Photo By Cpl. Orion Stpierre | U.S. Marines assigned to the Marine Innovation Unit (MIU) write code at the Marine...... read more read more
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AUSTIN, Texas - Behind the historic yellow brick façade of the Austin Community College Campus is a sleek modern workspace with massive computer monitors and floor-to-ceiling white boards, dotted with neon sticky notes and scribbled handwriting. Here, during a two-week “coding sprint” from 17 to 28 March, 2025, Marines from the Marine Innovation Unit and the Marine Corps Software Factory worked together to develop new capabilities for deployment across the Marine Corps.
“This stuff should be built by Marines,” said Major Andrew Hutcheon, a member of the Marine Innovation Unit (MIU) team that supports the Marine Corps Software Factor (MCSWF). “Marines have the empathy with the end user to understand the real problems - some of this stuff should be built by the people who actually use it.”
What began as an informal gathering of like-minded Marines with an interest in coding (“literally a chat room,” said Hutcheon) now takes shape in a more formalized fashion as a team of MIU reservists supporting MCSWF. Although many of the MIU Marines have civilian careers in coding, software and information technology, their technical expertise is also ultimately shaped by their experience as Marines.
“When MIU sets out to create a piece of software, you should have a pilot, an infantry Marine and other specialties involved,” said Hutcheon, a Logistics Officer who works in industrial cybersecurity. “They’re going to tell you things about the color scheme, the display, and how it works when it is sweaty and dirty – and all of that matters.”
One team of coders, led by Major David McGee, is working to develop a tool that predicts helicopter landing zones (HLZs) based on topographical information, ensuring that they are sufficiently level and free of any obstructions. The application, called ARES (for Augmented Reconnaissance and Estimate of the Situation), is intended to support planning for casualty evacuation or the infiltration and exfiltration of tactical-level units. In this case, users provide basic information about the aircraft they are flying and the area they are operating in. Then, in just a few seconds, it returns a map overlay with suitable HLZs highlighted in green, and unacceptable areas in red. To ensure usability, the team partners with Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1) to continually assess and improve the software.
“We used to provide a sliding scale of risk, where pilots could identify potential HLZs in terms of high, medium or low risk,” said McGee. “But the pilots said they’d rather see all of the information at once, so we transitioned to a color gradient design that shows the risk as an overlay – from green [low risk] to red [high risk].”
During the two-week sprint, much of the ARES team – including two Marines from the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity (MCTSSA) – focused their efforts on refining the data set the application uses, ensuring it remains functional even without an internet connection. The application “plugs in” to a platform known as the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) and is accessed via a ruggedized touch-screen tablet called the Marine Air-Ground Tablet (MAGTab), which has limited memory and processing power. The challenge for the MIU team, then, is to ensure that the data is packaged in small enough segments that it can be pre-loaded and accessed directly from the MAGTab.
“It’s about Marines understanding the problem set. A version of this software developed by an external contractor was reliant on a consistent internet connection to a server,” said McGee. “And if you’re operating in a disconnected environment, that’s the first thing that’s going to go. There is no network, there is no reachback.”
“MIU and MCSWF looked at that problem set and said: ‘we think we can develop an algorithm that will run on MAGTab, with no connectivity, because if you’re going to use this capability in combat, you have to have a software architecture that supports that.’”
In addition to ARES, MIU Marines also worked to develop a second ATAK plugin, this one designed to help pilots receive and process “nine lines” – the standard nine-component radio transmission that Marines on the ground use to coordinate close air support with the pilots flying above them. Often, pilots will note the contents of a nine line on a notepad strapped to their thigh, a system that ATAK and MAGTab are meant to improve upon. But the existing interface, according to Capt David Whalen, did a poor job of meeting the needs of the pilots using it
“The current version is pretty much unusable in flight,” said Whalen, who also works as a data analyst for a cybersecurity firm. “It doesn’t flow in the same order that the information is being provided by the supported unit, and the interface isn’t practical for someone who is also flying an airplane.”
The request from pilots at MAWTS-1, then, was to develop a “flight mode” redesign of ATAK’s user interface to make the inputs easier and more efficient. The resulting application has oversized buttons that occupy almost the entire screen of the MAGTab, making it easy to type in information with just one hand.
“When we think about the context in which people are going to be using these things,” said Major Ivy Chamness, “it’s not sitting at a desk. In a lot of cases, it’ll be the secondary thing that they’re doing, and the primary thing that they’re doing is flying a plane, or trying to maintain broader situational awareness in a chaotic situation on the ground.”
Chamness, a Combat Engineer Officer who previously worked as a product manager and design strategist for a major auto manufacturer, likened the process to developing the interface found in many civilian vehicles today. “Thinking about the design, everything needs to be big, minimal text, almost able to operate it out of the corner of your eye – because that’s how it is going to be used,” said Chamness.
Across the room, Captain Scott Pierce-Wrobel and a team of Marines worked to build a database of open billets across the Marine Corps’ Reserve component. Originally requested by the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the resulting application is known as “Reserve Hub” and helps Marines navigate the process of identifying open jobs in the Marine Corps Reserve. Rather than manually scrolling through a 100-page PDF document that is updated once per month, Reserve Hub serves as a continuously updated and searchable database, allowing Marines to quickly find opportunities to serve with a Marine Corps unit near them. One portion of the software, developed by Major Collin Chew, has massively reduced the amount of time necessary to process and display the data.
“With automated web browsers, it basically does the clicks for you. So we’ve taken a fifteen minute process where you have to download the data and redact it, and now it takes about fifteen seconds,” said Chew, a Communications Officer who also works as a data solutions architect. “You just type your PIN in and hit ‘go’.”
The new Reserve Hub application presents users with a modern interface, where the data can be filtered by billet, rank and unit, while also providing a Google Maps link that tells users exactly how far the unit is from the Marine’s location – all intended to help reduce friction. “It’s all meant to improve retention, to make things easier for Marines,” said Pierce-Wrobel, an Air Defense Control Officer and strategy management consultant. “We’re saying ‘stay with us, don’t go to the National Guard.’”
But despite the efforts of the Marines in Austin, developing software for the Marine Corps is not without hurdles and bottlenecks. The process of making software publicly available to users is known as putting it “into production” and it requires a server to host the application – infrastructure the Marine Corps does not currently possess. Lacking an organic capability, the Marine Corps relies on support from the U.S. Army Software Factory to host their applications and make them available for Marines to use.
“It’s a different perspective,” said McGee. “We need Marine Corps infrastructure, and we need a platform to put things out to the fleet – and we also need Marine writing the code. They’re the ones on the ground who really understand the problems. Wouldn’t it be great if I was an infantry squad leader, and could figure out where I can land a helicopter without having to pull out a map?”
“Or instead of building a terrain model out of cardboard, I can use a device to open up a .KML file (a file extension for two- and three-dimensional geographical data) and say to ‘turn right at the white building with the broken window?’” McGee continued. “Let’s use the tech that we’ve got to enable our Marines.”
| Date Taken: | 03.28.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.04.2025 09:48 |
| Story ID: | 494461 |
| Location: | AUSTIN, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 630 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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