Now you can help develop drones and apps for the Marine Corps

The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory is looking for a few good innovations to shape the future force.

The Quantico, Virginia-based lab will kick off the first "CMC Warfighting Challenge" this month, said Col. John Armellino, the warfightinglab's operations officer. Marines can starting submitting ideas through the new "CMC Innovation Portal" once it officially goes online Sept. 15. A different challenge will be offered every other month.

Gen. Robert Neller, the commandant of the Marine Corps, has encouraged Marines — from general officers to privates — to get creative and identify new ways to bolster the service's storied combat force. Neller wants, as he often says, "disruptive thinkers."

Officials seek ideas that are "forward looking, futuristic and cutting edge," Armellino said. "What we are trying to do is to address our current challenges to ensure the Marine Corps is organized, trained and equipped to meet the demands of the future environment," he added.

Submissions can be made via the web portal, which had a "soft" opening on Sept. 1. While the first challenge is aimed at getting Marines' input, Armellino said, the Marine Corps also wants to hear from people in academia and industry. And anyone who submits an idea will be kept in the loop, he said, and "remains part of the process."

First up: Ideas and ways to make autonomous, robotic systems that can better support Marine air-ground task force operations. The September challenge is targeted at finding solutions to what "Marines do today that seem considerably dull or dirty or dangerous," Armellino said.

So the lab has pitched this challenge: "Identify missions or tasks assigned to your unit that currently requires a Marine (or Marines) to accomplish, that could, and should, be replaced by robotic, autonomous, or unmanned systems. Missions or tasks that are prime candidates for autonomous solutions are typically dull, dirty or dangerous in nature."

Some Examples:

• Dull: Filling sandbags
• Dirty: Going into a potential CBRNE environment to sense for chemicals
• Dangerous: Sweeping for mines/IEDs

For November, the Marine Corps wants ideas from developers for apps "that enhance quality of life, physical fitness and warfighting in general," Armellino said.

The innovation challenges are part of the service's broader and ongoing effort to help develop the future force. The CMC Warfighting Challenge, he said, will provide "a focused, analytical framework."

And it wants answers and solutions a lot faster.

So the Marine Corps also is establishing a Rapid Capabilities Office. The office will manage the crowd-sourcing portal and other pathways for innovation and will be "empowered to accelerate turnkey solutions or further incubate ideas" that could be demonstrated, tested and experimented, Armellino said. It also will play a part in the Future Force Implementation Plan.

The RCO, he said, will be a bridge between the Marine Corps' combat development and systems commands — think, concepts and ideas and the equipment and systems that bring those to life. And it "could accelerate technology for development or rapidly get" what's available to the operating force much faster, he said.

Innovation is a hot phrase of late, perhaps driven by the resetting of the force mired in two major wars over nearly a generation and facing a much more-advanced, high-tech and hybrid threat environment. Agencies like DARPA have reached out to outsiders for ideas, say, to counter threats to drones.

And the Marine Corps isn't alone in tapping crowd-sourcing to broaden its stable of thinkers and developers. The Navy created Task Force Innovation in January 2015, along with a web portal for virtual collaboration called The Hatch, spurred by Navy Sec. Ray Mabus' Innovation Vision for the department.

The Army in 2013 started soliciting ideas for its "Rapid Equipping Force" program through a website that remains in place today. Soldiers can submit ideas or solutions online. The Army is taken a greater collaborative approach with workshops and meetings to pull ideas from soldiers and others whose innovations, expertise and skills just might help develop better gear, vehicles and equipment. Its third annual Innovation Summit was held Aug. 16-17.

"Innovation needs to be a culture, not a niche corner or a specific time,"Army Training and Doctrine Command chief Gen. David Perkins told the audience at the two-day meeting in Virginia. Soldiers "are natural innovators. We just need to make sure we don't stifle them."

In late August, Army Secretary Eric Fanning announced the creation of a Rapid Capabilities Office to find and field technology and equipment more quickly. "We're serious about keeping our edge, so we need to make changes in how we get soldiers the technology they need," Fanning said, in an Army news story. "The Army Rapid Capabilities Office is a major step forward, allowing us to prioritize cross-domain, integrated capabilities in order to confront emerging threats and advance America's military dominance."

What tangible, concrete innovations come of these efforts remain to be seen.

The CMC Warfighting Challenge is like a next-gen take on "Marine Mail" from the mid-1990s, when the top general, Gen. Chuck Krulak, sought out creative and innovative ideas from Marines. Krulak also established the warfighting lab during his tenure as commandant. In 2007, in the midst of two major conflicts, then-commandant Gen. James Conway revived Marine Mail, but it's not clear what specifically came of that effort.

Marine Mail, said Armellino, was "a great idea" that also was "unsustainable." If it's set up as a "virtual suggestion box," he said, "you run the risk of being potentially overwhelmed."

Will the new CMC Warfighting Challenge work?

The Warfighting Lab worked through the web portal bugs during a beta test in July to collect thoughts about wearable technologies. That drew 260 ideas, Armellino said. It likely will fall to the lab's RCO to cull through those suggestions.