By Mary Shinn and Savannah Eller

Lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine inspired an ongoing hackathon at Fort Carson, where defense contractors are integrating previously siloed technology, such as air and missile defense systems and drones. 

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said he had the idea while talking with Ukrainian fighters in Germany who were working to help train American forces by acting as their adversaries. The Ukrainian command system showed Driscoll that U.S. systems are not as integrated, simple and effective as needed. 

 So the idea for a new Army initiative called the Right to Integrate was born. 

Thus far, 600 participants, including many engineers, from over 50 companies have helped to integrate computer systems and equipment, Driscoll said, including well-known names such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX, formerly Raytheon. 

“Every single CEO I talked to was incredibly positive,” Driscoll said during a visit to Fort Carson last week. He appeared alongside other defense officials. All of the company leaders were willing to send engineers and equipment to the effort.  

Many of those engineers worked on laptops in Spartan rooms on Fort Carson, where long, thick cables hung down from the ceiling. They worked alongside soldiers, some local to Fort Carson and others who visited to participate in the work. 

Fort Carson was selected for the hackathon in part because of the work happening at the base to develop new communications technology for the whole Army, an effort known as Next Generation Command and Control. The base had the right people with the right expertise and a central location for those who needed to travel, said Lt. Col.  Jeff Tolbert, public affairs adviser for the Office of the Secretary of the Army.

While the Right to Integrate is a separate effort from Next Generation Command and Control, it will ensure the Army’s legacy systems can connect to the new communication infrastructure, he explained. 

However, the new integration work through Right to Integrate is on a faster timeline, and some of the improvements have already been sent out to troops. The work is intended to simplify the data that can come into tired, cold, wet and hungry soldiers, on seven or eight screens, members of the panel said. 

Soldiers need numerous screens, in part, because many of the systems still in use in the Army were cutting-edge when they were introduced, but have not been integrated into other computer systems. The siloed systems often require humans to take data from one computer system and put it into another system by hand. 

“It’s like trying to conduct an orchestra on a Microsoft Teams call when everyone is on a different sheet of music,” said Capt. Micah Maule, an air and missile defense officer.

The new integration will introduce artificial intelligence into the decision-making process when soldiers are faced with complex scenarios, such as drone swarms, Driscoll said.  

“This is probably one of the biggest things we, as an Army, have done in decades,” Driscoll said. 

Some of the computer updates have already been shared with troops in the Middle East, said Alex Miller, chief technology officer to the Army chief of staff, including a new method for tying in drones, counter-drone systems, radars, and cameras to the Army’s systems for controlling troops on the battlefield.

Some of these systems are newly purchased, such as 10,000 Bumblebee drones that crash into other drones to bring them down. About 23,000 new pieces of equipment can now better protect service members in the field because of the updates, Miller explained. 

While the hackathon, named Operation Jailbreak, will wrap up on Saturday after 30 days of work, the Army intends to build on the progress, the defense officials said. 

The next coding sprint is expected to focus on integrating systems that fire long-range munitions, such as rockets, said Brent G. Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology. A location has not been selected for the next hackathon. 

The Army also recently launched an online marketplace for defense-related application programming interfaces (APIs) in early May. An API can help integrate computer systems while protecting the proprietary information on each system. 

The Army Data Operations Center will run the API marketplace, which is currently behind a firewall. The marketplace is intended to be available to defense contractors, Miller said. 

The recent changes help ensure that sensors and decision support can be added to robots, he said. 

“Now we can provide another layer of defense for our soldiers,” he said.