An innovative new smartphone app will make navigating Arlington National Cemetery a bit easier. Set to launch this fall, the wireless app will use a network to help lead visitors to individual graves, providing a simpler way to pay tribute to fallen heroes, USA Today reports.
The app is part of a larger effort to improve the services at the enormous cemetery. Last year it was revealed that there was some mismanagement of the hundreds of thousands of burial sites. Some were double booked, some had no headstones and others contained unidentified urns. Arlington will be the first national cemetery to offer this type of mobile phone service.
"All we need is better 3G or 4G coverage in the cemetery, and it's coming," Army Maj. Nicholas Miller, chief information officer at the cemetery, told the publication.
The program is just one of the several modernization efforts going on at the cemetery. Perhaps most useful, a new system combines the use of photos and electronic records to streamline the burial process and keep track of each site.
Revamping the record-keeping is no small task. There are approximately 400,000 graves at the cemetery, which covers around 624 acres, according to The Washington Post.