Workers assemble part of the Elevated Transfer Vehicle outside the Ramstein Air Base, Germany, air freight terminal. The ETV is part of the Mechanized Materiel Handling System, which will expedite the handling and storing of air cargo. (Lisa Horn / Stars and Stripes)
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The newest member of the 723rd Air Mobility Squadron, which handles air freight operations at Ramstein Air Base, is no lightweight.
The 60-ton Elevated Transfer Vehicle, or ETV, will help process, store and move cargo in the new air freight terminal. It is all part of an approximately $9 million Mechanized Materiel Handling System, a complex that will be an extension of the new terminal. The terminal is under construction and is scheduled to be completed by July 30.
The ETV arrived at Ramstein on Tuesday and will help move cargo pallets holding anything from Meals, Ready to Eat to unaccompanied baggage.
Nearly four stories tall, the ETV looks like a construction crane. It can transfer 80 inbound and outbound pallets an hour, said Hans-Juergen Kraska, 723rd’s air freight terminal project manager.
The ETV operates along a 590-foot-long track within the complex. It is expected to be in full use when 723rd AMS operations begin in the terminal in October.
Currently, pallets are stored outside and are moved with a forklift.
“ … Right now, we have to drive the forklifts over, find that grid location and pick up that pallet,” said Capt. Andy Jones, 723rd AMS Rhein-Main transition project manager. “You’re sequencing a load for an aircraft that could have 36 pallets on it. So it may take quite a few trips to the grid yard.”
Operated by a mainframe server, the ETV can also be programmed according to aircraft height and weight limitations.
Using optical scanners, “the system will identify the height, width and the length of whatever is on the pallet and then it will allow the pallets to be properly identified for loading,” Jones said. “Some aircraft get narrower toward the rear and they have height restrictions, too.”
While the ETV and a second one, due to arrive next month, will help with the cargo overflow when Rhein-Main closes in December 2005, plans to purchase the system and build the handling complex were in the works long before the Rhein-Main closure was decided, said Ted Diakiw, an engineer with the Air Force Materiel Command.
“This is not a result of the Rhein-Main closure,” Diakiw said. “This thing has been talked about way before the Rhein-Main closure was even an issue.”
Five Air Force bases in the United States and two bases in the Pacific currently use comparable systems; however, the Ramstein complex is now the largest in the Department of Defense.
Workers assemble part of the Elevated Transfer Vehicle outside the Ramstein Air Base, Germany, air freight terminal. The ETV is part of the Mechanized Materiel Handling System, which will expedite the handling and storing of air cargo. (Lisa Horn / Stars and Stripes)
A worker cleans the floor of the Mechanized Materiel Handling System at the Ramstein Air Base, Germany, air freight terminal. A 60-ton cranelike device will operate on a single track through the system to organize cargo at the freight terminal. (Lisa Horn / Stars and Stripes)
Workers make way Wednesday for an Elevated Transfer Vehicle, shown behind them, at the Ramstein Air Base, Germany, air freight terminal. Pallets will be stored on racks on the left and right, and the ETV will move on a track down the middle to load and unload freight. (Lisa Horn / Stars and Stripes)
