Army sees smart phones playing important role

FORT GORDON, Ga. — The Army wants to issue every soldier an iPhone or Android cell phone — it could be a soldier’s choice.

And to top it off, the Army wants to pay your monthly phone bill.

To most soldiers, it sounds almost too good to be true, but it’s real, said Lt. Gen. Michael Vane, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center. He said the Army would issue these smart phones just like any other piece of equipment a soldier receives.

“One of the options potentially is to make it a piece of equipment in a soldier’s clothing bag,” Vane said.

With the backing of officials such as Vane, efforts are underway around the Army to harness smart phones to revolutionize the way the service trains and fights.

ON OUR FORUMS

See what readers are saying about this

Army-issued smart phones are already in the schoolhouse and garrison, in the hands of some students at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Fort Lee, Va.; and at Fort Sill, Okla., under an Army program called Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications. CSDA’s next step, already underway at Fort Bliss, Texas, is testing for the war zone.

In February, the Army plans to begin fielding phones, network equipment and applications to the first Army brigade to be modernized under the brigade combat team modernization program. That test will not be limited to smart phones but will include any electronic devices that may be useful to troops.

“We’re looking at everything from iPads to Kindles to Nook readers to mini-projectors,” said Mike McCarthy, director of the mission command complex of Future Force Integration Directorate at Fort Bliss. The directorate is one of the agencies leading the CSDA project.

The Army plans to roll out wireless Common Access Card readers for the iPhone in January and for Android phones in April. This would give soldiers secure access to their e-mail, contacts and calendars.

At war, smart phones would let soldiers view real-time intelligence and video from unmanned systems overhead, and track friends and enemies on a dynamic map, officials said. But the Army must first work through the complex task of securing the data and the network before it sanctions smart phones on the battlefield.

The goal is for soldiers to get information when they need it, wherever they are.

“What we’re doing is fundamentally changing how soldiers access knowledge, information, training content and operational data,” McCarthy said. “The day you sign on to be a soldier, you will be accessing information and knowledge in garrison and in an operational environment in a seamless manner. We’re using smart phone technologies to lead this.”

WHO’S BUYING WHAT
The Army’s fielding plan, which calls for fitting commercial phones into antenna sleeves and linking them to the network via a patchwork of ground stations and airborne nodes, was scheduled to be presented to Vane this month.

While the Army plan will be far from definitive — it’s likely to be updated every six months — it will provide a starting point for an initiative that has proponents in the Army’s highest ranks, including Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli.

To date, the Army has not conducted testing of the concept over classified networks. First, the service had to prove it could combine the phones and applications with a mobile infrastructure capable of offering service in an austere environment.

“We had to prove that we could make the electrons flow from one end to the other successfully,” McCarthy said. “We took a little bit of license in not going over classified networks. Once it works, we can start working on the information assurance piece.”

The Army is open to using multiple phones, according to Rickey Smith, the director of ARCIC-Forward.

“We’re not wedded to a specific piece of hardware. We are open to using Palm Trios, the Android, iPhone or whatever else is out there,” Smith said. Vane, too, is open-minded; he carries both an iPhone and an Android.

The Army probably won’t develop its own phone or do much to alter the commercial phones it buys. Even if a cell-phone giant like Apple agreed to modify its production lines to tinker with the iPhone’s insides, it would be so expensive for the Army that it would defeat the purpose of going to cheap commercial technology.

The service would rather make minor tweaks and “ruggedize” existing phones, which as long as the phones’ shapes and electronic guts aren’t modified, will place them at close to retail prices, said Tony Fiuza of the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center.

“What we’re looking at buying is probably in volumes large enough so that you can buy a one-off and not break the price point of whatever you can buy,” he said.

Buying the software for the phones might pose a challenge to the status quo for Army acquisitions and its traditional purchasing model, said Mark Bigham, a Raytheon vice president, because the Army may have to create its own portal, like the iTunes apps store, to track and pay for individual app downloads.

Indeed, the Army is exploring such a portal, officials said, to guarantee what apps it sanctions are secure, and free of viruses and malicious code.

