What Is DARPA TransApps?
Transformative Apps (TransApps) was a DARPA program, started in 2010, that fielded secure smartphones and military apps to U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan. It used startup-style agile development to get new software to Soldiers in months rather than years.
Combat-Ready Smartphone Apps
The Taliban had nearly surrounded us. We used the handheld (TransApps device) to identify the enemy’s position and fired directly at them. If we would not have had the device to pinpoint the enemy, lives could have been lost. (Source: NIST)
Transformative Apps (TransApps) was a DARPA program, started in 2010, to put secure smartphones and apps in the hands of Soldiers in combat. Less than a year after the program began, a pilot with the 10th Mountain Division was under way in Afghanistan. The phones ran on military radio networks rather than commercial cellular or Wi-Fi, so they worked where Soldiers actually were. At its height, about 3,000 Soldiers were using TransApps, with more than 50 apps available.
The Apps
- Maps. A military mapping app with offline satellite imagery. This was by far the most important app.
- Patrol heat map. Showed where previous patrols had spent the most time, since insurgents liked to place bombs where they had seen patrols before.
- Almanac. Local sunrise and sunset times, for planning patrols and equipment.
- Blast calculator. Blast and fragmentation distances, used when calling for airstrikes or artillery.
- Weapons guide. A recognition guide used when examining insurgent weapons caches.
- Face recognition. A database of high-value targets for comparing against detained suspects.
A New Way to Build Military Software
The Transformative Apps program will develop a diverse array of militarily-relevant software applications… The objectives are to transition the resulting systems to end-users in the Services and to foster a new model for rapidly and effectively acquiring, introducing, maintaining and enhancing software. (Source: DARPA)
Most defense projects use a requirements-heavy, waterfall-style procurement and development process. The result is a long wait between a Soldier having a need and the government putting something in their hands.
TransApps borrowed from how private-sector startups work instead: agile development, user-centered design and, above all, getting devices to users as fast as possible. Soldiers in the field could ask for new capabilities, and the development team in the U.S. built them in short cycles based on that feedback.
Compared to the Alternative
Compare this to the U.S. Army’s Land Warrior program, which aimed for similar capabilities. It started in the mid-1990s, but first reached combat in Iraq in 2007. The program was later canceled and restarted in 2008 as Nett Warrior, which fielded its first devices for combat in Afghanistan in late 2013.
What Came Next
TransApps showed that commercial smartphones could work at the tactical edge. DARPA also provided early funding through TransApps for the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK), a mapping and situational awareness app that went on to wide use across the U.S. military.
My Role
From 2012 to 2013 I was a Field Service Representative, the program’s representative on the ground in eastern Afghanistan. My job was to get phones into Soldiers’ hands and get their feedback back to the development team. I fielded devices across more than 20 units and 12 frontline bases. That included:
- Initial fielding of phones to Soldiers at their bases
- Training officers and NCOs to use the apps
- Revisiting sites to provide support, software updates, replacement hardware and terrain imagery
- Interviewing users after combat missions and sending reports to the U.S.-based development team
The feedback from Soldiers was overwhelmingly positive. Having served in Afghanistan myself as a Marine a year earlier, I would have loved to have such a device on my own tour.