Innovation in Software

When the UK went to war in earlier this decade, I gave serious consideration to signing up to the Army with the intention of becoming an officer.

Not because I’m a blood-thirsty man looking to kill Taleban foot soldiers or because I had aspirations of heroism, but because I had (and believe I still have) a set of skills that would be of use on a battlefield. I might – just might – have been able to help save a few lives in the British ranks. The main reason I didn’t is because I really have a problem with being shot at just because I’d been told to be shot at. I have “problems with authority”, as they say.

There is a desperate lack of improvisation, innovation and lateral thinking in most battlefield situations. There are some stunning examples of tactical and strategic thinking, but the current row over equipment is an example of how we must wait a number of years for a handful of helicopters to turn up in order to conduct basic troop movements.

I am pleased then, to point to an example of innovative thinking on the battlefield by a US soldier.

In Iraq, Sergeant 1st Class Martin Stadtler had nothing. He was stationed near Mosul, at a base that covers 24 square kilometers. Surrounding the base was a wall, and at intervals along that wall stood watchtowers. Those towers were improvised; they were large concrete water pipes, stood on their ends.

Inside each tower is a pair of soldiers. They’re watching for insurgents. To communicate with the home base, they had standard-issue tactical radios. Unfortunately, these radios couldn’t reach home base — the base was too big. Soldiers had to play a game of Telephone to reach the base: one tower radios the next until they are finally in range of the home base. Obviously, this would not do.

Fortunately, SFC Stadtler knew how to use open source software. Using found hardware, like a laptop pulled from the trash, and wires pulled from collapsed buildings, he was able to establish a wireless network between the towers and the home base. He was able to install freely available voice-over-ip software on this recycled hardware, which turned the computer into a wireless telephone. The soldiers were now able to communicate with each other and the home base. At no cost.

Later on he adapted his night-vision camera equipment using software “invented by a young man in Germany who wanted to watch his cat while he was away from home”, to watch out for insurgents planting bombs beyond the perimeter of the base.

Of course, the flip-side of this is that because its low cost and using commodity hardware, the technical advantage can be lost quickly to the “other side” adapting – they can have improvised night vision systems and cheap long-range secure telecommunications, too. But that’s the nature of warfare.

It just goes to show though, there is a place for innovative software solutions in even the most dusty and difficult of situations.