FORT CARSON, COLO. — The U.S. Army held its first hackathon, Project Jailbreak, at Fort Carson, Colorado, to integrate its numerous proprietary battlefield software systems. Engineers from major defense contractors gathered to enable weapons, sensors, and command-and-control systems to share information more effectively.

Project Jailbreak brought together representatives from Anduril, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Perennial Autonomy, and RTX. These companies sent engineers to the event on their own dime, according to officials. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the effort resolved a "first-mover problem" that had previously stalled collaboration. "My perception of this is there had been a first-mover problem where none of them could take the first step without being certain the others would come. And so once they were certain that the United States Army, as the convener, was requiring everybody—or strongly recommending everybody—to show up, everybody came quickly, and it has unlocked massive momentum," Driscoll said.

The initial focus of the hackathon was integrating existing counter-unmanned and air-missile defense systems. Army chief technology officer Alex Miller explained that current battlefield operations centers are overwhelmed with screens displaying fragmented data. "So if you've been into any joint operation center or tactical operation center, there's screens everywhere, and that is because we, over time, have tried to give as much information visually as possible," Miller said. He added that this setup forces personnel to act as the integration point under grueling conditions. "What that has unintentionally done over time is forced our people to be the integration point, which is really rough if you're cold, tired, wet, and hungry. So, if you've been fighting and, you know, 20-hour days and you're getting a little bit of sleep, it just doesn't scale very well," he said.

Some software patches developed during the hackathon have already been deployed to troops in the U.S. Central Command area of operations. "A couple of the software patches have gone forward, luckily we're still in a lull of action. There hasn't been a ton of incoming, so we haven't used them in an offensive capacity," Miller said. He added, "Our goal is to push the rest of that forward in the next 30 days." Army assistant secretary for acquisitions, logistics, and technology Brent Ingraham said the effort aims to expand decision-making capabilities for deployed forces. "At the end of 30 days, hopefully we've given them more decision space, more space to be able to decide what system, what effector, how they're going to defeat the threats that they're facing every day, based on all of the different capabilities over the years," Ingraham said.