Apps for the Army has not delivered game-changing mobile applications for warfighters, Army officials told an industry audience March 17. 

Given the number of apps on the commercial market and the sheer size of the Army, it was tempting to assume that apps are easy to write and the Army already has personnel that could write them, said Lt. Col. Gregory Motes, chief of the mobile applications branch, Army Signal Center of Excellence & Fort Gordon. He spoke during the AFCEA DC Next-Gen Mobile Technologies Symposium.

"It turns out that wasn't true. There weren't soldiers sitting in their barracks at night writing and publishing apps to iTunes or the Android Market. And a lot of that was flushed out in the Apps for Army contest," Motes said.

"The soldiers that wrote apps for Apps for the Army, and I'm pretty sure I talked to all of them, none of them had written apps prior to the Apps for the Army challenge," he said. But the contest was nonetheless useful since it allowed the Army to assess its capability and raise interest in app development, Motes added.

"Not all apps are created equal," said Col. Earl Noble, project manager for Army Knowledge Online and Defense Knowledge Online. With Apps for the Army, "most of those apps were not things that handled FOUO information. For example, one of the winners was a PT manual," he said.

"A lot of the apps that you find on the app store today are simply repackaged information, not necessarily something you need," said Noble.

The Apps for Army version of the Army Soldier's Blue Book had 25,000 downloads in a matter of days, without any promotion from the Army, and provides a more economical and user-friendly version than the print alternative, said Motes. But ultimately, he would like to see more interactive apps, not just those that provide reading and reference material.

In an effort to ramp up development capabilities, Motes is teaching app development classes and trying to get help from industry partners. Twelve people have reached out to him, with some programming background, who want to help, he said. "Of those 12, only one has actually produced an app for us," said Motes. "It's not HTML, it's not Flash, it's not a procedure language. It's not just something you can pick up on the weekend."

A small cadre of app developers also raises questions about sustainability. "We have serious questions about operating and maintaining the apps," said Maj. Gen. Steven Smith, director of the cyber directorate, CIO/G6. 

Relying on industry to meet the Defense Department's mobile technology needs is a tough sell as well. Commercial app developers can make a lot of money without having to target the DoD, said Noble. Requiring end-to-end encryption and common access card capabilities, make working with DoD all the more difficult, he added.

"DoD is not a big customer. It's an important customer. And to be honest with you, a lot of vendors are working to put their product together for us out of a sense of patriotism, because it's not going to be a huge profit margin for them," said Noble.

The best place for apps to be distributed is still unclear, as well. "I would imagine that our app store would be the DoD storefront, at the DoD level. We do not necessarily want an app store for the Army, because what's probably good for us, [Brig.] General Nally could use in the Marine Corps, General Ward could use in the Air Force," said Smith.

However, Noble said a locked down DoD app store may be unnecessary. He said his team is pursuing the companies that already have commercial apps stores and convincing them to host Army apps there. Apple is able to encrypt and restrict access to certain apps so that they can only be downloaded if a user knows the exact address and has access permissions.

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