Director of the Department of Defense Combat Feeding Program Jerry Darsch holds up a Meals Ready to Eat package as he briefs reporters in the Pentagon on May 23, 2002, about some of the new developments in the area of feeding troops deployed in the field. The U.S. Army's Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., is developing a broader menu of a Meals Ready to Eat-better known as MREs--and other revolutionary combat feeding concepts.