Why is it that you can send money around the world in seconds with your phone, but a forward observer can’t use a secure application to connect with an artillery battery and call for fire? That’s because the past 30 years of technological innovation have largely left the military behind. The services don’t have a large-scale ability to create the technology required to compete on the modern battlefield.

This is a problem. And the Marine Corps is no further ahead than the other services. It does not have an active duty or civilian workforce with the skills necessary to develop or maintain the technology it will need for its operating concepts in the next conflict. Recruiting and training the right people will take decades.

We have found a way to speed this up: Use the reserve components to inject private sector expertise into the active force while it builds technical capacity. We (Drew and Collin) have worked to establish an organization within the Marine Corps Reserve to support the active force’s software development efforts. Our experience has shown that — if employed correctly — reservists can bring a wealth of experience into the active force while working to advance the mission. But to use reservists effectively, the services will need to update their employment models for the 21st century by enabling asynchronous remote work and considering a reservist’s private sector expertise when assigning them to software development units.

Case Study: Casualty Evacuation Planning Software

A recent project demonstrates what software can do for the operating forces. We’ve been building an application — Augmented Reconnaissance and Estimate of the Situation — to help plan casualty evacuations. The project began with a student at Naval Postgraduate School who was trying to build an application to help plan responses to changed tactical situations. Patrols that take a casualty usually default to pre-planned evacuation points. But these zones are rarely the most advantageous, because the tactical situation has completely changed since they were identified. Quickly finding a nearby evacuation point within the “golden hour” after taking a casualty can be the difference between life and death. The application scans data to identify nearby landing zones.

Alongside the Marine Corps Software Factory, we have worked on iterative versions of the application. We first formed a cross-functional software team and, after design sessions with the app’s creator and Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One, we gave it to the operating forces for initial acceptance testing. Feedback indicated that we needed to improve the tool before it would be helpful on the battlefield.

The biggest issue was that it was too slow. To identify landing zones, the application scans topographic data to find areas that don’t exceed specified aircraft landing parameters. This is a complicated math problem. So, we added a marine with a doctorate in mathematics to the team and had him apply a machine learning model to improve performance.

Within a week, he decreased landing zone and route calculation time from over a minute to less than ten seconds. Considering the value of speed when someone’s life hangs in the balance, this is a huge improvement. This saved over 1 percent of the golden hour, and shows how a reservist’s civilian skills can be more important than their military training.

We implemented two further modifications that showcase the value of reservist software developers. First, we recognized that we needed to account for airframe-specific landing footprints. So, we pulled a pilot onto the team to improve the accuracy of the airframe specifications and ensure compliance with safety requirements. This increased the likelihood of finding a safe landing zone.

The second modification was improving the user interface. The original application required the user to type coordinates on a digital keypad to define the search area. But it’s hard to type 30-to-40 characters in a row without making a mistake, and doing so requires the user to strip off their gloves.

These might not seem like major sources of friction. But the marine faces one of the most stressful situations imaginable. They’ve been shot at, and one of their friends is wounded. So, we changed the interface so that the user could tap points on a map rather than type in digits.

These modifications highlight additional benefits of integrating reservists into software development. First, they bring private sector experience with them. Second, they can leverage networks to informally vet products before fielding. And finally, because reservists have (literally) walked miles in the user’s boots, they identify design flaws that civilians cannot. Reservist software developers have a unique ability to empathize with the customer, allowing them to anticipate their needs and frustrations.

If accepted by the fleet, our application can save lives by speeding casualty evacuations. This is the sort of technological tool the service needs to develop before the next war.

Moving Too Slowly

Applications like these can improve warfighting capability by streamlining mission planning and execution. But software development is a capability that takes decades to mature, and the Marine Corps is moving far too slowly. Even though the Marine Corps Software Factory has all the pieces in place to be successful, the service needs to pick up the pace.

It takes years for someone to become a high-level software developer — these are not skills that can be mastered in a programming boot camp. If the Commandant decided that he wanted the ability to build and sustain software today, it would be decades before the service had a cadre of experienced uniformed personnel who could do so at scale.

That’s a problem. China is building up its military with an eye to developing the ability to attack Taiwan in the next two years. Technology, like cheap drones, has transformed the battlefield in Ukraine. American forces will need to compete on this high-tech battlefield the next time we go to war, and so the Marine Corps needs to begin preparing for the next conflict now.

The Reserve Component Can Help Bridge This Gap

The service actually does have a pool of personnel who understand software development: reservists. Because of their civilian careers, members of the reserve component have an unparalleled diversity of professional experience. Some develop software in the private sector, others work on artificial intelligence, and many possess advanced degrees in computer science or similar fields. The reserves have the most realistic chance of recruiting people with these skills who want to serve without leaving their jobs. Finally, the reserves can retain marines who leave active duty to pursue private sector opportunities. And as our app development experience shows, reservists have a unique ability to identify software design pain points and solutions.

