A hackathon event is pushing the US Army and defense partners to better integrate systems.
US Army photo by Sgt. Nicodemus Taylor
US Army leaders are trying to break down the decades-old technology barriers that have kept weapons, sensors, and command systems from easily sharing information, a critical step as the service pushes to make battlefield decisions faster.A recent exercise, the Project Jailbreak hackathon, brought top defense companies and the Army together to connect counter-drone systems, air and missile defenses, command systems, drones and uncrewed systems, and other weapons, getting these disparate systems speaking the same language.Updates were made and are already being pushed out to soldiers, including those deployed in the Middle East."If you're not a technologist, think about your daily life. Imagine if every accessory you have — light bulbs, toaster, TVs — had a different way to connect," Alex Miller, the Army's chief technology officer, told reporters on Thursday. Imagine "your toaster didn't plug into the outlet," he said, and "you had to find a special adapter."That condition is what the Army's dealt with for decades, forcing soldiers to be what Miller described as the "integration point" between different systems, "which does not scale well if you are cold, tired, wet, and hungry operating on 20-hour days." Troops would have to manually input data for battlefield decision-making, spending more time going back and forth between all the different systems.That slows the decision-making process when speed matters.