Vane said that he understands the challenge and that the Army is still figuring out the dollars and cents of buying smart phones and apps. One option, though, is giving the purchasing power to the soldier.

Soldiers could receive a monthly stipend — what Vane called a “maintenance fee” — to spend on both minutes and apps, allowing each soldier to personalize his phone with the training and tactical apps he needs.

“If you did it that way, the advantage would be to pay for the phone once and then you pay a maintenance fee to the soldier … and then the soldier can buy whatever iPhone, Android or hardware that he or she likes,” Vane said. “Then the challenge is just figuring out how we pay for the minutes each month.”

Soldiers would be able to choose some apps, have others showcased for them and still others put on a “must-load” list tailored to their jobs, said McCarthy.

“The requirements that General Vane have are far different than Private Jones down in second squad of 1st Platoon,” he said. “We need to create an environment that lets them find the applications that are best suited for that individual, and that’s the approach we’re taking.”

IN GARRISON
In a classroom at the IT school at Fort Gordon, full of computers, smart phones, green-suiters and contractors, 2nd Lt. Matt Kaili was helping bring the Army into the smart-phone age one line of code at a time. The classroom is the workshop for the Army’s small mobile applications branch, and Kaili was converting a mobile app that displays interactive training videos for use on an Android to an iPhone.

Branch chief Lt. Col. Greg Motes, and his team of technicians, students and contractors, was adapting training materials for iPhones, iPads and Android phones, to be used by tech-savvy soldiers. Although the team is exploring 50 app concepts, including a mobile interface for MyPay, most of their apps mix open source, non-sensitive text and multimedia into training apps.

Not everything is strictly for students. The “Fort Gordon Post Locator” marries a post map to the capabilities of Google maps, letting users search for buildings by name and number, find themselves with GPS and generate directions to their destination. Motes said he can adapt the app for other posts, too.

“Some of these places are on Yahoo Local, but where’s the [Central Issue Facility]? You’re not going to find that on Yahoo,” Motes said. “If you’re told to go to Building 25801, this will show you Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications World Headquarters.”

Training and Doctrine Command’s Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, deputy commanding general for initial military training, has been directing many of the team’s efforts personally by e-mail, riffing off feedback from drill sergeants and other folks for ideas. One led to development of the Army Values app, which puts instructional videos on ethics in students’ hands.

The Fort Gordon team is constantly churning out apps. Motes and Hertling touted apps that let soldiers take practice quizzes on their mobile devices; a mobile version of the Army Blue Book that uses audio to teach the Army song, the soldier’s creed and bugle calls; and mobile versions of thick training books used at the explosive ordnance disposal school.

One popular app, PRT, which won awards in the Apps for Army competition earlier this year, took only days to make. The physical readiness training app not only tells you how to do a proper push-up with text from the Army PT manual, but shows you how with videos from the physical readiness proponent at Fort Jackson, S.C.

Hertling was adamant that the technology “is not a replacement of, but a supplement to” training.

“We’re getting some pretty good feedback from the younger soldiers,” Hertling said. “The older soldiers are saying, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re doing what?’ But it’s a matter of understanding how the younger soldiers learn. And imagine, then, how much we can eliminate out of the classroom time and give them more opportunity for hands-on.”

CONNECTED TO COMBAT
No need to leave the smart phone in garrison when a soldier deploys. Army officials want soldiers to bring the phones to the war zone, where their intelligence sharing and communications capabilities could revolutionize battlefield tactics.

A widespread deployment of the phones to the battlefield could come as soon as next year, Vane said.

Rather than having to trudge over to the One System Remote Video Terminal to check out the blue force tracker or watch feeds from the Shadow buzzing overhead, soldiers could fish their smart phones out of their pockets.

The future is giving dismounted soldiers a “fused picture” of information and intelligence overlaid on a map, like that of the multimedia TIGR (Tactical Ground Reporting) System, said Col. Marisa Tanner, chief of the doctrine, organization, operational architecture and threat division at FFID. As the Army pushes decision-making power to lower-level troops, their access to information becomes crucial.

