The US Army Marketplace, a government system developed for use by military personnel, will launch with application software for soldiers, which they can download to their computers or mobile phones.
The Army Marketplace is a site where applications can be published, rated and discussed. It is slated for a release this August and contains apps developed for military personnel and potential military personnel, including training manuals and productivity tools. The site will also have an apps contest.
The Army is expected to host apps that track the location of friendly forces or map out wartime terrain or translate foreign languages, all of which have already been developed by app developers and companies.
The Wired magazine has reported that the Army Marketplace will host 17 apps for Android phones and 16 for iPhones. Soldiers can request for new apps in a forum within the store and discuss how it should be built.
On its website, the Chief Information Officer US says, "The Army Application Marketplace will bring developers and end-users together to collaborate on innovative solutions to Army problems, level the playing field for all vendors and increase competition in order to provide the best and most relevant apps for use by our Soldiers."
The US Army’s mobile applications branch chief Lt Col Gregory Motes told Wired magazine, "The current process of [army] software creation is a very long and arduous process. That’s how we do things. But app development needs to be done quickly."
Marketplace is a combined effort of the U.S. Army CIO/G-6, the Office of the DoD Chief Information Officer, and the Defense Information Systems Agency.
