Blockchain solutions company Simba Chain said today that it was selected by the U.S. Air Force Strategic Technology Focus Initiative to receive $30 million in funding to follow multiple projects the company has worked on for the military in recent years.

The objective of the initiative is to identify technologies that could help the United States secure its military dominance and this investment in Simba Chain represents a continuing increase in budget towards applying blockchain technology to that end.

The USAF intends to use Simba Chain’s technology to focus on the development and deployment of blockchain applications for supply chain management.

“Our new project for the USAF will pave the way to more efficient and comprehensive management of assets within the Department of Defense supply chain,” said Stacy Betlej-Amodeo, vice president of government operations at Simba Chain. She added that Simba would “build upon our existing partnership with the DoD to scale blockchain technology across the enterprise.”

Blockchain technology is often used for supply chain management because it provides an immutable historical ledger of transactions that can track parts, elements or items in a supply chain throughout its lifecycle in an easily audited manner that helps reduce errors.

Each time a part or component is received, accessed, dropped off or its status otherwise changed, that change is added to the blockchain’s cryptographically protected distributed ledger. As a result, blockchain technology can also deliver a tamper-resistant data platform that can keep the data secure while only revealing pertinent data to track the journey of the part.

As part of previous projects, Simba Chain worked with the USAF to develop tokenization for the organization’s budget to enhance accounting. The company also developed an experimental pilot of a blockchain-based supply chain tracking system in 2018 for the Naval Air Systems Command, the provisioner of material support for aircraft flown by the U.S. Navy.

The company’s technology is now in use by multiple branches of the U.S. military including the U.S. Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines, as well as by aviation manufacturing company Boeing Co. and a number of other companies for a range of commercial applications.

“Through STRATFI our government partners are sending a strong demand signal for blockchain technology,” said Simba Chain Chief Executive Bryan Ritchie. “Given the interconnectedness of the DoD supply chain, it also signals an opportunity to collaborate and increase adoption within the commercial industry.”

Simba Chain previously raised $25 million in a Series A financing led by Valley Capital Partners in 2021, which it used to continue the development of its blockchain platform and create more features such as support for nonfungible tokens for anti-counterfeiting and other emerging opportunities.

Supply chain tracking is a common use case for blockchain technology and has been explored across multiple industries. These include automotive, where BMW and PartChain formed a partnership, mining with Open Mineral, as well as tracking diamonds, where De Beers adapted the technology and food supply chains with IBM’s Food Trust Network.

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