DOWNRANGE DEVELOPMENT
challenges. Being one of the first team members in theater, Hall had difficulty with communications software. “None of our development tools are credited to work on those networks,” the Non- Secure Internet Protocol Router and Secure Internet Protocol Router. “We stood up commercial satellite dishes in several places and worked on commercial Internet and networks,” he said.
Fellow team member Beckinger agreed.
“The COP is a pretty sparse place, almost in the middle of nowhere, and every- thing’s running on generators. The bandwidth is ridiculous,” he said.
A higher operations tempo (OPTEMPO) at
the COP, compared with CONUS,
was also something with which the team struggled. “While we’re working 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, we might give a request to CONUS, and we might get it on Monday. We’d have a call on Friday, and they’d say,
‘Have end,’” Hall said. At the COP, “There are ENHANCING FUNCTIONAL TOOLS
The TransApps team developed software using some of the functions of the Tactical Ground Reporting (TIGR) tool as a base. TIGR’s graphical, map-referenced user interface, shown here, allows multimedia data such as voice recordings, digital photos, and GPS tracks to be collected and searched easily. (U.S. Army photo by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.)
no weekends. There’s an OPTEMPO mentality gap between CONUS and OCONUS, so we had to adjust to that.”
“It’s a different perspective,” Beckinger added. “We were there with the Soldiers, and we had a trailer there. They’d come in, on and off missions, 24 hours a day. They’d come wake us up if they needed something. We’d tell CONUS,
‘We
need this now because the Soldiers need this now.’”
A MODEL FOR THE FUTURE The direct link between the technol- ogy team and the Soldiers’ operational environment is key to providing use- ful solutions, both in the TransApps program and with other technology, said LTC Richard Hornstein, Military Deputy
for CERDEC’s Command, Power, and Integration Directorate. a good week-
“One of the things I always see is, there is always some type of preconceived notion of what the requirement or need is. It’s
different” in theater, Hornstein said. “As these guys
[the TransApps team] are
developing capability and Soldiers are using it, they are saying, ‘This is neat, but this needs to be changed.’ There’s noth- ing like that type of environment, where you are changing software for use in an operational setting, where you are getting that feedback. You are obviously going to produce a better-quality product.”
That’s exactly what the TransApps team was able to do. The team’s work allowed deployment of the Transformative Apps concept throughout the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division and eventually a larger portion of the division. While CERDEC does not have any engineers currently deployed to Afghanistan, TransApps still has a pres- ence in Regional Command (RC) South and RC East.
The TransApps team’s work has also pro- vided a model for CERDEC to use in the future. “As we start addressing future capability technology efforts, we know we are operating in a constrained resource environment. Getting Soldier feedback to specifically target gaps is going to be done more effectively,” Hornstein said.
“It’s having people dealing with Soldiers, who are dealing with constraints every day, and being closely linked with the operational community in dealing with their problems. I think TransApps and what we are doing now is the model for how it’s going to continue in the future.”
BRITTANY ASHCROFT provides
contract support to the U.S. Army Acqui- sition Support Center
through BRTRC
Technology Marketing Group. She has nearly 10 years’
experience in magazine
editing and holds a B.A. in English from Elmhurst College.
120
Army AL&T Magazine
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