Army touts ‘Mortars App’ for soldiers to fire rounds via smartphone, tablet

The Army developed an app meant to help mortar crews calculate and launch rounds, the service said, replacing software for decades-old platforms with a fire control system that can fit in their pockets.

Originally introduced in 2023, the “Mortars App” is intended to give soldiers a more intuitive fire control system that can be used for different platforms. Mortar crews are responsible for delivering immediate indirect fire for maneuvering forces, and are required to coordinate ranges, ballistics, round types and a host of other fire data to do so.

The service described the application as modular, with the ability to run on “devices as small as a Samsung phone running Android OS” and legacy systems, such as the Lightweight Handheld Mortar Ballistics Computer (LHMBC), which was released in the early 2000s and is common to Army mortar units.

The Army said the app received clearance to run on the LHMBC in March, according to a June 4 press release, as part of an effort to shed old fire control systems that accumulated “significant technical debt” and create software that could transcend platforms.

“We created the solution that had such an impact on the [Fire Control Systems & Technology] Directorate and soldiers, and were able to provide something modern, user friendly and responsive,” said Julia Gustafson, a computer engineer and software project lead for the app, according to the release.

In recent months, the Army has made several moves to connect its disparate — sometimes old — hardware with common, transferable software as new technology becomes available, a problem that has plagued the service for years, officials have said. 

DefenseScoop recently reported on Operation Jailbreak, a Colorado-based “hackathon” where data engineers from different defense companies assembled to get new and old Army systems to exchange data, a priority service officials have said is necessary for modern conflict where quick information flow could mean success or failure.

The Mortars App is intended to replace legacy software that was a frustrating staple for hardware such as the LHMBC or the larger Mortar Fire Control System (MFCS), officials said in the press release. The Army described those systems as having “started to show their age” and their original software tied solely to the platform, meaning “desire to have it on a new device would require starting from scratch.”

The new app stemmed from a 2015 Marine Corps request for an Android app the LHMBC could run on, but the app “was not up to par,” the Army said. So, the service’s Weapons and Software Engineering Center (WSEC) decided to develop a new app and planning began in 2020.

An initial iteration the app developed in 2023 was more advanced than the legacy software, but was not interoperable enough for the Army. By the following year, the service developed the “modern” app after formal testing.

Soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division adopted the app “with little training,” the Army said. The release, citing Gustafson, said more software advancements are expected. Though it did not describe those advancements, they “are wanted on increasingly accelerated schedules,” according to the service. 

“As the software is both modular and highly flexible, any significant updates or offshoots will start from a mature operating base,” the service said. “These projects will require fewer developers, fewer resources, and will deliver products to the warfighter even faster than before.”