Army Unable to Create, Distribute the High-level Mobile Apps They Want

Apps for the Army has not delivered game-changing mobile applications for warfighters, Army officials told an industry audience March 17.

Given the number of apps on the commercial market and the sheer size of the Army, it was tempting to assume that apps are easy to write and the Army already has personnel that could write them, said Lt. Col. Gregory Motes, chief of the mobile applications branch, Army Signal Center of Excellence & Fort Gordon. He spoke during the AFCEA DC Next-Gen Mobile Technologies Symposium.

"It turns out that wasn't true. There weren't soldiers sitting in their barracks at night writing and publishing apps to iTunes or the Android Market. And a lot of that was flushed out in the Apps for Army contest," Motes said.

"The soldiers that wrote apps for Apps for the Army, and I'm pretty sure I talked to all of them, none of them had written apps prior to the Apps for the Army challenge," he said. But the contest was nonetheless useful since it allowed the Army to assess its capability and raise interest in app development, Motes added.