Practical Considerations for Use of Mobile Apps at the Tactical Edge

Abstract : Along with the increased interest by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in the use of portable electronics for the warfighter as part of the Command and Control (C2) infrastructure, such as smart phones and tablet computers, there is the alluring possibility of incorporating or adapting the associated commercial mobile apps ecosystem to gain access to the vast array of functionality available. Currently, over a million Android apps and a million iOS apps are available for download from the Google Play and Apple iTunes app stores, respectively. Of these, most would not be considered relevant to the military mission in their original forms, but often can form the basis of militarily useful functions after suitable customization (e.g., social media for C2, games adapted for training, maps for situational awareness). In addition, due to the special requirements of the military environment at the tactical edge, there are serious practical considerations that need to be addressed, such as operating under limited communications and establishing a viable app ecosystem, in order to successfully tap into these apps. The commercial mobile app ecosystem requirements, features and enablers are compared with the military environment. Key factors to be considered include major differences in the economic drivers and scale between the commercial world and DoD for developers and deployers, the increased security needs of the apps for soldiers both from the vulnerability and supply-chain aspects, difficulties in patching and keeping platforms and apps up-to-date, privacy constraints, and concerns about the distribution of information such as location data. The DoD is currently pursuing several policy, research and pilot efforts, primarily at the enterprise level versus the tactical edge, to facilitate implementation of some form of mobile apps ecosystem.