An Army of Apps
Written by Peter Buxbaum
MIT 2010 Volume: 14 Issue: 6 (July)
MILITARY SEEKS RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF APPLICATIONS
THAT KEEP UP WITH THE FLUID DEMANDS OF WARFIGHTERS
ON THE EVER-CHANGING BATTLEFIELD.
Military commanders, users and technology specialists often complain about how long it takes to get software applications into the hands of warfighters in the field. Now some organizations are trying to do something about it.
The Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are taking separate approaches to this problem. The Army has initiated a competition among its own people—soldiers and civilians, but not contractors—to come up with new Web and mobile applications in a program called Apps for the Army. DARPA, as part of a recently released request for information entitled Mobile Apps for the Military, is seeking commercially available mobile applications that could be adapted to warfighter handheld devices, thus broadening their functionality and making them more utilitarian.
One of the obstacles to the more widespread adoption of commercially available applications by the military is the defense acquisition system itself, analysts inside and outside the Department of Defense say. As DARPA noted in its request for information, “The military’s own acquisition process ... can take years to complete and involves an unwieldy linear process of formal requirements definition, technology development and system certification. Furthermore, there is a real risk that these very technologies will be obsolete by the time they are in the warfighter’s hands.”
Mobile Apps for the Military advocates “a transformation in technical approaches and business processes,” with the agency envisioning “the rapid development of applications that keep up with the fluid demands of warfighters on the ever-changing battlefield.” DARPA also seeks to “enable pervasive use” of the mobile apps “targeted especially among the end-users at lower levels in the military echelon.”
Some private sector firms, including current DoD contractors, point out that business and technology models already exist that enable the quick deployment of new commercial technologies to the field. But a paradigm shift in military acquisition procedures will be required for those models to be broadly adopted and make a difference in the long run.
HOME-GROWN DEVELOPMENT
The Apps for the Army (A4A) program has the virtue of circumventing the acquisitions process by having Army personnel themselves develop the applications. In other words, the Army doesn’t have to invoke the acquisitions process to deploy these home-grown applications.
“I think it’s great that soldiers are developing apps,” said Jim Hardin, vice president for business development at the Defense Systems Division of Northrop Grumman Information Systems. “They are so smart, they can do things so quickly and they know exactly what they need. I think we will get some tremendous ideas out of this contest and that the Army will be better off for it.
“Our view is that the whole concept is attempting to accelerate the adoption of technologies to the field,” said Steve Marschilok, president of DoD business at Harris RF Communications.
A4A is offering Army personnel the opportunity to demonstrate their software development skills and creativity, according to Marvin Wages, the A4A program manager. “In return, the Army hopes to improve its current capabilities or to add new ones,” he said. “Apps for the Army is designed to foster rapid development of Web and mobile applications for use across the Army.”
Participation in A4A was limited to the first 100 who enrolled. Once an app passes security certification, it is judged on the basis of usefulness, usability, appeal, inventiveness, effect and viability. Winners will receive monetary awards from a total cash pool of $30,000. Fifty-three A4A applications were accepted by the May deadline, with 17 Android, 16 iPhone, 10 ASP.NET, seven LAMP, two Blackberry and one Army Knowledge Online applications.
“A4A applications may tackle any aspect of Army IT,” said Wages, “for example, distributed training, battle command, career management, continuing education, or news and information distribution.”
The apps submitted as part of the contest include those analyzing threats in an area of operations, generating mobile hand receipts for property inventory, and providing information on mess hall options. The A4A challenge provided equally for both Web and mobile applications. “Of the actual apps submitted, nearly two-thirds of the apps were developed for mobile systems,” said Wages.
While the contestants have developed the actual applications, Wages anticipates that the Army will deploy a system similar to the Apple App Store, where new applications can be deposited and later downloaded by Army personnel. “A4A further deviates from traditional development practices by utilizing the latest in collaborative development media,” he added.
The Defense Information Systems Agency provided the apps developers with the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE) service, which offers access to on-demand virtual Windows and Linux development environments. With RACE, participants are able to pursue Web application development using all available programming languages supported by Windows Server and the Linux, Apache, MYSQL and PHP (LAMP) frameworks. They also will be able to build emulated Blackberry, iPhone and Android mobile applications.
“The key behind building apps of any sort is having a good process,” said George Stone, chief scientist in the Defense Operations Integration Sector of Alion Science and Technology. “First, you have to verify to make sure the application will function correctly. Then you put it in the hands of users to see whether it helps them do their jobs better.”
One way to accelerate the development of applications is to establish a rapid prototyping environment, according to Stone. In the training and simulation development business in which he operates, some developers work directly with end-users to validate each component of the software as it is being developed.
One of the goals of A4A, said Wages, is to “help define the business processes needed to make applications easily available to the Army enterprise.” By providing programmers with a common development environment, A4A takes hardware idiosyncrasies out of the equation. Creating an application repository would make the apps easily available to interested users.
Winners of the competition are scheduled to be announced by the Army at the LandWarNet Conference in Tampa, Fla., August 3-5.
ENTERPRISE MODEL
This scheme shares some key characteristics with the existing Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Enterprise Business Model (EBM). “We think that A4A is part and parcel of what we are very involved in,” said Marschilok. “JTRS is really an effort to create a common architecture for the development and reuse of radio waveforms.”
The EBM was established in 2005 in connection with the program’s restructuring under the Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO.) The model outlines the rules for participation in the JTRS program, along with published standards to ensure technology developments meet key characteristics. These characteristics include interoperability, programmability, transmission across multiple bands and waveforms, and scalability.
