U.S. Army Pathfinder Program: Innovation in Makerspaces
Watch this video to learn about the U.S. Army Pathfinder program. Managed by DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory in close partnership with the DEVCOM Armaments Center, the program aims to build crucial environments for bottom-up soldier innovation in makerspaces focusing on design, innovation, research, and technology in a collaborative setting.
Transcript
00:00:00 [Music] foreign the United States Army Futures command or AFC is advancing army modernization strategy with one Focus to enable soldiers and units to win our nation's Wars then come home safely from multi-domain operations to assist in this Mission afc's Combat capabilities development command or devca is building
00:00:26 crucial environments for bottom-up Soldier innovation in makers faces focusing on design Innovation research and technology in a collaborative setting at Fort Campbell the first of these spaces is the eagle work Supply tactical Innovation Center known as the attic and in just its first year of operation has made a significant impact on Frontline Innovation with some napkin
00:00:53 math and some YouTube videos took our idea we used the tools here we built what we wanted once the the attic's name got out saying hey there's a place you can go that has all the you know all this cool equipment and everything else we were getting emails from people all across the United States saying hey we want this too we have use for it and it's not just those in the
00:01:14 fire section or the electronic warfare section we had Aviation come in Cavalry the Infantry all these officers from different branches had ideas of what they could do with our prototype makerspaces create a progression for Frontline Concepts to become prototyping Solutions allowing innovation in the dirt to transition from the abstract to the actual this is a key asset that
00:01:43 allows us to improve our mission Effectiveness it allows us to tie in the Tactical level to the higher echelons if we don't have this ability we're going to slow down and we're not going to be able to empower our soul years to solve problems at the basic level cannot predict the kinds of benefits that will come out of this type of asset but I guarantee you it will surprise you every
00:02:05 time and it will make us better for it in these makerspaces soldiers are embracing innovation in action and seeing results they bring their creative ideas and receive engineering support and guidance as they collaborate with academic and defense experts on novel Technologies critical to Army operations the Pathfinder program empowers the soldier who best understands a given
00:02:29 problem to develop a solution for the rest of the team soldiers know more about field artillery than certainly I ever will you have a you know an enormous resource of you know people in the Army to inform a designer or an engineer like myself or others in the lab as to what we really should be focusing on when we're making something for soldiers this interaction with
00:02:51 academic and Industry researchers makes a significant impact on research and in solving real challenges facing soldiers so this collaboration impacts Innovation because it gives us access to soldiers and problems so as an academic you know the more you understand the context challenges of the space the better the solution you can come up with and to have a place like the attic and
00:03:13 Innovation officers it gives you access to soldiers you can go out in the field you can do observations you can do interviews collect videos like pictures and again really just expand your understanding of you know what are the realm of acceptable Solutions in addition to traditional maker spaces the Pathfinder program also offers specialized maker facilities like torch
00:03:34 a centralized Hub to test and evaluate cyber vulnerabilities using access to physical and logical practice environments torch emphasizes cyber security and Readiness in a testing and research environment and the dod our next fight is going to move at a much much faster Pace than what we've seen previous conference deal and our ability to respond either to
00:03:59 contingencies humanitarian crises or you know a full-up fight speed is going to be important and so what we're likely going to find is in the future will be out in the field some kind of Crisis and there will be a problem and we will know how to solve it but we will need the means to do it at the Tactical level whether you seek a general facility or a specialized space Pathfinder makerspaces
00:04:22 allow for specialization and solution development to support Warfighter modernization