The use of passive UHF RFID tags in the Aerospace and Defense market goes back to 2003.At that time the global standards had evolved to a point where organizations such as McCarran airport in Las Vegas and Hong Kong airport moved forward with plans to use first generation EPC RFID tags for tracking baggage at those respective airports. In 2005 Boeing announced an RFID initiative in support of the launch of the new 787 Dreamliner program. As part of this program Boeing suppliers were to apply high memory passive UHF RFID tags to a vast collection of parts being installed on the 787. The planning and education that took place to support this initiative has since spawned a number of RFID projects across the aerospace industry in areas unforeseen when the program was initiated. The Defense sector has been using active RFID for many years to support global logistic applications.

The United States Department if Defense initiated a UHF passive RFID mandate, similar to the Wal-Mart RFID mandate, for suppliers shipping cases and pallets of product to specific DoD supply depots.While active and passive RFID technologies serve different purposes, the performance gap, specifically where tags are applied to metal, has closed over recent years. Durable on-metal passive RFID tags now perform sufficiently well to support many of the applications that previously had required expensive providing significant savings.Initiatives currently underway in the aerospace and defense sector include Inventory Management of Life Limited Parts, maintenance history records, and transitioning from active to passive RFID to support logistics operations.