The EBM relies on the use of open system standards to allow companies such as Harris and Thales, the two prime contractors for the JTRS handheld radio, to bring COTS offerings to the market. Among these standards are the JTRS Software Communications Architecture and a defined set of application program interfaces. These privately funded research and development efforts also are helping the JPEO establish a common set of waveforms for transmitting voice, data and video. Program-approved waveforms are made available to industry developers through the JTRS Information Repository.
Objectives of the EBM include leveraging the research, development and manufacturing efforts funded by the private sector to encourage innovation, speeding the delivery of JTRS-approved technology to the field, and lowering DoD procurement costs.
The Consolidated Interim Single-Channel Handheld Radio (CISCHR) contract, the principal vehicle for delivering JTRS-approved handheld radios and vehicle-adapter amplifiers to DoD, is being facilitated by the EBM. Since Harris and Thales Communications were awarded CISCHR contracts in June 2007, more than 100,000 handheld radios have been delivered to the U.S. armed services. Over $390 million procurement funds were returned to the services as a result of using EBM.
The JTRS EBM takes a commercial approach to procurement, in contrast to that of a program of record. The traditional acquisitions process has contractors developing systems based on requirements documents generated by a program office. A commercial approach has vendors developing products with their own money and then marketing products to users.
“As a commercial supplier, we are much more agile and flexible than programs of record,” said Marschilok. “We are able to leverage current technology and accelerate its adoption to the battlefield in a quick and efficient manner.”
One prime example of this phenomenon was Harris’ development of a waveform that allows downlinks from small UAVs into one of its battlefield JTRS radios. By talking to warfighters in the Southwest Asia theater, Harris was able to ascertain that this was a feature that would be useful to them.
“We were able to develop the waveform, demonstrate the capability and have it integrated into our radios in six months,” said Marschilok. “Compare that to a program of record, where it would take someone six months to a year just to decide that we should incorporate a UAV downlink into a tactical radio. This development was fully funded by internal Harris funds and the resulting software was delivered back into the JTRS information repository.”
Besides saving time, the commercial model saves the military money over the program-of-record approach, according to Marschilok. “Traditional acquisitions are based on cost-plus contracts,” he said. “There is a built-in incentive to spend more hours in development. The only money I get is from selling products. My model drives us to quickly develop something marketable and get it into the hands of users to help them with their missions.”
OPEN SOURCE PLATFORM
The Android operating system, which is now being increasingly used for mobile devices and their applications and is based on the open source Linux system, provides many of the same advantages as the JTRS EBM does for tactical radios, according to Jim Curtin, defense systems program manager at Product Development Technologies (PDT). Because Android is an open source platform, “product entry becomes a little easier,” he said. “Opening up to open source allows people to drop in and not have an extreme learning curve. It is really about having a more conformist view of an operating system rather than everyone having their own flavor.”
Like Marschilok, Curtin believes a commercial model can help the military. “The A4A challenge might boost the military’s level of confidence,” he said. “They may realize that they can use commercial product development practices and get reliable results.”
Because Android is based on Linux, there are huge numbers of programmers qualified to create applications for the operating system, Curtin noted. The applications can have the look and feel of apps available for Apple’s iPhone but without Apple’s licensing fees.
Android’s flexible Linux underpinnings have allowed developers to program powerful applications that can support a variety of interfaces and anything from disaster relief optimization to supplier integration and wartime navigation, according to Curtin. The forthcoming government-sponsored application marketplace emphasizes user interface controls and minimal bandwidth usage on networkdependent applications, areas in which the platform excels.
The U.S. military has begun to embrace Android, Curtin noted. “This has given us the tools necessary to make applications useful for soldiers, intuitive in stressful situations and inventive when compared with current and previous approaches,” he added. “The increasing scope and complexity of military software over the last decade had previously made it almost impossible to port existing methods to mobile environments. With its comprehensive framework of potential modifications suiting nearly every need, Android has reinvented the concept of the digital military exercise and could foster a truly wireless battlefield support infrastructure in the near future.”
The biggest obstacle to the rapid introduction by the military of developing technologies is the military acquisition system, according to Marschilok. “Technology spirals at a rate of four times a decade,” he said. “Every two and a half years there is a new generation of technology, and this acceleration is only going to get faster and faster. Yet a program of record can take 15 years from conception to fielding. In 15 years, you are fielding 12-year-old technology. We are all about attacking that.”
Users and commanders in Afghanistan can advocate for what they need to enhance their performance in current operations, Marschilok said. But that model of purchasing decisions is challenging, he added, “because it really comes down to how much users in the mission area push, and ultimately, how sympathetic decisionmakers inside the Beltway are to commanders in the field.”
A4A circumvents all of these obstacles by having the applications developed internally by Army personnel. “They are on the right track by encouraging soldiers to develop applications,” said Northrop Grumman’s Jim Hardin. “With applications being developed outside the normal acquisitions process, you’ll see speed as never before.” But contractors are not like to be cut out of the picture. Hardin expects the applications developed by soldiers for soldiers to be handed over to industry contractors for integration into command and control and other larger systems.
“Our vision dovetails well with Apps for the Army,” said Peter Blankenship, a technical fellow at Northrop Grumman. “We are increasingly focused on infrastructure and security. It’s not a question of one displacing the other, it’s a question of one augmenting the other.” ♦
