuel, water, and waste.

Why is this important to the Army?

Food plays a large role to ensure that America’s warfighters are the world’s most capable fighting force.

Current operating environments require state-of-the-art combat rations and field feeding systems to guarantee a high level of physical and cognitive performance regardless of shifting variables in a rapidly evolving battlefield. NSRDEC’s research ensures the continuous delivery of capabilities that increase Soldier lethality and optimized human performance on the battlefield.

Resources:

Related documents:

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