“It’s critical that we give the soldier[s] a platform that they can work with rapidly and easily, and within comms’ reach, so that they truly have a situational awareness,” Tanner said. “If you look at every soldier as being a sensor, and give them a handheld that has eight or nine sensors, that’s a force multiplier.”

What the Army found is that soldiers with smart phones are more likely to collect data and share it.

In an exercise last May at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the Army gave two four-man patrols mobile devices loaded with various apps that provided a fused picture. The patrols had a seasoned company-level team in a fixed location monitoring their text-message traffic and mentoring them.

“They can text faster than they can type, so there was a huge jump in the amount of reporting, in the description and detail in the reporting,” Tanner said. “Every word they typed, the company team could see that and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, ask them this. … You just mentioned a radio, take a picture and send it.’ ”

The mentors could not only see where the patrols were on a dynamic map, but help them make decisions.

“Two targets were trying to pull money from them for stability ops, and the company team said, ‘Nope, say OK to this one on the right for $10,000, but the other guy’s trying to exploit you,’ ” Tanner said.

It’s all happening hand-in-hand with industry. Upon request from a group of special-operations soldiers, the engineers at Raytheon, for example, built a smart-phone app that allows soldiers to take a picture with their phone and then circle enemies or weapons caches to send back to headquarters and other units.

A unit deployed to Afghanistan in November with the phones loaded with Raytheon’s Advanced Tactical System to test the software, said Bigham, of Raytheon. The company expects to receive feedback in December.

Companies have also built apps that display video from unmanned aerial vehicles overhead, read words spoken in English into any language the soldier chooses, or — with the so-called “augmented reality” app called Soldier Eyes — let soldiers see information overlaid on what their smart-phone’s camera sees.

“If another unit knows of IEDs, that info can be downloaded directly onto the cell phone,” said Staff Sgt. Isaiah Marquez, an infantry squad leader with the Army Evaluation Task Force who tested the app. “Then the other unit can tell exactly where the IED is supposed to be by looking through the camera on the phone. As you pan around, it will show you where they are.”

Vane said he wants to use the phones to collect biometrics on enemy combatants.

“Can we connect this to biometrics? Well, that’s the direction we’re headed,” he said.

The technology is there, but “the challenge will be to work through the policy issues of sharing data and information assurance,” Vane said. “Army officials remain concerned of enemy forces hacking into the phones, but don’t want that fear to paralyze the use of these phones.”

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
Just how those cell phones will work in the most remote areas of Afghanistan might seem like a mystery. However, industry has developed mobile hubs no bigger than a suitcase that can be strapped to a balloon or an aircraft and provide connectivity up to a 40-mile radius.

According to Tanner of FFID, the Army envisions using a suite of various technologies working together, a base station at brigade headquarters as well as technology that fits in a backpack, on a vehicle, or on an aerostat.

This month, tests were set for White Sands Missile Range, N.M., to see how such an approach would work in an environment where the communications network is unreliable. A unit equipped with smart phones and more than a dozen apps will conduct operations, first without the phones, and then with them.

“It’s a true, rough environment; you’ve got mountains, you’ve got flatlands, iron pyrite, rattlesnakes, wind-knots at 70, and lightning,” Tanner said. “If we can get extended comms to soldiers in that environment, it’s the ideal environment to truly challenge the systems.”

Lockheed Martin and Sierra Nevada both have systems that can put an antenna base on a vehicle, a tower or a fixed-wing platform. An Army project called MACE, or multiaccess communications extender, envisions using a refrigerator-sized base station and vehicle-mounted antenna to more or less do the work of a cell tower.

The Army’s goal at this stage is to start with 3G technology but keep pace with companies like Verizon and T-Mobile as they advance, according to Fiuza of CERDEC.

“So as new technologies come out on the commercial side, we want to quickly bring them in, adapt it to what we want to do on the military side — and then to deploy it,” Fiuza said. “It could be cycles as short as six months, just like the commercial wireless industry does.”

Until then, Vane said, the Army can in most cases depend on cellular networks in countries one might not expect — like Afghanistan.

“You might not think it, but places like Afghanistan and Iraq have networks and infrastructure we can work with,” Vane said.