The problem is that the reserve experience isn’t designed to maximize these individuals’ contributions, and the service doesn’t have a way to identify and employ a reservist’s private sector skills. The Marine Corps categorizes people based on military specialties rather than civilian expertise. While that’s helpful to staff operational units, it means that the service is simply unaware of a marine’s professional development over the course of their civilian career. For example, it can only see a reserve helicopter pilot who now works in artificial intelligence as a helicopter pilot. And it will only ever slot him into pilot billets, rather than assigning him to an organization that would benefit from his world-class expertise. Simply put, the service has no way to identify people with technical skillsets acquired outside the military.

Second, the reserves employment model is needlessly cumbersome and discourages people from joining the reserves. Reservists traditionally work one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, totaling around 300 hours per year. But this is rarely on the reservist’s schedule, and, frankly, it is rarely convenient. Statutory protections notwithstanding, reserve service is almost always a source of friction with one’s employer. And because the model relies on physical presence rather than productivity, marines have to fly to drill weekends even if the work could have been performed at home. Travel time isn’t compensated, nor are costs fully reimbursed, further decreasing the attractiveness of a reserves career.

This model hasn’t changed in generations — meaning that it predates computers. Although it may be sufficient to maintain currency in basic military skills, it doesn’t allow the flexibility that those in the tech sector are used to. Situational telework is now an industry standard. Requiring people to physically travel across the country once a month — only to stare at a computer screen — is the sort of thing that makes it hard to recruit and retain private sector software developers.

Marine Coders and the Marine Innovation Unit

We have found a way around some of these problems and our solutions could scale across the rest of the force. Five years ago, we started the Marine Coders as an informal community of practice to coordinate software development efforts and enable marines with technological skills to work on the service’s problems. We built a network and gained executive sponsorship. Then we organized a microservice application challenge, where Marines competed to develop small apps that would increase tactical unit efficiency.

We sensed that there was untapped talent in the reserves, so we migrated the Marine Coders to the Marine Innovation Unit. Our unique structure allows us to recruit software developers from across the reserves and to work on projects that benefit the entire service. We have identified some features of our unit that have allowed us to have an outsized impact.

Most important is the ability to select marines based on demonstrated aptitude rather than military specialty code. We’re interested in someone’s technical ability, which is usually developed in the private sector. This allows us to attract high-impact, low-density skillsets in areas like space engineering, machine learning, and cloud engineering.

Second, we allow our most proficient members to lead projects because, in our field, the least senior are often the most technically able. For example, one of our top performers is a sergeant who has written open-source code that has been accepted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Google repositories.

We’re marines, and so of course we operate with a chain of command. This allows us to decentralize execution to the person who can solve the client’s problem. This means that if one of our junior enlisted marines is an expert, then they are responsible for solving the problem. To be clear, this environment is not for everyone: It requires maturity and mutual professional respect. The Marine Innovation Unit’s interview process allows us to select those who will thrive in a culture where responsibility is based on proficiency and willingness to lead.

The third enabler is remote telework from military installations near our homes. We create work packages that fit our marines’ skills and availability. The individual chooses when to work, so long as they meet our requirements. They can do an hour every weeknight or sixteen hours over the weekend — whatever fits their schedule. Our teams go onsite with their clients to brief progress, plan objectives, and complete administrative requirements. Working on defined projects with concrete deliverables from local installations lets us work during what would otherwise have been travel time.

This arrangement saves money because the Corps pays for far less travel than in a traditional unit, reducing the cost per drill by 40 to 70 percent. It also significantly reduces friction with civilian employers and lets us recruit people in demanding jobs who want to serve, but need some flexibility to juggle work obligations. And finally, it lets us employ people who wouldn’t be able to travel as frequently as the traditional reserves model would require.

The last key enabler is the ability to make a difference. We work on projects that directly impact the active force’s warfighting capability. This helps recruiting and retention: Many of our members joined from the inactive list and the individual ready reserve because they want to do meaningful work. We believe that marines who serve a three-year assignment at the Marine Innovation Unit will be disproportionately likely to continue in the reserves.

Conclusion

Applications that speed mission planning and execution will play a decisive role in the next war. But software development is a capability that will take decades to mature, and the Marine Corps isn’t working quickly enough given the threats on the horizon. Members of the reserve component can help accelerate this capability. The Marine Coders have pioneered a structure that is attractive to software developers and allows them to contribute to the active force. This can be scaled across the rest of the Department of Defense.

War on the Rocks, 26 August 2025… by Will McGee, Collin Chew, and Drew Hutcheon