What the Army's Next App Reveals About Defense Innovation

When you use an app or a webpage to book a hotel room or an airline ticket, that room or seat immediately becomes unavailable to everyone else. It’s the sort of automatic system that airlines have relied on since the 1960s. But if you need to book time on a U.S. Army firing range, you’re stuck with a process that predates the Jet Age.. 

“Typically…there’s a lot of phone calls back and forth, a lot of centralized control,” said Maj. Evan Adams, describing the Army’s Range Facility Management Support System. “If you have to go through range control in order to figure out a phone number in order to coordinate with someone about a firing and do that three or four times because you’re trying to coordinate, it’s very difficult.”

On Tuesday, Adams won the inaugural Dragon Innovation Challenge, a Shark Tank-style event dreamed up by the XVIII Airborne Corps to find a better way to schedule range time. Adams pitched a new mobile range scheduling app that functions very much like a reservation app for a restaurant or hotel. It also includes satellite photos and additional information on the ranges themselves so that people looking to book can make sure that the course meets their needs. Army officials said the Airborne Corps would build and test the app.

In an interview, Adams modestly pointed out that the idea really just mimicked the kind of experience most iPhone users have come to expect. “My idea hinges on the fact that these technologies exist already. I mean, messaging boards have been around since I’ve been in college,” he said. ..

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