In an effort to take advantage of the seemingly unlimited capabilities of smartphones and tablets, the Army recently designed a program that lets commanders send mission-specific apps and data directly to the devices. The newly-developed platform, called Tacmark, could revolutionize the way troops operate in the field, Military Times reports.
The program closely resembles Apple's App Store, but it offers commanders a number of other advantages. Specifically, leaders can assemble a mission pack full of different programs and send them to their subordinates' devices. Although there are still some questions that need to be answered before the program is implemented, its initial testing last summer showed just how useful it could be.
"We exercised Tacmark, told people to go into the woods, and we exercised this over a couple of different network layers," developer Steven P. Mazza told the publication. "We continued to ride over the top of this in a comms-agnostic matter, and it was a huge success."
The time when Tacmark is heavily used by the military may not be that far off. According to Wired, the Army is poised to equip the 3rd and 4th Brigade Combat Teams of the 10th Mountain Division with smartphones when they deploy to Afghanistan in October.